Tribe.net online community and branded community

Ok, this is more like it… participatory marketing, within a community, with a great feedback mechanism and some (hopefully) compelling content.

Tribe.net One of the First Social Networking Sites to Offer Advertisers Branded Communities
Auto Manufacturer Scion First Advertiser to Sign-On for Innovative Online Branding Campaign
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 18 /PRNewswire/ — Tribe.net, a free online destination where local people connect with each other about shared interests,announced today it is offering branded communities, which enable advertisersto harness the power of social networking to deliver brand messages and interact with consumers. Tribe is one of the first social networking sites to offer advertisers dedicated online communities devoted exclusively to a specific brand. Automaker Scion is the first advertiser to use a Tribe branded community. The Scion online branded community, which recently launched at http://scion.tribe.net, enables consumers to interact with each other and Scion to discuss Scion cars as well as access information about existing and upcoming models.

I particularly like the interactive feel of the information gathering techniques (not just bloomin’ polls):

Tribe’s branded communities giveadvertisers a new way to reach consumers, with features such as discussionboards, listings of local events and promotions, banner ads and permission-based marketing opportunities.

Aha! “permission-based” marketing opportunities. Someone has taken notice that mass marketing and direct sales don’t work with Gen Y due to the sheer amount of interruption marketing they receive by the age of twelve, compared to the Baby Boomers.

Permission-based marketing:

Coined and popularized by Seth Godin, permission marketing is the opposite of traditional interruption marketing. Permission marketing is about building an ongoing relationship of increasing depth with customers. In the words of Seth Godin, “turning strangers into friends, and friends into customers.”
Permission marketing has been hailed as a way for marketers to succeed in a world increasingly cluttered with marketing messages.

Why not indeed set up online communities instead of expensive and imperfect focus groups? If you need to bounce a set of ideas off potential and existing customers and have them committed and participating and giving feedback, online communities are absolutely the way to go.

Tribe.net (http://www.tribe.net) is a free online community that helps local people connect with each other based on shared interests. By offering opportunities for advertising and lead generation through classifieds, Tribe offers marketers the ability to target specific demographics
and consumers with interests related to particular products or services. This makes Tribe a highly effective grassroots marketing vehicle. In addition to branded communities, Tribe is offering a variety of displaybanner advertising campaigns to help advertisers reach the approximately 500,000 unique monthly visitors to Tribe. Banner ads can be targeted at consumers based on age, gender, geography and interests to maximize relevancy and click-throughs.

I still think stickiness not clickthrus are the answer, but they seem to be heading in that direction.

Completely off the track: Marketingterm.com says for Guerilla marketing “Guerilla Marketing not gorilla marketing” hahahaha.