Tocquigny

By now, you’ve surely read all about Facebook changing the “Become a Fan” button to a “Like” button on all brand pages. It’s a little change, but it could make a big impact on the way individuals psychologically engage with brands on the popular social networking site.

Facebook itself calls the change a “more light-weight and standard way to connect with people, things, and topics in which you are interested.” Light-weight? As in low-involvement. The thought here is that users will more readily “like” a brand than “fan” one since liking requires less cognitive or affective involvement with the brand.

So, we sent an informal survey to the office to find out the difference between liking and being a fan of a brand. We asked respondents to indicate their knowledge of and engagement with Interbrand’s top 15 best global brands of 2009. And, Facebook’s bet on users increased willingness to “like” was right on.

Only 16% of all responses denoted being a fan of a brand, where 53% of responses designated some form of “like.” Interestingly, 24% of all responses reported a delineation of liking a brand but not being a fan.

Brands like BMW, Coca-Cola, Disney, Google, McDonald’s, Mercedes-Benz, and Microsoft received a higher volume of users that “like” the brand than users who delineated liking but not being a fan. Brands like GE, Gillette, HP, IBM, Intel, Nokia, and Toyota evoked more users to express their delineation of liking but not being a fan. Thus, it seems users are less likely to really engage with utilitarian, functional brands, like the latter set, and more likely to develop affinity for lifestyle brands, like the former set.

In all age categories, users were more willing to report their “like” for a brand than their affinity as a “fan.” Two demographic groups in particular appear to offer some opportunities given the new button change. Users 25-30 “like” brands at a higher-than-average comparative rate (42.67%), and users 22-24 were the strongest in delineating liking a brand but not being a fan (29.63%). Both of these groups especially seem to be more willing to “like” than “fan.”

So, great – more users expressing their “like” for my brand, more eyes seeing branded messaging on their feeds, more awareness, more engagement, right? Wrong. Since more users are willing to “like” a brand than “fan” one, the quality of the Facebook audience will now decrease. The true brand evangelists may get watered down with all the non-committal consumers who just “like” your brand. Plus, more liking means more brands getting inside more consumers’ feeds, increasing the noise and decreasing the involvement with your brand’s messaging.

All in all, there are quite a few opportunities and challenges arising from Facebook’s new change. What do you think will happen?