The Tendo View

Sports rivalries get people talking. At the beginning of the World Cup, the Nike Shoes Facebook page posted a question asking users to vote on who they thought would win. To date, 2,722 users have voted—and they’re still weighing in. The Nike Basketball page got the competitive juices flowing for Lakers and Celtics fans with a question about whether or not a game 7 was going to be necessary.

But using competition to generate enthusiasm and interaction isn’t limited to Nike, a company with an obvious and direct link to the sporting world. Benefit Cosmetics, a San Francisco-based makeup company, has a sassy Facebook page that’s also taking advantage of users’ love of competition to encourage comments on its page.

Right now, for example, you can vote for your favorite Benefit product in the Beauty World Cup, a clever way to tap into the World Cup hype and also get some feedback from users on their favorite Benefit products. Benetint beat the Eye Bright pencil in last week’s match-up and will move on to compete against the winner of the Hoola bronzing powder vs. High Beam match-up.

The page also includes links to Benefit’s blog content—sometimes they’ll recommend a past blog post to answer a user question, or sometimes they just want to promote an event, product, or other information. There are videos, too, and currently there’s a contest going to share travel photos inspired by Benefit (i.e., “Bad Gal in Vegas,” which is a play on the company’s Bad Gal mascara); the contest could use more submissions, but it’s clearly an effort to address its global audience and to consider the brand’s global reach.

Many corporate Facebook pages suffer from a lack of personality and a lack of active involvement, but not so for Benefit and Nike. Kudos.