Since mid December 2010, Facebook started rolling out a new Profile layout, which most users are now familiar with. Its most distinctive feature is the use of tagged photos to add more visual impact and personality to your page. A new line of photos now sit right at the top of the page, in plain sight for everyone to see.
Many people have since started using the new profile creatively, creating unexpected compositions with all the images on the page. They followed in the footsteps of French artist Alexandre Oudin, who was the first to hack his profile. The featured picture of this post is a great example, and you can find plenty more here, and there.
What most people dont realize is that while you can hack your profile yourself, friends can also do it to you the top picture line will show photos where you have been recently tagged by you, or by others!
A German advertising agency recently used this to their advantage for a very disruptive recruitment campaign. Five short days after the new profile functionality went up, two of their employees spent a night tagging 250 of the most connected advertising professionals, advertising schools, and journalists in Hamburg who weighted together a collective 90.000 friends. In this first ever Facebook profile guerrilla campaign, they essentially high-jacked user profiles as advertising billboards for the agency. Take a look in the video.
Im torn between awe and shock at this brilliant but very intrusive tactic.
To be honest, Im not 100% in love with the way they executed it. I dont quite understand the relevance of the In Your Face message. You had to click and zoom on the picture to get the actual message. But thats the price of getting it out there in just 5 short days after the new profile picture was launched. Kudos.
DraftFCB claims the campaign was a massive success, driving huge buzz in the Hamburg advertising community, quadrupling the number of applications almost overnight. And only costing them one Facebook friend, who did not find it amusing