Consumers are not idiots. Let that sink in. When Kanye West and Jay-Z decided to release a new song on Facebook, making access to that song contingent upon liking the song release page, one would think that they would be able to convert a few million of their 11 million existing Facebook fans into liking the new page. It turns out that consumers are no longer that easy to persuade, given that only 80,000 fans actually clicked Like. That, needless to say, is an abysmal hit rate.

A large part of Facebook marketing these days centers around encouraging consumers to share content through a variety of means, from blatantly asking them to share (“share it with your friends if you find it useful/funny”) to meticulously engineering viral loops that sound so good in theory that, if they worked, every employee of that business would be retiring by the next week in Bermuda. Consumers recognize a viral loop when they see one (really), so any overt attempt at making them play along with marketing shenanigans would naturally make the business look desperate and the brand less desirable.

A viral marketing strategy that is increasingly popular is the hostage strategy: if you want X, do Y first. This strategy is possibly the result of countless futile attempts at asking consumers nicely to share things, and, though more and more brands are adopting this approach, it remains unknown if this sort of free marketing actually produces returns. We ourselves use the hostage strategy in building our marketing app, and we have also recently experimented with the game mechanics strategy, i.e. making sharing fun and interactive.

At the end of the day, however, it may be best to revert to a no-nonsense plea to share, once consumers get tired of hostage situations and silly games. What do you think?