SwBratcher's Posts

A few years ago I read a quote from Blackbaud’s George Rubanenko in regards to fundraising,

“After six solicitations a year, the likelihood for long-term loyalty diminishes significantly.”

This means too many asks leads to the ultimate communications breakdown–the tune out.

Think about it, today it’s even easier to both reach your consumer AND HELP THEM TUNE YOU OUT. You may be encouraging your customers to tune you out and not even know it.

For those who are online conversationalists (participate on a social network a few times per week) you are most likely asked to: “friend,” “follow,” “like,” “click here,” “donate” and a plethora of other actions many times each week. These asks aren’t only when we’re online, but reach us on television, radio and print. Overwhelming!

Let’s use the ever-popular “Follow us on Twitter!” example we now see just about everywhere. What does this mean? Why should I follow you? Instead of the generic ask, let people know WHY they should connect with you and WHAT’S in it for them via another platform. Don’t you want to save an ask to your customers for something REALLY important?

For example, if you’re a news organization you can continue a story with an additional discussion “now happening on Twitter.” Instead of a random, “follow us,” you’ve offered substance for your audience. Even better? Feature those who participate or “tweet” back with them. You’ve bypassed the ask and created something valuable for those who want it.

Think about your social assets less as one more thing to drive people to and more as an extension of something:

1. You’re already doing (e.g. marketing campaign);
2. That benefits the customer or consumer (e.g. discounts, customer service).

If your social marketing consists of “Like us on Facebook,” or “Watch us on YouTube,” etc, it’s an opportunity to improve. You’ve already embraced social networks (which is great), now it’s time to change your frame of reference away from the ask.

How do you feel when you’re asked to “do” something for a brand online? What advice do you have to offer?

In the sphere of physical/digital interaction, the bulk of the attention is going to “outbound” communication from objects. For example, Nike+, EcoDrive, and BakerTweet. This is all about objects generating data and communicating it back with their owners or other interested parties.

The other area to explore is “inbound” communication to objects, controlling them and changing their behaviour via digital channels.

The most celebrated example of this is Nike’s LIVESTRONG Chalkbot. Chalkbot took tweets as input, and used those to write chalk messages of support in the path of Tour de France riders, allowing fans to remotely participate in this inspiring tradition.

Livestrong is a great example of a brand supporting their marketing efforts by allowing people to remotely control and input into physical devices. Here’s a collection of other examples of this idea in action:

Halo “Remember Reach”

For the launch of the latest instalment of the lauded gaming franchise Halo, Microsoft and its partners constructed a “54,000 points of light” tribute to the fallen heroes of the Halo Reach battle. Fans can use a pick a point of light on the matrix, and then watch as a giant robotic arm plots that point onto the light sculpture, helping reveal the final form.

Heinz “Talk to the Plant”

Described as an “Interactive Ketchup Growing Experiment”, Heinz’s Talk to the Plant campaign took the slightly-dubious insight that 75% of people talk to their plants, and decided to see whether they could prove that a little vocal encouragement goes a long way for our green friends.

Plant lovers could peck out a message on the Heinz microsite, selected a voice to use, and then listen as it was played for the lucky plant. A control plant received no such support, and in the end of the six week experiment it was 7% shorter, proving the campaign proposition that Heinz can grow tomatoes like no other.

Absolut Machines: Absolut Choir

Part of Absolut’s brilliant 2008 Absolut Machines exploration of the intersection of technology and creativity in art and music, Absolut Choir is a “multi-channel robotic choir” created by Swedish studio Teenage Engineering.

The installation consisted of 10 wooden characters ranging in size from four inches to nearly eight feet tall, each with a unique synthetically produced voice ranging from tenor to soprano. The characters also contained an embedded Linux device allowing them to be controlled and fed sound instructions by a master server character.

The master character was then connected with the world via www.absolut.com/absolutmachines. Online users from around the world were able to input words to the machine, which the choir would automatically absorb into the composition, generating new melodies, tempos and lyrics, taking on a “mood” from the tone and content of the user’s input.

BBC Blast

Named as the 2010 Webby’s People’s Voice Award for best NetArt, BBC’s Blast Studio
interactive art installation put the tools of creativity into thousands of young people’s hands, allowing them to create a collaborative piece of art over the internet in a brilliantly simple and fun way.

