In this age of cut-throat sales and shoppers armed with personal assault devices, getting and receiving gifts online might just be the safest way to get through the holidays without a trip to urgent care.
If the mayhem on Black Friday tells us anything, it’s that good deals never fail to attract attention, and while there’s certainly nothing new about brands offering special promotions to increase sales, social media, by its very definition, offers brands the chance to exploit a different dynamic: the opportunity to join a circle of friends, to actually participate in a social network.
We’ve noted before that other brands have been gaining traction online by becoming the facilitators of interaction between consumers. The bold move was asking consumers for the chance to interact with other consumers on their behalf – asking them to turn over the Rolodex, and start a dialog with a consumer’s own contacts.
But what we’ve consistently seen is that if the deals are good enough, consumers have been willing to participate. Restaurant.com, for example, recently launched its Feed It Forward program for the fourth year in a row. According to Restaurant.com’s Facebook app:
Feed It Forward enables individuals to give FREE $10 Restaurant.com eGift Cards to friends, family or anonymously send random acts of kindness to the Restaurant.com community. Over the past three holiday seasons, Feed It Forward participants nationwide have gifted more than $32 million in dining experiences.
LIKING Restaurant.com opens the app which then asks you to allow Restaurant.com to post their free $10 eGift card to your friends’ walls. If you agree, you choose who gets the gifts. The receiver gets a $10 gift card and the sender gets the satisfaction of sending a free gift. And Restaurant.com, of course, gets to its product delivered to a wider audience thanks to an ever-expanding network.
Giving is the new receiving. Unless we’re talking about pepper spray.
Restaurant.com’s Track Social Profile
Restaurant.com’s Facebook Page
Restaurant.com’s Website
Track Social