FedEx Facebook: Sending 'virtual gifts' in a company box was top download last week
FedEx Corp. is bouncing off the walls in the walled garden called Facebook.
In just over a week, 270,000 users have downloaded its Launchapackage.com application for sending virtual gifts, all wrapped up in a FedEx box, of course.
What you might not expect are the sounds of jet engines as the package zooms into your space, bouncing off the parameters and landing with a cool-sounding thud on the bottom of your screen.
“A year ago, we decided we wanted to see if could own virtual delivery in the social community,” said Steve Pacheco, FedEx director of advertising and the guy who helps mastermind the company’s award-winning Super Bowl ads.
“You can put anything you want in it and fling it to family and friends.”
Last week, Launchapackage was the No. 1 download out of Facebook’s 40,000 applications.
“Of course, your friends learn about it through the news feed we provide, which is a summary of the different kinds of activity your friends have been doing on Facebook,” said spokesman Matt Hicks in Palo Alto, Calif.
The feed is a key part of the viral spread. Because it includes news about people you’ve admitted to your site, it tends to be of high interest, he said.
The platform gives FedEx all sorts of opportunities to view the social behavior of its customers, particularly the Gen Y’s and millennials it suspects do not know the history of its national TV advertising, dating to 1975.
“We’re able to see what times of day it is being used. And what people are sending in their packages is really great information. We’re learning more about how people socially engage,” Pacheco said.
What FedEx already knows is that the average Facebook user is plugged in 20 minutes a day. Multiply that by its 70 million active users and you have a space “where we think we need to play,” Pacheco said.
Users get the download for free. To give them reason to wrap their text, photos or video in a FedEx box, FedEx provides technology-cool interactive visuals, like the giant rubber band that stretches across your screen to send your message into the next realm.
The concept was developed with Atmosphere BBDO, the interactive arm of FedEx New York advertising agency BBDO.
FedEx added a roster of 60-70 gifts suitable for virtual mailing: a heart-shaped waffle — nice for people separated from significant others — candies, flowers, even an orange rubber boot.
FedEx pays nothing to participate on Facebook, essentially because the social networker realizes it can offer its users more by making itself a platform for others’ genius.
“We think our developers out there have lots of great ideas our users would want to use,” Hicks said.
