Last month Gap held a promotion with Facebook places where they would give away a pairs of jeans to the first 10,000 customers to check into gap stores using the Facebook Places application (an app similar to Foursquare). Gap’s experimental use of Facebook Places had both its rewards and its drawbacks.
Early Friday morning found line ups of customers waiting to get in at Gap stores across the United States. The interesting fact about this was Gap had done zero in-store marketing and there was no mention of the promotion on the Gap website. The only advertising Gap had done was on their Facebook page and through Google deals. Their use of social media allowed them to attract a large customer base (over 25,000 customers said they’d attend the event on FB) with very little advertsing costs.
Unfortunately the use of social media had its drawbacks on the promotion too. The jean giveaways were poorly administered and many stores failed to confirm the customers in line had “checked in”. Many customers were outraged that they were one of the first 50 to check in and a hundred pairs of jeans had already been given away at that store. Gap’s Facebook page is filled with negative user feedback about how the promotion was handled and the resulting backlash has hurt Gap’s image.
for more info about Gap’s facebook promotion check out this article