Nike Basketball's Beautiful Facebook Timeline In Time for NBA Playoffs

Just a terrific, creative and well-timed use of the Facebook Timeline by Nike Basketball. Coinciding with the NBA Playoffs - and a handful of new sneakers for top stars like Lebron James, Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant - Nike Basketball is releasing a series of basketball rules: "Every EPIC moment has a story. And every story has a lesson. Lesson No. 1: The deeper the bench. The stronger the squad." Each rule is placed atop a basketball poster that ties into the playoffs and relevant players. Two or three rules are posted a day (so far, 38 rules and posters have been loaded). Nike also mixes in other timely promos like a congratulations to Lebron James for his MVP award and this graphic for the evening's Lakers / Thunder game:

It's clever, fun, on brand and highly visual - which means it is highly engaging on Facebook. It is also something that only Nike can do (the talent, the imagery and the production) and something that really can only be done on Facebook and with Facebook Timeline (no offense to Twitter, but this would be neither as effective nor engaging).

Dunkin Donuts Promotional Facebook Timeline Page

I've written a few times about Dunkin Donut's clever use of their Facebook fan page to spotlight fans and drive on-Facebook promotion. Dunkin Donuts would reward fans each week with a spotlight in their Facebook Profile Picture - to win, users would upload photos of themselves drinking coffee and tagging @Dunkin in the photo. Want proof that it works? Check out how many fans post to their Facebook wall.

With the introduction of Facebook's Timeline, the profile picture is less prominent and Dunkin had to rethink the Fan of the Week promotion. The result: Dunkin now includes those fans directly in the cover photo... which is a ton of visible real estate and a fun way to highlight fans, drive social activity, and keep the Timeline fresh.

Harrods Takes to Facebook to Promote their Pinterest Contest

This is relevant to two posts: - Yesterday's on the value of being a first mover, specifically on Pinterest; and - Porsche moving users between their Facebook and Pinterest pages

Well here's another good examples: Harrods is allowing fans to help design their retail windows using Pinterest mood boards.

Clever: It's on brand. It's effectively free marketing. It drives Pinterest activity far beyond the winner. And it blends users across Pinterest and Facebook - both from the cross-promotion and Pinterest's opengraph integration.

Titleist, Nike Golf Compete for Facebook Relevance with the Masters

Fun and interesting screenshot below from my Facebook newsfeed just a few minutes ago. These two posts appeared beside one another and were not clustered under a topic (ie 'Masters' or 'Golf') by Facebook. Titleist posted 19 minutes ago that champion Bubba Watson used their ProvV1x ball. That came 10 minutes ahead of Nike Golf, whose icon is Tiger Woods (had a very poor outing). They posted a generic comment about the tournament.

Also worth noting - Titelist's Facebook Timeline is great!

Both brands are posting about the same topic - trying to take advantage of the current interest - and both brands are doing so at the exact same time. Titelist is doing it far more effectively from an engagement number (250k fans vs. 1.1m) and are leveraging the person (Bubba) to do so.