After yesterday’s post I think I’m going to start a Zombieconomy Room 101. So here goes with entry # 1 …

But before I start this post I want to state that I have nothing against promotions, just the boring and lazy ones. I also have nothing against promotions using social tools, just the boring and lazy ones.

Now a post about giving away free stuff just to get an email address, followers or some traffic has been brewing for a long time. I just don’t think they work and at the very least it only delivers some very artificial or tenuous numbers that do not constitute effectiveness or engagement. I don’t have any concrete research to back this up – but I don’t think people find them interesting, I don’t think people want the brand more than the prize and only a certain type of person enters them. Of course all of these points can be overcome, but it would require people to stop being zombies. Again not concrete but it shows how uninteresting this is becoming. The fact that people spend their free time scouring the web for free stuff also speaks volumes.

However what tipped me over the edge this morning was the whole MacBook Pro Giveaway that Moonfruit are doing dubbed by Mashable as a ‘Twitter competition done right’. (Note: this is about lazy bribes not about trying something new and being on Twitter, which Moonfruit has done well).

So I can win a MacBook just by Tweeting #moonfruit? Thanks Moonfruit, I still have no intention of even visiting your site but thanks. It was top of the Twitter trends list for about 4 hours but now it is wedged in between #DemiLovatoLive and #urwashed. What does that mean and who cares? Only the people that sit on hashtags so they can spam people. Case in point

Has it influenced search? No. The biggest influence on search is us marketing folks talking about it.

The only interesting thing I have learnt about Moonfruit is that it’s also the term used for the part of the body you see when someone bends over too much whilst mooning.

However there are some great promotions out there such as the Whopper Sacrifice and Spot the Bull. These just weren’t created by Zombies.