Outside the Fishbowl

Success Story: My Favorite Photo (I’ve Ever Taken)

October 26, 2009 – 5:05 pm

Grand Prize Winner

Brickfish runs and sponsors programs of our own accord. We do this for a variety of reasons: to learn about the interests of our Brickfish community and to offer a variety of programs for consumers to engage with in all categories, such as Entertainment and Sports.

Brickfish sponsored and executed the My Favorite Photo (I’ve Ever Taken) photo submission program, which asked entrants to share their favorite photos and explain why they were their favorites. Entrants were incentivized to participate in the program for a chance at $1,000 cash/scholarship prize. By asking consumers to share about themselves and show off their photography skills, the program appealed to those consumers’ desire to share their skills with their peers across the Internet for the chance to become an Internet star.

To get momentum going for the program, Brickfish executed several promotional strategies. The program was promoted via email marketing, to scholarship networks and sites, and through PR and blog outreach.

The combination of the ease of entry, cash/scholarship incentives, and motivation to share proved to be a great success. My Favorite Photo (I’ve Ever Taken) generated an astounding amount of entries: over 83,000 photos. Additionally, the program generated more than 7.9 million consumer engagements (the total number views, reviews, votes, and entries the program received). The program reached over 25,000 unique URLs and 35% of all entries were shared across the Internet.

Most Viral Winner

We’re thrilled with the success of My Favorite Photo (I’ve Ever Taken) and loved seeing all of the favorite photos of our Brickfish community. Should you want to learn more about the program or if you are interested in sponsoring any in-house programs, feel free to contact us at engage@brickfish.com or leave a comment.

By aheestand | Posted in Social Media | Comments (1)

Brickfish CEO/co-founder, Nichole Goodyear, to Discuss Measurement Metrics at the Upcoming WOMMA Summit

October 20, 2009 – 1:36 pm

As part of the Social Media Advertising Consortium (SMAC), Brickfish CEO and co-founder, Nichole Goodyear, will participate in a panel discussing “a New Methodology to Measure the Effectiveness of Social Media Programs” during the WOMMA Summit in Las Vegas November 18-20^th. The WOMMA Summit is the only Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing conference where research and measurement integrate with online social media and offline conversationsⁱ.

Accompanying her is Heidi Browning, EVP of Universal McCann and Daina Middleton, SVP of Moxie Interactive. All members of SMAC strive to work together with marketers and researchers to create uniform measurement methods for social media. During their panel, SMAC will introduce its comprehensive research and definitive measurement tools to help marketers better understand social media’s impact on growing revenues and increasing customer engagement.

Please join this prestigious gathering of the industry’s leaders who define solutions and drive business forward through innovative thought leadership and industry excellence as they discuss current challenges, best practices and breakthroughs in WOMⁱⁱ.

In addition to this relevant panel, the WOMMA summit offers several compelling reasons to attend such asⁱⁱⁱ:

1. The WOMMA Summit 2009 is the only marketing conference where you’ll learn how to integrate online Social Media activities with offline WOM strategies and measure its combined impact.

2. Network with the industry’s leaders who develop ethical and effective WOM solutions.

3. Learn the latest and most vetted ways to measure WOM and social media activities.

4. Discover BEST practices of other companies that will become your NEXT practices.

5. The conference is designed to encourage direct hands-on learning from big brand case studies.

Brickfish representatives will be on-site throughout the Summit, and would be happy to schedule an appointment to meet with you. Contact us at engage@brickfish.com, to schedule a time today.

Citations:

[i, ii] About the WOMMA Summit 2009 http://womma.org/summit09/about/#Why%20Attend

[iii] Why Attend? Five Compelling Reasons http://womma.org/summit09/about/#Why%20Attend

By afutak | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (1)

Brickfish Brings Home an OMMA Award!

