23 Jan Social Media Marketing Example #6: Fandango

Posted at 17:56h in Social Media Examples by

After many reminders, I am continuing with the series, “26 Social Media Marketing Examples in Detail” .  Because this is going to take a while to pour through (and I want to make sure these reviews are in-depth and provide quality insight) you also may see some of my colleagues contributing to this series in the weeks and months to come.

That said, it’s time to take a look at Fandango!  (The company, not the spanish dance).

What are they doing?

  • Blogging
    • Currently the Fandango has a blog called, “Freshly Popped- The Movie blog“.  This blog is centric to entertainment news, a niche that is highly competitive, mainly because it is expansive and broad.  Because of this, it feels like an overplayed space that Fandango really isn’t excelling within.  I’d rather hear entertainment gossip at third-party blogs that aren’t hosted on a corporate site.

    • Games
      • Currently the site has a “Fandango Fun” section, where it hosts online games for its users.  One such game is to simply create a personalized paper bag puppet, which is then used as your profile icon.  In no time at all I had reverted back to childhood and created a looker of a Paper bag puppet named “Fandanga Fun”.  This game was really the only game that I think could be expanded to a fun application or e-card.  It also inspired interaction by awarding Fandango Points (that are used to draw weekly winners).  However, while this game was fun to interact with and still very much on-brand, some of the other games included miniature golfing, solitaire, and bowling.  I think those are the type of games that make me think of what I could be doing instead of going to the movies, so I didn’t think those were as effective.
    • Widgets/Applications
      • On Facebook, Fandango has a movie ticket application that is able to be embedded within both personal and fan pages.  I think this is a fantastic idea because it provides movie enthusiasts with something that they can add to their personal profile or movie fan pages to easily show movie times by zip code.  In other words, it answers a consumer need – which in my opinion is a success within social media.
    • Social Networking
      • Fandango has its own social network within its website called, “My Fandango“.  Since I’m game to sign up for networks just to see what they are about, I created a profile and did some research.  Within my personal profile, I had the ability to rate movies, flag my favorites, and even start a wishlist of movies.  I thought this would have even more potential if I could take this content with me in the form of a desktop widget or Facebook widget.
      • Besides its Facebook Application, Fandango has a fan page with a modest presence (161 fans).  While I can see the potential to grow this number, I think Fandango should first work on increasing the interaction it has with its current members.  Right now most of the discussion topics are centered around driving customers back to Fandango.com, which is stopping interaction from growing on the Facebook page.
      • On MySpace, Fandango has a larger presence with over 1,000 fans, who are very active on the page.  This activity appears to be a result of weekly contests within MySpace fans, as well as the page being uploaded with fresh content.
    • Twitter
      • As far as I can tell, Fandango does not have a Twitter Presence that I could find.  I could see that it could be an opportunity for discount codes to movie tickets, or to embrace its gamer audience.
    • Video
      • Trailers for movies are within the Fandango site, but are unfortunately not easy to steal.  I like the fact that You Tube trailers allow me to more easily grab a video to embed in a blogpost.  Not having this functionality is always something I miss, quite frankly.
      • I expected that Fandango would have its own You Tube channel, but surprisingly I couldn’t find one.  Instead I saw channels with similar naming, but clearly designed for a very different purpose. (If you see that they have one, please tell me how you found it!)

      • Do you know of any other places Fandango is interacting?  Do you have any suggestions or improvements to this current outreach strategy?  If so, please share in the comments below!