From controlling a robot to blast paint against a wall, triggering AV sequences using hanging strip lights, and inputting into automatic typewriters, visitors to the Blast Studio microsite had a chance to contribute and explore their creativity in real-time, directly evolving the installation in London’s Southbank Centre.

Sony Hopper Invasion: #Pumpt

For their Spark Something campaign in the UK, Sony experimented with the idea of an event combined with real-time visualization. Using a combination of Twitter and Arduino, for every #Pumpt tweet that was received one of 49 Space Hopper balloons would automatically inflate for 10 seconds.

EA Battlefield Bad Company 2

To promote the launch of Battlefield Bad Company 2, EA went as far as to create an actual battlefield. Built at 1/10th scale and residing at a local cinemaplex, users could use a Flash interface to remotely roam the terrain with one of four webcam-enabled tanks, and blast the enemy tanks controlled by other virtual opponents using a laser LED cannon.

The virtual generals who scored the most points climbed a leaderboard and ultimately took home the spoils of victory, including free copies of the game.

Foster’s Scuba

Foster’s Scuba is a product innovation that helps control the size of bubbles in the beer, leading to a smoother drinking experience.

To create some buzz around the in-can widget, Foster’s created Ride the Scuba, a competition to seek and destroy bubbles in a 100,000 litre tank of amber coloured nectar. Using a scuba robot remote controlled via the internet, competitors had two minutes to blast away bubbles in the tank, broadcast live from the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth, UK.

Playground Stores / Sleepless

Playground Stores in Sweden wanted to sell more of its hiking and outdoor lifestyle products. Drawing from the insight that hiking makes people healthier and more alert, their agency Akestam Holst came up with the idea to have a competition for four hiking enthusiasts to stay awake the longest, and sell products while doing so. To raise the stakes, customers who bought products from the winning competitor would be fully refunded their money to making a successful bet.

Sleepless was a great example of outbound physical/digital integration. Not only was the event live-streamed, competitors had heart rate monitors and pedometers which broadcast their real-time activity back to the web.

There was also a really smart bit of inbound connection as well. where when users saw their chosen competitor starting to nod off, they could prod them back to life or send a message of support via a Tweet or SMS. Pretty low-fi compared to the other examples, but very nicely integrated into the overall concept and experience.

Imogen Heap TwitDress

Singer/songwriter Imogen Heap has long been a pioneer in the online space, using social tools such as Twitter to involve her fans in every aspect of her creative process and create a uniquely close relationship with them.

So when it came time for her to accept an award at the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards, she invented a way for her fans to accompany her on stage. Creating a piece of fashion called the TwitDress, Imogen’s dress collar featured a set of LED’s that were able to display TwitPics featuring hashtag #twitdress in real-time.

Skoda Octavia Remote Control

In an idea that amazingly got past the legal department, Skoda in Amsterdam gave people remote-control of a real car via the internet. Presumably in a pedestrian and vehicle free environment, people could choose to watch the live stream, or get involved and take it for a drive themselves.

Summary

The trend of brands experimenting with inbound physical/digital and connecting internet users directly with physical objects kicked off in earnest back in 2008 with the Cannes silver lion winning Heinz “Talk to the Plant”, the Absolut Choir, and Foster’s Ride the Scuba. Since then we’ve seen a wave of further innovations, notably the use of tools such as Twitter to make the input process even more seamless and social.

The best examples to date tick both the boxes of “PR stunt” and “audience engagement”, and the success metrics on quoted on both counts are impressive.

As more and more brands look for innovative and effective ways of engaging and activating their audiences, the idea of allowing those users to interact and collaborate in a shared physical space from the comfort and convenience of their own homes is ripe for further exploration and invention.

If you have any other great examples of inbound physical/digital connections in action, or thought on the future of the space, I’d love to hear them in the comments.

This is worth reviewing and learning from. I, too, fell into its tsunami.

Keys here:

1. Have a good product.
2. Integrate that product with an outward voice for those willing to shout to get an incentive.
3a. Make sure that shout can be customized to fit the user's personality, while retaining the plug for your brand.
3b. Link that shout back to your funnel.
4. A powerful incentive is infinitely fulfillable and boosts the social perception or enables features for new and established users.
5. Do what you can to get a few 'influencers' in play early to spur on an initial onslaught of traffic. This rush will help build a momentum that is self propagating.

