IBM’S VIRTUAL FORBIDDEN CITYSOA Virtual Forbidden Tour Campaign Deconstructed

Agenda

• Background• Campaign overview & objectives• Measurement & metrics• Approach to monitoring the market conversation• Blogger engagement• Campaign execution• Digital asset distribution – vehicles and results• Next steps• Lessons learnt

Background

• Live: 10th October 2008• IBM worked with Palace Museum

officials to build a virtual replica of China’s Forbidden City, including its former palace grounds.

• The Forbidden City: Beyond Space & Time is a 3-D replica built using Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

• www.beyondspaceandtime.org

Campaign

• Host 2 seminars INSIDE the Virtual Forbidden City providing an insider’s view of how the virtual world was built and the technology powering it & using the VFC as an SOA case study

Objectives• Identify & generate new IT / SOA influencer audiences• Generate leads for SOA using purely social media / online

channels• Trial social media tactics – e.g. blogging, SEO, digital asset

distribution, seeding, etc.

Measurement & metrics

From the outset...

Monitor the market conversation – approach

Identified which keywords and which web communities should be utilised / targeted based on:

• Current search rankings• Suggested keywords• Current rankings for these terms• Competitor site strengths• Links• Social engagement• Blog ecosystem and top 20 blog recommendations

• In line with the recommended keyword set, ten of the most prominent and useful blogs were identified. These were RSS-subscribed to, interacted with, and analysed – via the Netvibes dashboard.

• Selections were made based on Technorati authority, backlinks, and bookmarks and categorised into two broad areas – Virtual worlds, and SOA.

Blogger engagement / comment seeding

• Blog coverage – 21• Bloggers engaged - 15• Blog comments – 10• Comments seeded – 38

Execution

100% online / social media• Microsite development• Influencer identification and

realtime blog monitoring• Blogger engagement and Social

Media News Release• Twitter• Promotional resources via

YouTube, Flickr• Social network outreach

(LinkedIn, Facebook)• Internal marketing – harnessing

massive IBM community

Twitter

Twitter Stats

Twitter Grader 94/100

Followers 367

Following 598

@ replies 76

Re-tweets 81

YouTube

Video Views

How SOA was Used to Build the Virtual Forbidden City 214

How the VFC Demonstrates the Value of SOA in Business 75

How to Join IBM's Exclusive Virtual Worlds SOA Tour 127

SOA and IBM's Virtual Forbidden City 310

726

Flickr

• IBMVFC views – 227 • Images used – 4 blog posts

Traffic generated from:

Untagged promotion 1383

Twitter 379

Flickr 24

Facebook 24

YouTube 20

VRM newsletter 12

LinkedIn 9

Microsite

Unique visitors

Objective 2000 visitors

Total (excl IBMers) 4322 visitors

Total (inc IBMers) 4897 visitors

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/uk/itsolutions/soa/virtual-forbidden-city/

Event registration

What? Target ActualRegistrations* 40 172Number of Attendees 20 - 30 21 SOA & Web 2.0 mini-book requests 50 98

*Space on the Virtual Forbidden City SOA tours was limited and personal invites were issued to those selected to attend

Lead Management

Customer AttendeesCOMPANY Job title Country or region

ERICSSON Config manager United KingdomTRANSPORT FOR LONDON Project Manager United KingdomGRONSTEDT GROUP President United StatesWALMART programmer analyst United StatesWORLD VISION sr director United StatesCITI SVP Learning Technology and ArchitectureUnited StatesBURK Technical Specialist United States

FRONT RANGE COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Director, North Metro Small Business Development Center, United States

FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF ST. LOUIS Learning Technologist United StatesLOCKHEED MARTIN System Architect United StatesLOCKHEED MARTIN Software Engineer United StatesSAP Writer AustraliaFRESH AUSTRALIA PTY LTD IT Director AustraliaFILOGIX Software Architect CanadaAN Virtual World Rain maker India

All attendees have been given to the appropriate sales teams to f/u. All book requests are being followed up by Slipstream

Next Steps

• 2 videos created from the VFC Live Tour– Video 1 – Live Tour with John Tolva– Video 2 – Customer Q & A

• E-mail with video link to all respondees that were unable or not invited to join the Live Tour

• Continue to use Social Media tools to drive to the new videos, including Google Search Words - add Videos to VFC YouTube and Flickr after one month

• F/u all downloads via Slipstream • China looking to run this campaign

Lessons learnt

• Timescales, sign off– Microsite

• Clear goals and objectives• Counts were manual

– Not 100% accurate– Always changing

• Direct access to site stats• Getting people involved• Metrics in qualitative

context• Tools for measuring

Lessons learnt continued

• The dashboard is an essential tool • Require real time monitoring and reporting• Difficult to do Geo targeting• You need more than five weeks to build

momentum and the content schedule needs to fit:– Majority of ‘following’ activity occurred in first few weeks– Majority of ‘coverage’ and ‘views’ occurred in week two– BUT: majority of signups occurred in last week (week five)– Content (editorial) agenda should be more evenly distributed and more tightly

themed– A blog is essential in this respect (Twitter was our only publishing outlet to

drive traffic)

18 SWG Web Marketing Leadership Council | IBM Confidential

Executive Summary

Objectives•Identify and generate new influencer audiences/leads for IBM SOA from purely Social Media channels

Execution•100% Social Media campaign•Virtual Tour for IT Architects in Chinese Virtual Forbidden City•Campaign recruitment led via Twitter•Promotional resources via Flickr, YouTube ,linkedin, Facebook , blogs, etc.•Creation of a Social Media Press Release•Identification of key influencer Blogs, Twitter profiles and more•Coordinating massive IBM internal Social Media push•Sophisticated Campaign Social Media Monitoring Dashboard

Results

28th April: 115 - 20% Prospect, 6% Academia, 7% Business Partner, 10% Media, Rest: IBM, events team

29th April: 45 - 13% Prospect, 9% Academia, 11% Business Partner, 4% Media, Rest: IBM, events team

Twitter - Total #IBMVFC Tweets: 1,550

Blogs (x3 week active campaign)

Total posts related to event coverage: 21

8 blog posts by IBM staff

Flickr IBMVFC image views (x3 week active campaign): 209

YouTube IBMVFC video views (x3 week active campaign): 642Campaign Social Media DashboardCampaign Social Media Dashboard

The Team

IBMDelphine Remy-Boutang

WW Sponsor

John Tolva

Terry Lifton

Wendy Tarr

Graham Lewis Text 100Jordan StoneAlison O’LearyCatherine Pymar

C&MRoger WarnerAndy KeetchRowan Stanfield

THANK YOU!Questions?