Social Media Success Story, The Game (BET)
Remember when Time Magazine named You its Person of the Year? It was 2006 when the newsweekly decreed: “The many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.” At the time, the blogosphere was exploding and people were happy to share their thoughts, experiences, opinions and more online and readership was as high as mainstream newspapers. Facebook had launched just 78 days prior, to anyone with an email address. We had YouTube, MySpace, and Wikipedia, but no Tweet or Like buttons, no Facebook Pages, Foursquare, Groupon or iPhones. With only a whisper of what we have in 2011, Time Magazine managed to predict the future with monumental accuracy.
From February 7-11, in 9 cities around the world, brands, marketers, futurists, technologists and anybody who had an interest in participating, attended Social Media Week (#SMW11), a globally connected conference – for free. During his opening remarks in NY, David Eastman, JWT Worldwide Digital Director & CEO North America offered a key theme, “Social networks are helping innovation to be more collective,” cementing what Time Magazine said four years earlier. We the people are watching, listening, commenting, Tweeting, posting, sharing, engaging and interacting with each other 24 hours a day in “networks that know no borders.” With this comes a “fundamental tension between the imperative to innovate and brand managers that have to shift a half million units and meet quarterly targets.” said Eastman.
One thing is clear. Social media is disruptive to marketing.
Film and TV have an inherently social quality to them and fans are driving strategy more and more. In “The Dissemination of Entertainment News in Social Media,” moderator Don Buckley, Partner, THA.i read from The Hollywood Reporter’s, “How ‘The Game’ Quadrupled Its Audience With Move to BET,” which partially credits a partnership with a Facebook fan Page. It was started by a woman following the series’ cancellation by The CW and had two million fans seeking its return. They thought “what could she do if she had our support, our content and our resources and almost our blessings to proceed as the person who is responsible for the Page.” said Monique Ware, VP Digital, BET Networks, whose digital strategy started with that Page. A promotion was launched at the grassroots level calling on fans to watch and Tweet about the show. Following the premiere, “Traffic to the site saw double digit growth in page views, triple digit uniques, and mobile platforms had double digit growth as a result of the comeback” and “the series becoming the number one scripted show on cable TV.” added Ware.
Some felt big name advertising agencies whose Super Bowl ads were beaten live in real time online on game night are out and small creative digital firms are in, as new media fell victim to old media when Groupon’s ad resulted in a public apology following the ferocious backlash of their spot. Volkswagen hit a sweet spot with their Star Wars-inspired ad, “The Force,” racking up six million views (now at 30 million) online before an abridged version ran during the big game. Most, however, missed the opportunity to continue their story online when they failed to include a call to action pointing the viewer to the web for more content.
Strategy is well beyond the TV spot and website, as brands must now become producers of story-driven content that is engaging. In “Participation, Aggregation and Criticism in the Digital Age,” moderator Ian Schaefer, CEO of Deep Focus and panelists discussed the need to for brands to create content that can be shared to continue the dialog online for at least some period of time. “At this moment where you can do anything creatively, there are just no limitations. As far as story telling and the confines of a :30 second spot, you can extend that in so many ways. The [Super Bowl] spots could have run 10 years ago and the fact that you couldn’t tell the difference illustrates that agencies aren’t getting it,” said Danielle Sacks of Fast Company.
One key to success in brand and product strategy is coming from activity in the social graph and while we are a long way from perfecting the process of social listening to call it the special sauce in marketing, it’s coming. Sony Computer Entertainment learned this lesson February 8th when their fictional Twitter account for Kevin Butler, a character in several Sony TV commercials, re-tweeted the jailbreak code for the PS3 while their legal department is in the process of suing a website owner who published it online. Shiv Singh, head of digital for PepsiCo, commented in “Pay Attention! Social Listening Done Right” on their findings following the Brisk/Eminem Super Bowl ad, “There was a special Eminem party being hosted in Brooklyn Monday evening,” prompting them to send some people to attend the event. “Brisk the brand got amazing attention. Hardcore Eminem fans were all of a sudden becoming Brisk fans. Such a strong, passionate group of people, they serve as an amazing launch pad to do something interesting. Born in the Super Bowl, through social listening, we found this group.”
Opinions varied slightly on how much Facebook should play in digital strategy. In “Facebook State of the Union” Sarah Personette, US Head of Agency Relations, showed us its numbers tell the story during “It’s 2011…How’s Your Facebook Strategy Doing?” It’s a platform that can continually be built upon, that offers more and more features to grow brand strategy right were people want it most. “By dominating Facebook in your area, you’re building a alternate distribution network as powerful as your website or email [database] to 650 million people.” said Michael Lazerow, CEO & Founder, Buddy Media during “Dissemination of Entertainment in Social Media.” Moderator of that panel, Don Buckley, Partner of THA.I added, “We recommended to some [movie] studios to forgo official websites and import everything to Facebook.”
Now that we’ve gleaned a bit on the disruptive nature of social media, where do we go from here? Benjamin Palmer, CEO of The Barbarian Group, presented an extraordinary solution in, “Humanizing Brands: It’s Only Taken 192 Years,” (if you watch one video, this is the one). He started by stating, “Brands and people are forming a new nation on the Internet,” and continued, “Communication has evolved. Companies have to change the way they interact with humans. If they want to be heard, friendship needs to really mean something. Relationship requires participation from both parties. They’re not waiting for us to speak. They’re not waiting around to buy our products. Nobody likes a one-sided relationship.” This social interaction demands honesty and transparency. Bringing his point home Palmer added, “If you think about how most brands behave in social media, they’re not actually good people. Would you want to actually hang out with someone who talks about themselves a lot? Probably not.”
Overtly or not, there is an element of crowd-sourcing that is happening in digital strategy and this is just a sliver of what was discussed in New York City during SMW11. “It is unlikely brands will lead the future in social media. We need a new combination of creative technologists, behavioral scientists, and media theorists with space to invent, whose daily bread isn’t dependent on the immediate success or failure of the outcome.” David Eastman, presented in his opening keynote.
Toby Daniels, Founder of Social Media Week and Co-founder & CEO at Crowdcentric, announced it will return in September, with plans to include more participating cities.
