A Social Media Story: Flat Stanley, Meet Flat Bart
This is the story of a social media campaign, and how sometimes the best ideas are the simplest—and the already thought of—ones.
For the last few months at Runner’s World my coworkers and I have been promoting our first ever running event coming up this fall. (Side note: come run with us!) A brilliant, brilliant mind on our marketing team had promotional ‘Bart Marks’ created, which are basically bookmark-style cardstock cartoon cutouts of our semi-famous staff member, Bart Yasso. The name ‘Bart Yasso’ may or may not mean something to you, but to the running community he’s as popular as bleeding nipples and missing toenails (albeit much more enjoyable).
Well, one of Bart’s almost 12,000 Facebook fans (between his maxed out personal profile and fan page) snapped a photo of their Bart Mark in a homemade Lego set up referring to him as ‘Flat Bart’. Doh! Flat Bart a la Flat Stanley, why didn’t I think of that?
I got to chatting with Bart about it and he mentioned this wasn’t the first instance of a ‘Where’s Waldo’ type photo of a Bart Mark out in the world. He shared the Bart in Legoland photo with his Facebook fans and several commented immediately: “where can I get my own Flat Bart?!” i.e. “omg PLEASE send me your marketing material. PLEASE!!” Why fans, I think we can do that for you.
I took down contact info of requesters just to find we were fresh out of Flat Barts. Sigh. Then—as if not already spelled out in the stars for me—I suggested we create a free downloadable version, prompting fans to print, cut and photograph their very own Flat Barts. Oh! And tag our Facebook page in your Flat Bart photos, too.
And so, a mini social media campaign was born. It’s in its infancy stages right now, but no matter how viral (or not) it becomes, its formation is worth noting. Credit belongs almost entirely to the fans that got to this before we did. What we saw as clever bookmarks others saw as a play on a traditional kid’s project. But kudos to us for having the avenues for sharing open, celebrating engagement when it happens and for welcoming a little out-sourced creativity.
For the last few months at Runner’s World my coworkers and I have been promoting our first ever running event coming up this fall. (Side note: come run with us!) A brilliant, brilliant mind on our marketing team had promotional ‘Bart Marks’ created, which are basically bookmark-style cardstock cartoon cutouts of our semi-famous staff member, Bart Yasso. The name ‘Bart Yasso’ may or may not mean something to you, but to the running community he’s as popular as bleeding nipples and missing toenails (albeit much more enjoyable).
Well, one of Bart’s almost 12,000 Facebook fans (between his maxed out personal profile and fan page) snapped a photo of their Bart Mark in a homemade Lego set up referring to him as ‘Flat Bart’. Doh! Flat Bart a la Flat Stanley, why didn’t I think of that?
I took down contact info of requesters just to find we were fresh out of Flat Barts. Sigh. Then—as if not already spelled out in the stars for me—I suggested we create a free downloadable version, prompting fans to print, cut and photograph their very own Flat Barts. Oh! And tag our Facebook page in your Flat Bart photos, too.
And so, a mini social media campaign was born. It’s in its infancy stages right now, but no matter how viral (or not) it becomes, its formation is worth noting. Credit belongs almost entirely to the fans that got to this before we did. What we saw as clever bookmarks others saw as a play on a traditional kid’s project. But kudos to us for having the avenues for sharing open, celebrating engagement when it happens and for welcoming a little out-sourced creativity.