° see the final slide for end notes and references

In our opinion the long-term use case for

social media has been made: adoption is

growing at an exponential rate; social

media is more trusted, particularly

among key demographics; it‟s at the

heart of the mobile experience and it‟s

about to converge with TV.

Flickr: some rights reserved by joguldi

And while it still doesn‟t have the reach of

traditional media channels, and individual

platforms may come and go it‟s growing so

rapidly that it has now become an essential

and powerful part of the marketing and

communications mix.

The question now is not if or when. It‟s

how?

How do you develop successful, creative

social media campaigns? What works and

what doesn‟t? Is there a guarantee for

success? What might it cost and deliver?Flickr: some rights reserved by L. Marie

Which is why we‟ve developed

this five-point framework based

on our experience of developing

award-winning creative social

campaigns over the last few

years as well as what we see as

industry best-practice.

Flickr: some rights reserved by Todd Ehlers

The framework is not a guarantee of

success, and like all conceptual models

there are some ambiguities, however, we

find that it‟s useful tool to help develop and

evaluate social media campaigns.

Flickr: some rights reserved by minicooper93402

In the long term we believe that social media will be about building communities and platforms not campaigns. However, we‟re pragmatists, campaigns are an excellent first step into social media, and a good way of determining what works best for your brand.

Flickr: some rights reserved Mike_Fleming

concept

participation

content

partnership

propagation

concept

That every great campaign needs a great

concept is a banal observation. However, while

there is some overlap, the types of concept that

work in social media tend to be different to those

that worked in traditional advertising. The primary

challenge of social media campaigns is to

develop shareable concepts. Most marketing

and advertising collateral is not shareable.

You need to create messages that your fans,

or brand advocates, can pass on to their

broader social networks. Because, as you are

probably aware, social media is digital word of

mouth.

So how do you make sharable

social objects? What is it that

makes things shareable beyond

the obvious viral tricks of cute

babies and funny animals. Well

there are lots of different

approaches, however, we‟ve

identified four broad types of

shareable ideas (or social

objects as we often refer to

them).

Offers – coupons, discounts, samples

Utility – apps, customer service

Content – entertainment, news, education

Causes – particularly peer-to peer giving

Align which social object you pick with the aims of the campaign – sales, brand, etc.

However, whichever one you chose, you must then ensure that they are remarkable – in both senses of the word.

remarkable [rɪˈmɑːkəbəl] adj

1. worthy of note or mention

2. unusual, striking, or

extraordinary

so how do you makesomething remarkable, something shareable?

InnovativePeople love to share news on

innovation. Think how car

manufacturers and the tech

industry use innovation to

promote themselves. What

are you doing that‟s

innovative?

ExclusiveScarcity, as economist have long

understood, drives demand. Is

there a limited edition, or a truly

unique experience that you can

offer? For example, fashion

brands now offer access to

catwalk shows with live streaming.

UnexpectedPepsi Refresh was an

unexpected move. And while

it‟s received a lot of attention,

there are many who think that

it‟s not part of a coherent

brand message. Be careful

when using this tactic.

SimpleDon‟t over complicate the social

object. Attention span on the web

is incredibly short. We released

this simple puzzle picture as a

JPG image, there is no

interactivity, it was just a picture,

but we got 1M views in 2 weeks.

participation

“It's because of this

fundamental shift

towards user-generated

information that people

will listen more to other

people than to

traditional sources.”

Eric Schmidt, ex-CEO Google

1% heavy contributors

9% intermittent contributors

90% non-contributors

The 90-9-1 rule was

developed as part of a study

by Bell Labs on web

participation, however, the

work was based on already

existing communities of

shared interest. In our

experience it does not apply

to brand campaigns. Levels of

participation depend on

existing brand engagement

and the type of participation

required, but tend to be much

lower than this rule would

suggest.

TWO BROAD TYPES OF PARTICIPATION

Creative and „critical‟.

Voting, commenting, sharing and „liking‟ are all

participatory acts (critical). You need to provide this

alongside the deeper creative participation. All

participation is valuable. Don‟t judge the success

of a campaign on the level of creative participation.

This is because different levels of participation reach different

audiences. Creative participation reaches advocates and

provides depth. ‘Critical’ participation includes the mass and

delivers reach.