October 7, 2009 – 10:41 am

During Advertising Week, Brickfish was honored with the prestigious OMMA Award for Best Viral Campiagn. As mentioned in the previous post, two of our social media programs, “David’s Bridal ‘One Love’ Contest” and Coach’s “Design A Coach Tote” programs had both been selected as finalists for this year’s OMMA Awards in the Viral Campaign category for Online Advertising Creativity. We were thrilled to be selected as finalists, but even more excited to be honored with the award! We took home the OMMA Award for Best Viral Campaign executed for our client, Coach. It was incredibly rewarding to receive this prestigious award, and we will continue to push the envelope in online advertising creativity.

The “Design A Coach Tote” program was created to reach and engage a new, younger demographic, females 17-22, for Coach. The program asked entrants to create unique designs for Coach’s classic tote. The winning tote design would be turned into a special edition item and sold in select Coach store locations. Over 3,300 entries were submitted to the program, reaching over 8,000 URL’s and generating over 6 million consumer engagements. Coach was able to use the information gathered from the program as a resource in creating a new, younger line, Poppy, that catered specifically to that demographic.

Receiving the OMMA Award for Best Viral Campaign is a testament to the viral social media platform we have built over the last four years. Since our inception, we have run over 350 viral social media campaigns on behalf of the top agencies and brands around the world, achieving more than 200 million consumer engagements. Our social media solution offers brands the ability to successfully engage their audience in brand-focused and brand-safe conversations where they are living on the social Web. We are thrilled to receive this recognition and will continue to pioneer connecting brands to consumers across the social media landscape while upholding the highest standards in online advertising excellence.

If you would like to hear more about Coach’s “Design A Coach Tote” program or about any of our programs, fell free to contact us or leave a comment.

Brickfish CEO/co-founder Nichole Goodyear Proudly Showcasing our OMMA Award!

By afutak | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (1)

The Business of BlogHer Business Part III

August 3, 2009 – 9:02 am

I conclude this blog series with a case study of our very own. Brickfish’s Jamie Dicken, EVP of Sales, was on hand to share our Coach case study. Vanessa Flaherty, Coach’s Public Relations Coordinator of New Media and Celebrity Relations, and blogger Stephanie Rahlfs, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Adventures in the Stiletto Jungle, came together to give a 360 degree perspective on our successful “Design a Coach Tote” social media contest.

The contest was created to help Coach reach a new, younger market for their bags, and they wanted to engage those women in a totally new way. With over 3,200 design submissions and 6 million in consumer engagements the campaign proved to be successful on many levels:

Consumers want to engage with your brand: give consumers a fun and exciting way to participate with your brand

Reward your consumers for participating: offer experiential incentives

Leverage existing brand evangelists: call on existing brand evangelists to help get the word out

Start a dialogue: utilize consumers as focus groups on upcoming products and messaging, ask their opinions

All in all, BlogHer Business proved to a meeting of the social media minds, a gathering of information from a plethora of companies using social media successfully. It’s a wonder why more companies aren’t utilizing this media resource?

What are your measures of success in the world of social media? Are they constantly changing per campaign, or do they remain the same?

By afutak | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

The Business of BlogHer Business Part II

July 31, 2009 – 9:35 am

Part II of my blog series on my experience at BlogHer features case studies from Prego and Fiskars.

The Fiskars case study focused on building deeper relationships with their customers. They recruited customer advocates to be “Fiskateers”, leaders and evangelists online and off. Fiskars Director of PR Suzanne Fanning, Brains on Fire agency account advocate, Carrie Woodward and Fiskateer Angela Daniels shared why the program worked and how Fiskars defined success:

Brands need to have an emotional connection with their consumers: research target demographic and learn their likes and dislikes

Find your passionate audience: leverage your passionate audience to become your brand evangelists

Be transparent: build relationships w/ your consumers, invite them to share their work, ask for their opinion

The Prego case study was an example of how Prego encouraged unfiltered conversation around core brand values of its product. Through this campaign, Campbell was able to support women in their quest to find and share value with one another during these tough economic times, which ultimately improved the image of its brand among the consumers who took part. Not only was Campbell able to reach millions of consumers, but it was able to interact with them in a way that was authentic, not forced. Prego’s takeaways included:

Don’t overdo it with your brand: people don’t like to have brands constantly in their faces

Incentivize consumers to participate

Make sure to engage your audience with the right topic: you don’t want to offend your consumers

Let it happen naturally: don’t force consumers to talk about your brand, let it happen naturally by asking them to participate

By afutak | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

The Business of BlogHer Business Part I

July 30, 2009 – 10:29 am

Each year women and some men flock to BlogHer’s Business Conference. Contrary to the BlogHer Conference immediately following BlogHer Business, the Business conference focuses on best practices for reaching the most influential and powerful consumers—women online—in the quickly evolving social media world.

