Facebook Likes: Brand Marketing Dream

Do you identify yourself by the brands you like? Are you a PC or a Mac? Coca Cola or Pepsi? Burger King or McDonalds? What clothing brands do you wear? What kind of phone do you have? What kind of car? Like it or not we all project our brand likes to some extent. Whether you’re a fanatical member of the cult of Apple or you just love the taste of Mars Bars.

Facebook takes your likes to a new level by making them explicit. You can publicly like brands and in effect recommend them to your friends and family. You can also opt in to receiving a wave of marketing from your favorites. If you engage with the brand then you’ll see updates from them popping up regularly in your news feed. It’s not enough just to like them, they have to engage with you to get the traction they need because Facebook is checking behind the scenes and culling a lot of stuff from your news feed to prevent you from being swept away by a tidal wave of irrelevant updates. This means they need to suck you in with competitions, apps, games and all the other marketing tricks they can conjure.

Advertising has come a long way. The success that many brands have had engaging directly with consumers through social media has led to a crowd struggling to climb onto that bandwagon. Social media is cost effective and measurable so it’s a win-win for marketers. If they can get you hooked then their brand will be your friend for life and your public declaration of like will act as a free ad aimed at everyone you are connected to on Facebook. You can see why brands are happy to spend on social media presence from Facebook to Twitter to Google + and beyond, has it ever been so easy for them to get people to effectively sign up to receive marketing?

The stats for the most liked pages on Facebook make interesting reading. Predictably enough Facebook itself is number one with over 63 million likes. The Texas HoldEm Poker game is number two with over 58 million likes.  YouTube is number three with over 54 million likes. You’ve then got Eminem, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Shakira, Michael Jackson, Family Guy, and Harry Potter pushing The Simpsons out of the top ten. The top of the charts is dominated by music acts, movies, games, sports teams and stars and TV shows.

The first big recognizable brand is Coca Cola at number 15 with over 40 million likes. Starbucks pops up at 34 with nearly 29 million likes and you’ll find Oreo at number 48 with over 25 million likes. Skittles at 61 with 21 million likes are way ahead of the mighty McDonalds at 83 with only 17 million likes. Interestingly the top religious page is Jesus Daily at number 134 with over 12 million likes just below the LA Lakers and System of a Down.

So what does all this mean? Why are people willing to surrender their privacy and broadcast their favorite brands? Maybe it’s because they see these brands as part of their online identity, just like their favorite music, movies or books, or maybe it’s because they can get free stuff. What do you think?

If you want to check out the charts for yourself then you can find them at Page Data.