Shoppers Drug Mart has developed a social media campaign for gift-hunting consumers, an initiative that makes use of Facebook‘s Connect feature.
Shoppers’ “Gifts Made Easy” site serves as the hub for the program and gives visitors options for browsing the online versions of the retailer’s Gifts Made Easy and Beauty Book catalogues.
Along with an “Easy Gift Finder” application, which allows the user to browse for gifts after entering a budget and some basic information about the person they’re buying for, the site also includes a link to the Facebook Connect feature.
To use the latter, a consumer must click the “Connect With Facebook” icon, then click on the name of a Facebook friend to get Shoppers gift ideas based on information made public in that friend’s Facebook profile.
“Over the last year and a half we’ve really been expanding our digital presence, so in conjunction with that initiative, this seemed like a great fit,” said Tammy Smitham, director, communications and corporate affairs for Shoppers Drug Mart.
Smitham said Shoppers’ increased online presence included more than 100,000 Facebook “likes.”
The program was developed in partnership with Toronto interactive agency Trapeze.
“The key idea here is that we’re using Facebook Connect to tap into that social graph, to inspire people to think of more friends than they might otherwise have thought of for Christmas and to make it as easy as possible to get recommendations for those friends,” said Rob Balfour, CEO of Trapeze.
“Things like gender and age we can bring into the data set and use that to filter what’s in the catalogue.”
Smitham said Shoppers has launched online advertisements on the Google ad network, as well as Yahoo and Facebook.