Five case studies were shared with the audience, all of which leveraged social media to build successful campaigns. Each case study proved to have its lesson learned as well as key takeaways for future initiatives. I enjoyed attending the influential conference and I am excited to share my favorite case studies and what I learned from them. I will be posting my favorite case studies in a 3-part blog post, beginning with the Allstate case study.

The Allstate case study touched on building the internal case for social media in a heavily regulated environment. Lizzie Schreier, the woman responsible for Internet Marketing at Allstate, worked with legal to build a social media program that was innovative, achieved measurable and desirable results, all within the unique regulatory environment that Allstate, as an insurance company, is beholden to. In order to get her program up and running, Lizzie shared her 5 step process:

Fact finding: find as many statistics as you can on the relevance of social media and why it is important for your company to leverage it

Educate: keep your company educated on what your initiatives are and how social media can help the company as a whole

Guidelines: set realistic guidelines around your social media goals

Take baby steps: don’t try and jump into social media headfirst; take baby steps to learn what works for your company

Prove/communicate/enhance/repeat: share metrics and analytics that prove your social media initiatives were successful, communicate throughout the process, enhance your initiatives and repeat.

Check back soon for my analysis of more relevant case studies.

By afutak | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

How to Develop a Viral Campaign

July 13, 2009 – 5:03 pm

In Michelle Wohl’s article, “5 mistakes to avoid when launching a viral campaign,” she suggests researching past viral campaigns when developing your own campaign. It is as beneficial to look at what went wrong for some campaigns as it is to examine what made other campaigns successful.

Wohl discusses the 5 most frequent mistakes that brands make in creating viral campaigns, and she presents relevant case studies; ranging from the Burger King Whopper Sacrifice on Facebook to the YouTube sensation of Susan Boyle. Wohl’s examination is eye-opening and spot-on, providing insight into the missteps you can avoid when creating a viral campaign.

The simpler the better. The easier the campaign concept, the easier it is for your brand to execute and the more popular it will be for your consumers to engage with. Wohl cites that too many brands get stuck on the “big idea”; rather, they should focus on small ideas and concepts and watch how users interact with the concept. Then, brands should continue to fund iterative development to help and develop certain campaigns.

Develop a thorough social media strategy. Look at where you consumers are on the social Web. If they are on Facebook, don’t develop a MySpace application. Think about hiring a company or consultant that specializes in social media; after all, they may have ideas that your brand may not have ever imagined.

The unexpected will happen. No matter how much you plan for every scenario, the one scenario you did not expect will happen. Adapt to the situation and adapt your promotional and execution strategy as well. Wohl points to the Burger King Whopper Sacrifice campaign on Facebook, which was disabled by Facebook for Terms of Use violation. Instead of disappearing, the Burger King Fan page acknowledged the disablement and positioned the campaign in a “new dimension – outlaw”.

Be in the know. Follow trending topics on Twitter search and learn what your consumers are talking about. Now more than ever, brands have the ability “to capture the mindshare of large-scale trending events on behalf of their audience.” Wohl presents the YouTube phenomenon of Susan Boyle as an example of how to track trending topics across the social Web.

The bottom line is that brands should keep their social media campaign concepts simple and easy for their consumers to engage with, as well as watch how the users interact with that concept. Listen to what the users are saying about the campaign, both the negative and positive. Listening and watching is a huge component of social media and should be a part of your brand’s social media strategy and viral campaign.

Which campaigns come to mind when you think of a successful viral campaign? Or an unsuccessful one? In your opinion, what did they do wrong or right?

By aheestand | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (1)