Facebook marketing has produced all kinds of valuable lessons from the unlikeliest of sources. Take Hollywood lunkhead and action star Vin Diesel, for example. Not only does a guy who gets paid millions to mumble keep getting hired, he also is quite the master when it comes to selling his brand on Facebook.
Just ask him.
“What Facebook didn’t realize is something very big was about to happen, and that was — for the first time in history, and it’s kind of a fluke they didn’t see this coming — when I jumped on that page in April 2009, I started talking to people. In the realest ways,” Diesel modestly reports in a new issue of Entertainment Weekly. “Imagine if you could’ve been a Facebook friend to Marlon Brando, or whoever your role models are. Imagine, if you were able to Facebook Elvis, and talk to him, and hear from him without the Hollywood of it all. That was the Fast & Furious experience.”
While Diesel’s oversimplification might make marketing snobs snicker, the dude has a point. Facebook is still the fastest and most direct social media network for brands, politicians and celebrities. Naturally, many would argue that most celebs and brands on Facebook are having someone else create their posts. But Diesel maintains that every post on his page was created by him alone.
“Facebook used to ask me to come up to their office to explain what the f**k I was doing, and why I had so many fans,” he says. “What was unique was: I never let anyone do a post, I never let anyone post for me in the last four years. My audience knows me so well on the page that if my producing partner’s in the room when I post, they’ll know somebody was around me. That’s kind of cool, that’s how sophisticated they are. Facebook really owes me billions of dollars. But whatever.”
But let’s hear what you think, kids. Have celebrities hurt or helped Facebook marketing? Do you take to heart what a personality or brand posts on Facebook, or is it all juts a bunch of PR hooey? And lastly, what stars do you follow on FB? Sound off below!
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