I received an invite to a dinner party last weekend as part of Macy’s “Come Together” campaign focusing on facilitating people to host dinner parties and donate the money they collect to help Feeding America. Dig the idea of this campaign; leveraging something that people have a passion for (dinner parties) to drive physical experiences that build moments and memories, while providing tools to facilitate that place your brand in the center of the conversation.
When I clicked through the email invite I was disappointed to see they had created a flash-heavy microsite for the event and built a custom invite system that required you to sign up to their system. I was surprised that they had not leveraged existing social media tools (Facebook platform specifically) to run the entire invite campaign through, handle rsvps etc.
I replied directly to my friend Sarah who sent the invite thanking her and sharing that comment. She is highly experienced in the digital space so I knew she would have a good perspective and her response only confirmed my personal issues…
“I hear ya..They failed with a lot of things regarding the site. like the sign-up: I’m a Macys customer and couldn’t use my Macys login which is bananas. They did have a Facebook plug-in but I didn’t use it bc you could only invite 12 people at a time AND it doesn’t work like a normal event so my NYC facebook friends that I didn’t invite could see that they weren’t invited which is sad. Also, the email address import didn’t work so I had to hard copy them all into the invite. But….i love the cause, too!”
Come Together is about making it easier to bring people together, in the places they already spend their time, so its a lesson for other brands and creative agencies to learn how to leverage the power of existing online platforms where consumers are spending their time.
