I’ve been in the social media scene for a while. I’ve met lots of people employed solely to implement campaigns, as well as worked as a community manager, and I’ve been disappointed with a lot of the strategies I’ve seen. Many sign-up, do a month long campaign and then leave the community hanging. Then there are the ones that are rockin’ it. Many savvy brands – including Coles Online, Caroline Apartments and Tiger Airways – are doing a great job at engaging with the community and providing support.

I am really impressed with what ANZ Bank is doing with Febusave. I’ve been really disenchanted with the Australian social media scene and this is the first project to excite me in months. I’m so proud to be one of the ambassadors. This is why.

ANZ were willing to lose control of their marketing.

I’ve had some bad experiences where I’ve gone out of my way to voluntarily help out companies, only for them to ask for my work to be deleted because they were worried how that would affect their brand. This turned me from a brand evangelist to someone who is unlikely to recommend products from that business.

ANZ are allowing the social media community to share the message in any way they want.

You can tweet, show a button on your blog, start a separate blog or incorporate the concept into your post schedule. This is a huge risk on their behalf. I think it’s an awesome one. It got some of my friends excited about how we could share the Febusave message.

We were treated as equals.

I’ve heard a lot of reports of people treating social media evangelists poorly, saying we are ‘just a blogger.’ I loved how I was contacted to be part of this. It was done via word of mouth – which was personal and meant that the pitch was tailored to my needs.

I got a phone call and after Fi Bendell explained what ANZ was doing we then focused on how they could help make this project as easy as possible. I felt like I was part of a team rather than an object in someones marketing strategy.

Over to you.

I know Iggy likes his posts short and sweet. However I’d be really interested to hear your opinions. Do you think other companies could apply similar strategies to their campaigns?