With the advent of 140 character communication, there has been much speculation about how Twitter can further the success of business and organizations. It’s fair to say that the potential for Twitter as a business tool is widely recognized; what’s now needed is an accumulation of case studies proving its worth. Our experience launching HootSuite 2.0 provides a case study for how this social technology can help businesses and organizations achieve marketing goals.

With the release of our HootSuite 2.0 upgrade, our objective was straightforward: to become a trending topic on Twitter. Visitor conversion rate on HootSuite.com is high–our primary challenge has been to promote awareness of the product. With the upgrade to HootSuite 2.0, our campaign aimed to harness the power of Twitter as a promotional agent to drive awareness of HootSuite. To accomplish this, we employed a three-pronged approach.

1. The upgrade tweet: The upgrading process we built was easy and optional: we invited folks to send out a formulated upgrade tweet. As soon as they did so, they were automatically upgraded to HootSuite 2.0. This way, we were able to connect not only with the HootSuite userbase, but with an entirely new group that may never have been aware of our upgrade, or even HootSuite.

2. #hootlove hashtag campaign: We asked folks to tweet their favourite feature of HootSuite 2.0 and attach the hashtag #hootlove. We incentivized the #hootlove campaign by retweeting our favourite responses from our Twitter account, @hootsuite, which has thousands of followers, many of them major influencers. By retweeting responses, we were educating our followers about the new features, prompting more #hootlove submissions, and encouraging positive branding through customer feedback - and hey, who doesn’t love a little love?

3. Blogger outreach: We added another dimension to our campaign by sending press releases to key online publications and blogs, which directly resulted in HootSuite 2.0 coverage in several top tier tech blogs. Once some influencers published our news, numerous other online publications picked up the thread. We’ve counted approximately 90 stories about HootSuite’s upgrade to 2.0, and more are being written everyday. The extensive coverage encouraged discussion as well as debate, and ultimately got people buzzing about the HootSuite launch.

Results

We achieved our main objective. HootSuite became a trending topic at approximately 5pm on the date of the launch, garnering our Twitter client millions of eyeballs and attesting to the success of our buzz campaign. We also went to #1 on hashtags.org, and were in top 3 for majority of launch day. This was a result of the approximately 25K #hootsuite hashtags that were sent over Twitter the day of the release. Moreover, we gained 4332 new member signups, with 6738 new Twitter profiles, and experienced about 2 million page views in one day.

Review

The HootSuite 2.0 launch campaign effectively used social technologies to accomplish its primary objective of trending on Twitter. While the strategies we implemented were intended to optimize promotion through Twitter, the most pivotal piece of the campaign’s successful use of social technology was our flexibility when it came time to adjust our strategy.

Halfway through the day of the launch, we began to receive some pushback about our formulated tweet. Despite the fact that the upgrade was optional, and our first version of HootSuite was still functioning fine, some people felt they had been forced to endorse our product in order to get the new and improved version. As the first few negative comments rolled in, we initially embraced the controversy and responded from our customer service client @hootsuite_help. However, when more than a handful of people expressed they wanted a change to the upgrade process, we delivered. Thanks to our crack team of developers, we were able to swiftly alter our optional upgrade tweet so that people keen to get HootSuite 2.0 were able to customize their upgrade tweet. The open-ended optional upgrade tweet now read: “I updated to #HootSuite 2.0 because…” By inviting people to fill in the end of the sentence, we let them explain why they upgraded in their own words. While some comments were negative, the overwhelming majority were positive. The hashtagged upgrade tweets poured in, as did extra tweets, about our flexibility in the midst of a marketing initiative. These additional tweets, combined with the upgrade tweets, the #hootlove tweets, and the tweets generated from coverage on tech blogs like Venturebeat, worked together to help us achieve our goal.

Social technologies are conduits for social activity. When using them for business objectives, the only effective way to do so is to respond to feedback - and to do so at the drop of a dime. This is why the HootSuite 2.0 launch was so successful.

July 30, 2009 to present

Check out this website I found at ow.ly