Don‟t expect or demand too much. In our experience,

high-engagement brands can expect much higher levels

of participation than low-engagement brands.

So if you‟re Nike then you probably

could get people to the top of a Everest

WHY DO PEOPLE PARTICIPATE?

An MIT Sloan study identified 3 main drivers for participation. Love, glory and money. In our experience, love and then glory are the most effective and authentic drivers, however, we‟ve found that it‟s often a clever mix of all three that works best – a small financial reward often helps with initial participation rates.

And it doesn‟t matter that creative

participation reaches a small number of

people, because you need it to activate your

fans. The small number of genuine believers

who will spread the word to others.

content

“We now generate as much

information every two days as

was generated from the

beginning of human history until

2003.”

Eric Schmidt – ex

Google CEO

This means that scarcity of attention is

the real problem. As Herbert Simon

noted, we now live in an attention

economy.

Flickr: some rights reserved by robinvanmourik

And most adverts, with some notable

exceptions, are not shareable content.

So what do brands have to do?

How do you reach audiences that you

can‟t interrupt?

Brands have to take more responsibility for

creating their own high quality content. As, for

example, Shell did over 50 years ago, creating

the Shell guides, edited and illustrated by great

artists and writers people like Sir John

Betjeman, Paul Nash and Eric Ravillious.

CREATE GREAT CONTENT

Christopher Bailey, the

creative director of

Burberry, has observed

that Burberry is now as

much a media

company as it is a

fashion company.

But it goes beyond just creating great content. Again you have

to plan for two separate audiences. You have to create two

different messages. One for your advocates and one for the

people that they reach. People who would not necessarily

respond to the first message.

Perhaps the best example of this is VW‟s Fun Theory

campaign. The website offered the chance for

participation in a UGC competition (not much more than a

few hundred entries) alongside in depth content.

But the message

advocates passed on

to the mass audience

were the simple short

videos that gave the

campaign enormous

reach. (Over 20

million YouTube

views).

partnership

Partnership

Partnership is, in our experience, a

very effective way of reaching a

wider audience. With Thinking

Spaces for the Economist we

developed the campaign with

influential partners that helped

propagate the campaign through

their own social networks.

And it‟s much more effective if

it goes beyond propagation.

With the Art of the Trench

Burberry co-created the

campaign with The Sartorialist

(and as we did with our

partners on Thinking Spaces).

The Sartorialist helped with the concept,

the art direction and took many of the

initial photographs. He lent credibility to

the campaign (something we find works

best with „new media‟ figures) and both

partners benefited from the association.

propagation

SOCIAL FIRST AND INTEGRATED

The most effective campaigns are „social

first‟, integrated campaigns. We worked

with Grey developing a Twitter and Google

Maps mashup that worked with their

space chair concept for a TVC.

digital platform

DIGITAL INTEGRATION

We advocate a „hub and spoke‟

approach – with, generally speaking,

the social media spokes used for

awareness and recruitment, with the

hub being used for conversion.

46

COST AND RETURNS

There is a perception that social media is

somehow „free‟ or „earned‟ media. It‟s not.

Quality content and partners cost money. To

„earn‟ attention you have to shift media spend

to content, creative activity, channel

management and build. The „free bit‟ is the

exponential return that a successful campaign

delivers.

WHAT’S THE ROI MODEL?

There is no established, general ROI model for

social media. However, that shouldn‟t be a surprise.

We‟re only about three years in. And approaches,

campaigns and channels differ widely.

ROI models will be established as the channels

mature. In the meantime it‟s worth noting that even

before the advent of social media brand advocacy

was proven to drive sales growth, by in some cases

as much as 20%. The results with social media can

be exponentially greater. Flickr: some rights

reserved by sahlgoode

Measure everything. Benchmark against your own activity. Benchmark against

your competitors. Develop your own attribution models, and ROI models. Test

them against others being developed in the market.

CONCLUSION

° Be remarkable

° Align your social object with your

business objectives

° Offer levels of participation

° Think like a media company

° Offer levels of content

° Think about partners early on in the

conceptual phase

° Integrate with other media

° Measure and benchmark

mailto:j.bennett@syzygy.co.uk