Brand Marketing on MySpace.com

The MySpace generation continues to grow in its audience, site functionality, and overall brand presence. Additional discussion is in the works of a print magazine geared towards MySpace addicts. With the extensive efforts and updates to the site in the past year, including music, videos, file sharing, and increased peer-to-peer networking, viewership and membership is seemingly growing at an exponential rate.

But is it too fast too soon? Brand marketers are eagerly jumping onto the MySpace plane to target their customers; after all, there really is no reason why the online brand presence can, and should be, any different than mass media efforts in print or television. Brand marketing for many companies is often considered a holistic effort, a 'synergy' of cross-media applications and platforms that offers a brand an opportunity to target specific groups, interests, and preferences in unique ways. By offering the 'latest and greatest' attraction, brand and company hopefuls aim to please their masses in one clean, brand-infused sweep.

If the masses are frolicking to a website, or hub where thousands of the participants are also conversing, chatting, and exchanging opinions, the perception may just be an advertiser's reality of a goldmine. For the MySpace venture in its growing years, advertisers were setting the foundations to become a driving force behind the site's surging popularity and revenue streams. With the recent Google acquisition, MySpace has become its own prominent brand amongst the teen and pre-teen generation, much to many a teacher and parent's disapproval.

Still, as the MySpace trend continues to spur and grow on itself, marketing departments are hopping aboard, seemingly in disguise. Brands are reportedly creating their own identities on the site, avatars and all: as a brand ambassador or representative, these MySpace profiles serve the ulterior purpose of connecting directly with the consumer in disguise. Erik Sass's article "MySpace Members Balk At Phony Profiles" (Online Media Daily, Aug. 28) highlights the laments and complaints received from MySpace enthusiasts on fake corporate entities cropping up across the site. Who's really going to do a background check on their next friendly acquaintance who lures them to a 'cool' or 'hip' site to check out? Odds are, the speed of clicking and natural curiosity will lead many a MySpacer to an advertising destination.

Akin to a mass fishing strategy, claiming a stake in a lively pool of fresh eyes and minds, this type of brand marketing effort seems extreme, but entirely possible: and highly productive for the marketer or advertiser involved. By creating a 'dummy' or disguised profile, the target audiences can be solicited, although inadvertently, into the brand's domain. It's the next generation's equivalent of e-mail spam and direct marketing; possibly in the hands of the next MySpacer who joins the pack. 'Friend' invites may take on a whole new turn if the strategy blurs the lines.

It seems the Trojan horse continues to roam the online world, except now it just has a new outfit. Brand marketing is powerful and creative, with guerrilla marketing efforts pounding on many a consumer's door in new ways. MySpace is an active hub of a highly motivated and influential consumer group of purchasers: 12-24 year olds are brand sensitive and uniquely driven by advertising and media presence. To use MySpace profiles as disguise may seem like a 'low blow' tactic; but it may just work as viral marketing strategies declare war for online consumer space.