The more friends you have, the more you earn, says a study. But modern life can allow little time to maintain meaningful relationships, so what’s the optimum number of friends?
If social media is to become the ad medium it’s been hyped as, it will need buy in from media agencies. new media age talked to the head of some of the UK’s top digital agencies to ask how they want soical networking to evolve and what’s holding clients back from joining in.
The success of social networks such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo has caught the imagination of marketers everywhere.
LONDON - The success of social networks such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo has caught the imagination of marketers everywhere. At online conferences, marketing experts regularly cite social networks as the best way for brands to tap into ready made online communities.
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With an aggressive £1m box office target, we had to identify and attract a fresh 16-24 year old audience in addition to the expected traffic from people who had seen Kidulthood, the film’s 2007 prequel.
Music has a huge influence on the target urban 16-24 year old audience. Our strategy was to leverage this passion for music and tap in to the viral nature of social media to build credibility for the film, and generate early hype among a new 16-24 audience.
The film had to feel niche, real and about them so the challenge was to talk to them on their level by infiltrating their worlds to give the film credibility.
Two months before release, we ran a MySpace music competition where people could upload their own tracks with the chance to be featured on the film’s soundtrack. This was supported by ads on specialist music titles and sites and campus targeting to university students.
We then promoted Adulthood in social media on Facebook using a Group Page, a Fan Page and Profile Page. By covering off all three areas we maximised the coverage on the site, turning Facebook in to the perfect environment to learn about the film and discuss its attributes with their communities and friends. We targeted people based on their film and music tastes using text and video ads in their news feeds. Exclusive content was also available on the Facebook pages offering fans and members the ability to view unseen footage and enter competitions only available to them, including an exclusive video commissioned by Noel Clarke inside an Adulthood liveried phone box.
Downloads were made available such as wallpapers and screensavers, and we set up the ability to text ‘Hood’ to 66667 to get the trailer sent direct to their mobile.
We smashed targets in the first weekend gaining £1,203,319 in the box office! Currently the film has grossed nearly £3.5million.
The Adulthood Fan page generated 23,426 Fans (15,000 in the week leading up to release) and
5,500 trailer downloads via the mobile activity.
In terms of Return On Investment the campaign achieved an £8 return on every £1 invested online.
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This radical change can present threats for advertisers; but also very exciting marketing opportunities. We work with our clients to ensure social media is being used only to enhance dialogue with consumers.
BLM Quantum’s Social Media unit delivers solutions for clients across all forms of social media, ranging from overt content seeding in niche forums through to building applications and User Generated Content on more familiar sites like Facebook and MySpace.
We have a number of case studies where huge media value and customer engagement has been achieved for a wide range of clients like Domino’s Pizza, TK Maxx, Pathe Films and T-Mobile in our Work section.
We don’t just provide clients with the right strategy; we also build and deliver applications, widgets and links, and we track the level of buzz achieved from this work across multiple social media environments.