So, our contest launched successfully on Monday (9/29)…along with over 400 comments on the video lead in page, we’ve received over 1100 channel subscribers and 27K channel views. We’ve a long way to go to keep the contest chatter interesting, and of course, keep spreading the word, but it seems we are off to a good start.
Our one and only requirement was to “have fun”, which is probably the best way for a large brand like ours to start testing User-generated media; but we’re also getting a lot of requests to extend our presence into other social areas…so we’ll see…
Technically, the Google/YouTube team have been great to work with, and the Analytics provided (for free) a welcome addition. Still, would like to see more case studies and or data on promotion “outside” of the network. We’re embarking on that now, so I will certainly relay what we “find” out on twitter, FF, FB, Myspace, et al…
Wish us luck..
ACEdge
On the eve of our large YouTube Video Cover song contest, I just wanted to give a shout out to the guys who really burned oil to pull this off (lawyers notwithstanding). We leveraged two groups…Saforian (www.saforian.com) for the YT channel page design, and creative direction for the micro-site (thanks Todd!) and Royal Pink Productions (www.royalpinkproductions.com) for the lead in video ad, as well as overall spiritual guidance and community moderation, many thanks Halcyon!
I, for one, certainly could not have done it without them, and interestingly, in my humble servant opinion, neither could my company. Despite our enormous online resources this is still a new area for us, with various challenges (we’re .Net [I have no idea why] and these things seem much easier to pull off with OS/PHP) and these “side projects” have odd timelime needs. I’ve talked a lot about how web 2.0, in my opinion, means for large enterprises the need to establish a “forward recon” team—capable of exploring all the “nooks & crannies” of technologies and ideas in order to find the most promising. But, it is even more true when exploration turns into “micro-execution” and / or real testing.
So, wish us luck on our this new chapter…I will feed some results of the contest as we get them…
ACEdge
Within any large company different agendas compete. No different where I work. One of the ideas that was batted around was leveraging celebrities who had gotten into financial trouble as spokepersons for our brand. Not a shabby idea. And, our first effort (psst…Ed McMahon) I thought was hilarious.
Still, there is the little manner of “releasing” such content. I prefer a more robust social media strategy where we engage with users *beforehand*, talk about our efforts *beforehand* and even share a little (or a lot) of what we’ve done right, what we screwed up, etc…I even prefer seeking feedback as we create assets and information to help guide its creation. Seems very consistent with “Web 2.0” to me…
Not so to others here. Fair enough. Develop in a vacuum and *hope* it resonates. I suppose, if it is truly creative and compelling it will. But, still seems like we miss out on authenticity of community and it generating that true sense of connection with our brand. Here, many seem to think a win is if a blogger blogs about us. To me it seems a win is getting the community to “comment” about us and engage with us, regardless of channel. We still seem to be focused on “uni-directional” messaging.
On the brighter side, it isn’t cheap to create “compelling” short film, and brands (ignoring the immediate gut gringe of commercialism) can act as a producer of (last?) resort.
Will keep you posted on whether we created an egg or started a new chicken…stay tuned!
ACEdge
So, we were really hoping to launch a behind the scenes blog of our upcoming YouTube contest, so we could *contribute* to the understanding of F500 using social media…but, alas, after it was approved…then rejected…then approved again…it was killed because it didn’t “fit” the brand.
Sad. I guess talking about what we *don’t know* and what we “think we know” in social media marketing, the mistakes we’ve made and the good things we’ve done to get this entire contest up and running is not *suitable* for our brand. Ugh! I guess I’ll need to confine myself to discussing my personal wins and failures as the “project steward”! :-).
Look for us, going forward on the “official” site blog at www.freecreditreportband.com and of course on Youtube itself at www.youtube.com/freecreditreport.
And, come back here for some “personal” commentary…;-)
ACEdge
Since “social media strategist” only takes one so far in the halls of a large corporation, most of us are also tasked with numerous other “real jobs” to justify the paycheck (ugh!). Sometimes, these can be equally fullfilling as strategizing on and executing against a new viral campaign. But, not always.
However, one of my current “additional duties” is to clean up our Account Executives processes for placing, monitoring, and measuring online campaigns. I know, I know, how 1999, right?
Still it must be done, and despite all the interest in and trials of Social Media marketing, we still get our bread buttered with the old-fashioned placements. So, I’ve set about to automate as much as possible and am reminded of something an old B-School professor of mine taught me. “Read, Remember and Relate”…straight from the mouth of the master Guil Babcock on how to prosper as an investor by continuosly learning and inter-relating from various disciplines. Borrowing from this, and trying to cross polinate between these two fields, I have begun proposing to our firm to treat our online marketing individuals as portfolio (or more precisely) “options” traders.
We have set out to build an algorythmic model to estimate expected revenue for each placement in real-time (or near real-time) based on a multiltude of inputs, similar to what the ad networks do, but focused exclusively for our budget/purposes. Hopefully, the notion will extend deep into our upsell/cross sale business as well. It is a large undertaking, no doubt. Transitioning a firm from a “manual” people business to one regulated (if not directed) by algorythms is a daunting challenge. Still, it must be done.
Day trading online placements? You bet. Interesting in a different fashion. And, about as polar opposite to the humanistic side of social media marketing as you can get. Though, I believe professor Wesch said it best, at the end of the day we are all “teaching the machine” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE , no?
ACEdge
