Social Media Campaign Review: Internet Explorer’s Shovel

Internet Explorer, the big fat and ugly giant of yesteryears, have lost the Browser War first to Firefox and then to Chrome. The giant failed to see the writing on the wall, and slowly it started to go out of fashion as Mozilla and Chrome became aggressive with their campaign led by their avid followers. Now the giant has woken up from its long slumber and has decided to reclaim its place, and the campaign I am going to review in this article is one step in that direction

Objective

The objective of this campaign is to bring back the past glory of Internet Explorer (IE 10), when it was the most-used web browsers in the world, the position which was first snatched by open source Mozilla Firefox, and now being held by Google Chrome, Microsoft’s arch rival. And to do that the web browser has taken the social route.

Execution

To reclaim its position as the favorite web browsers, Microsoft is promoting the latest version of Internet Explorer as a browser made for the socially connected web. And for that the software giant has used its Facebook page to create a fun activity centered on the social media experience of the web users.

Shovel is an app on IE’s Facebook page, which is being aggressively promoted by the company on its timeline. When you start digging, as the app asks you to, Shovel goes deep inside your social profile to bring you some fascinating data, presented in a meaningful ways, about your Facebook friends, their activities, etc. The app gives a fairly detailed analysis of your fans, their locations, activities, etc.

Positives

For average users, social media is all about knowing their friends and the activities they are engaged in, and shovel app, which claim to re-imagine your social life, is a nice way to rebrand Internet Explorer. The maker of the web browser has piggybacked on Facebook to give a hint of how deep the browser can go to make web more social for its users. The campaign is nicely designed and well executed. It gives a fairly detailed analysis of the user’s profile and his/her friends. The web browser has positively used Facebook and Twitter to promote the campaign.

They have been running contests on Twitter to promote the app:

Q2: You’ve got an average of____ likes on your status updates. Open http://t.co/Dj8RvXubGB on #IE & share the screenshot. #Shovel #Contest

— Internet Explorer IN (@IE_India) June 27, 2013

On the campaign page, IE has placed a banner promoting the web browser, which takes up bottom half of the campaign graphic, and it has also discreetly placed an IE logo on the top of the inside page (where user goes once he start digging). These placements will help the web browser gain some new users, particularly the one on the inside page. There is an IE banner in the bottom of the inside page as well.

Scope for Improvement

There is nothing so glaringly wrong about the campaign. It has been nicely done and well executed.

Conclusion

Internet Explorer has done a wonderful job with this campaign. It will surely fetch some eyeballs and make people excited about the browser, particularly those who have seen the kind of data IE can produce and present in a meaningful way. But it does not look very likely that people will switch to IE because to do that a person will need to switch to Windows 8, as the banners placed on various locations in the campaign graphics suggest. It is a big move and I am not sure how many will take that leap just to switch their browser.