Pi-Consulting

# Want to make friends with your customers? Perhaps an internet-based social club could help. MySpace, the social-networking website recently bought by Rupert Murdoch, is already the most-visited site in America, with monthly hit rates up from 17 million a year ago to over 50 million today. And they’re all just trying to be friendly! MySpace is now offering advertiser companies the chance to become part of a growing circle of acquaintance, and cement the relationship — nothing too crassly commercial, mind! — with a product-toting web page or two. Big marketers have been taking up the invitation. Consumer-goods giant Unilever, for instance, has made friends with the blonde, flirty and spectacularly well-endowed Christine Dolce, (or “ForBiddeN”, as she is known on the site), whose 900,000 ‘friends’ get to hear about Unilever’s Axe deodorant product when they check out her prominent social attractions on the ForBiddeN page. Ms. Dolce, flush with the proceeds of this ever-so-slightly-commercial alliance, is now launching her own fashion clothing line. Meanwhile a friendly bunch of mad-for-it 18-24 males pause in their contemplation of her spectacular cleavage for long enough to wonder whether they ought to try to smell better. Axe, and Unilever, are the gainers. Wonderful thing, friendship. (Source: The Economist, Pi)