Estee Lauder's Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign is the best example I’ve seen yet of a smart online campaign using social media to reach a targeted audience with high impact. The campaign launches today and you can already see pieces on sites like BrickFish. What makes this campaign stand out in the sea of other online campaigns coming to market everyday? They are going to where the peeps are.

There is a fundamental difference between the ‘old way’ and the ‘new way.’

‘old way’ = build it and they will come ala campaign focusing on yourcompany.com. If you build a campaign on yourcompany.com you now need to bring peeps to you. Past history has told me that outreach programs will garner you eyeballs from your fan base. You will shake your normal trees down and get your regular fan base to come see what you are up to – engagement marketing. But to reach outside your echo chamber requires a lot more media spend – acquisition marketing. Now we’re talking banner ads. Hmm… expensive and increasingly less and less effective. You are in the cycle of heavy lifting up front to build the campaign followed by heavy lifting of getting traffic to your site.  Ready to try something new?

‘new way’= go to where the people are. What if we flipped the thinking around and instead of driving people to yourcompany.com you went to where the people are already going everyday, social networking sites,Q&A sites and blogs. Take BrickFish.com a site designed to allow people to express themselves through multiple different marketing campaigns. It gives each campaign a complete report of campaign traffic and engagement as well as a really cool viral map and geo map. When you engage with highly trafficked blogs you can run a very targeted campaign. It’s not enough to run banner ads on sites, people don’t see them anymore. Go to where your customers are. Save yourself the time and resources it takes to build a landing page and find your audience online.Then figure out ways to reach them in the activities they are doing everyday.

On a personal note, today begins breast cancer awareness month. Please, please talk to your wife, sister, mother, friend. Breast cancer is over 80% curable if it is detected early. I have an aunt and grandmother who have battled this disease. I get checked regularly (going today) but 70% of women diagnosed with this disease have no family history. So call the women in your life today. Tell them you love them, then ask them if they've had an exam this year. It’s the difference between life and death.