Since January 30th, that’s only 11 days ago, the Facebook fan group, ‘Can this sausage roll get more fans than Cheryl Cole?’ has gained 900,006 members.There is no other way than the power of online social networking, that this huge figure could have been achieved.
Within a week it was in the Daily Star and has been made into a song which can be viewed on Youtube and purchased online.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-DXROXr9L4
This could possibly be the best publicity stunt that the sausage roll has ever been involved with and the most interesting part is that it wasn’t created by Ginsters or any other pastry brand - it was created by a single Facebook prankster.
This illustrates how online social networks can speed up public relations and how organic it can be. Whether or not it is bad publicity for Cheryl Cole is debatable. Most people will see it as a genuine laugh but her reputation could be effected due to its mass coverage. There is no doubt that the fan group will succeed in exceeding the 1.5million group members of Cheryl Coles fan club, which is when the national media will most likely cover the story.
A comment made in the discussion board states: “How ironic that this group is probably going to serve to further Cheryl Cole's career by increasing the media hype around her. Hopefully a fair number of people will be encouraged to eat more sausage rolls though.”
From the time I started this blog till now, the group has reached a total of 901,003 fans. One thousand in ten minutes.
This Facebook group is very much like the one which helped Rage Against The Machine become Christmas number one.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing how powerful social media can be for campaigning and influencing people's opinions.
Even though the purpose of this fan group started out as a joke, I bet there are more people out there who like sausage rolls than they do Cheryl Cole!