Wildfire

Company Overview
Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Wildfire Interactive, Inc. is a privately-held technology company specialized in developing simple tools that enable organizations to engage the hundreds of millions of users of social network sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Our patent-pending technology allows corporations, small businesses, marketing agencies, bloggers and non-profits to easily create their own attractive, branded interactive promotions (e.g. sweepstakes, contests, give-aways, incentive-based surveys) and to simultaneously publish them in multiple social networks and on their website. Intuitive, streamlined and affordable, our software is simple enough for even the least tech-savvy business manager to use, and flexible enough to suit the needs of the most creative marketer or advertising agency.

Our Story
Like many companies, Wildfire Interactive, Inc. was borne out of the founders' own need. Looking for a way to promote their adventure travel company to social network users, Wildfire co-founders Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard decided to give away a free trip on Facebook. But when they searched for a way to run a sweepstakes that tapped into Facebook's viral features they found that no easy solution existed and that they would have to build their own sweepstakes application for Facebook. When other companies expressed interest in using their application, Ransom & Chuard realized that an opportunity existed to help organizations run interactive promotions on social networks and Wildfire Promotion Builder was born.

Why are interactive promotions an effective marketing tool?
At a time when consumers increasingly resent being marketing to, interactive promotions like sweepstakes, contests and give-aways are a form of marketing that consumers actually like. In fact, 50% of internet users enter sweepstakes at least once a month (footnote 1) and 23 million Americans report that they enter contests or sweepstakes at least once a week (footnote 2). Interactive promotions provide an effective way to fulfill a number of marketing goals such as: building a company's social network page fan base (companies that run contests on their social network pages have twice as many fans as those that don't (footnote 3)) or e-newsletter subscriber list, introducing a new product or driving traffic to a company's website, gathering customer feedback or user stories, driving purchases via coupons or product samples, or just generally building a company's brand awareness.

What problem does Wildfire Promotion Builder solve?
Many marketers have recognized the power of interactive promotions to engage social network users, but the majority of such promotions are advertised on the social networks but are not integrated with the social networks. When clicked on, most social network ads promoting sweepstakes, contests and give-aways take users outside of the social networks to engage with the promotion and the result is that the company fails to take advantage of the social networks' viral features like friend invites, activity streams and notifications. Such viral features have the potential to spread the word about a promotion to tens or even hundreds or additional users for every one person that enters. Why do companies fail to integrate their promotions with the social networks' viral features? Because to do so would require them to build their own social network application, something that is beyond the budget and/or expertise of many organizations. Our patent-pending technology solves this problem by simplifying and streamlining the process of setting up and managing interactive promotions within social networks. Using our self-service web application, companies can have attractive, company branded promotions up and running within minutes and for as little as few dollars a week.

Company Formation
Wildfire Interactive, Inc. was founded in the summer of 2008 by Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard.

Location
Palo Alto, California

Legal
Privately held U.S. C-Corp. Patent pending.

Select Customers
Customers who have used our technology include Facebook, PepsiCo, Red Bull, 3M, Kayak.com and Zappos.com

Awards
- fbFund Winner
- OnMedia 100 Winner
- ClickZ Marketing Excellence Awards Finalist

Press Contact
For press inquiries please email us at press@wildfireapp.com or +1(888) 274-0929, ext. 310

Additional Information
For additional information, please see our FAQs section