We recently produced and ran a cross-media campaign that integrated beautifully into Twitter. For all the details of the campaign itself then take a look at my previous posting.
The campaign was tightly integrated into what we (XMPie) were doing at a UK trade show (MediaPro Expo 09) and was specifically targeting people to allow them to jump the queues and get a ‘VIP’ badge to attend the demonstration.
This campaign was exclusive to Twitter; which meant that anyone that wanted to experience it had to be a member of Twitter.com and they had to follow the account that we had set up. This again kept the campaign contained to a particular medium. When the campaign was initiated we seeded the viral element on about 5 twitter accounts, and we created a small press-release that went out.
Everyone therefore came into the campaign by responding to a viral message promoting the campaign or came in because of the press-release. There were a few that responded because of word-of-mouth.
Looking at the final results I believe that the viral element to the campaign was ‘potentially’ seen by 20,000 – 30,000 people. I say ‘potentially’ because only a small percentage of people will actually read every ‘tweet’ that they see from someone they are following – so the chances of seeing the viral tweet from the campaign was small. To that effect I cannot really draw any conclusion – except that the potential audience was relatively confined and small (in comparison to what it could have been if we had continually tweeted the viral element).
140 people responded to the call-to-action and followed the Twitter account that we had set up – but only 110 (79%) of those people actually came into their personalised website (RURL), which is interesting. I can assume therefore a good 15-20% of those that followed the account were automated bots or accounts looking to grow there ‘followership’ (by hoping we would follow back). There were a few that simply didn’t realised that we had sent them back a direct message and that they needed to click on the link!
Out of the 110 people that came into their personalised website 90 (81%) of them actually clicked on, and went through the process of authorising via Twitter. By doing this it enabled us to do two things within the campaign. Firstly it enabled us to validate who they were (so that we could collate more, valuable data) and it enabled us to send out the viral ‘tweet’ on their Twitter stream.
So, to that effect we only sent out approximately 85 viral tweets, promoting the campaign (excluding the seed tweets that we started from).
It was hard to gauge at the show itself how many people actually came in and presented their Twitter VIP Badge – primarily because we had such a slick set-up that no-one actually needed to jump the queues! There were certainly a few people waving them about. But, if I am honest that was not the sole intention of the campaign. The proof that this could be done and the buzz that doing it has created was the real goal. MediaPro was a vehicle upon which to base the campaign.
Talking about the buzz, the campaign has created some very interesting conversations – both on Twitter and externally. Whilst the campaign pulled in complimentary comments it also pulled in some negative comments. Primarily people were objecting about the way in which we implemented the viral elements. The most notable of which can be followed on the Print CEO blog, written by Eric Vessels from WhatTheyThink.com. Reading all the comments from those that objected they did so because of the way in which we virally ‘tweeted’ out, although the campaign asked people to essentially ‘opt-in’ and agree to the viral element. This campaign however did not give them a choice of entering without virally tweeting, or editing the tweet that was in-turn sent.
It is interesting – the majority of those who objected were the long-standing Twitter users (Tweeple) who tended to use Twitter as a medium to enhance their personal branding. In this instance, although the viral tweet was informative and not overly assumptive it was not the words of the those that were apparently sending it.
I personally agree with these comments – tweeting virally on behalf of someone needs to be approached with great caution. I appreciate that their are hundreds of third party sites that actually do the same on a much larger scale), but people probably either expect it with those services, or they are not as concerned about their personal branding. That said, it’s probably the one area that I would change it I did things again, providing more choice about the viral element.
With all said and done – the campaign was a huge success. We secured new prospects from the back of it (and hopefully future business) and we proved once again that XMPie is pushing forward in this industry forging new ideas and pathways within the Cross Media marketplace. This is the start of Cross Media 2.0 in my opinion. The merging of integrated cross-media and social media.
It is possible to use social media as a out-bound communications channel – however this is not what we did. We used Twitter to create a buzz, and asked anyone that was interested to express that interest by following us. Only then did we start immediately engaging them in conversation and drawing them into the campaign. We did not send out 10,000 emails (spray and pray) to try and gain some interest, we used Twitter in way that said, if you are interested then come and express that interest and then we shall engage you in conversation.
Think about the possibilities:
- A University or college could set up Twitter accounts directed at general admissions (UniOfLifeAdmissions for example) and anyone that followed that account automatically received a personalised website (RURL) that allowed them to ‘formally’ express an interest and receive a personalised prospectus pack – with follow-on communication about open-days and events!
- What about a corporate organisation who sent out personalised website (RURLs) to anyone that followed them effectively creating a personalised website for anyone interested in that company? The website could collect more information, suggest subscriptions to other news sources within the organisation – or even direct people in the right direction to other more relevant areas based on their personal interests.
- What about a book publisher, looking to promote a new book. Anyone that followers the author’s or publisher’s twitter account gets pulled into a campaign to engage them in conversation about the book, collecting data and allowing people to share it amongst others? Maybe even offering a personalised copy of the book as an incentive.
To me Twitter is about following the people that you are interest in, or aspire to become – and about promoting yourself and engaging in conversation. Integrated Cross Media is all about engaging people in conversation across different forms of media. The integration of Twitter and XMPie’s Cross Media enables people and organisations to engage in conversation and then to become more personalised (and relevant) in their engagement.
There is a huge responsibility of on those developing these types of campaigns as well. Doing this particular campaign has raised a lot of questions. The one that I had to keep asking myself was, “I know that we could do this – but should we?“. For example we could have continually tweeted out virally, we could have sent all the followers of our follower direct messages promoting the campaign. We could have sent personalised websites to anyone that mentioned ‘XMPie’ or ‘MediaPro’ in their tweets. We could have done a huge amount. We did however choose to keep this campaign exploratory and specific – and even then we generated some negative buzz!
As Gary Vaynerchuck recently said in a presentation, “Technology has no feelings” – make no mistake this will happen and it will become more commonplace. How this evolves from here is where it gets interesting!
[message type="info"]Full disclosure: At the time of writing this article the author was employed by XMPie, a Xerox Company. [/message]
[...] in the “Social Media meets Cross-Media” Trilogy! Check back on the previous postings (here) to read about the campaign, and the [...]
Thanks for this David. I updated my original post to point to this and even see Jacob engaging in comments there! That is really great to see.
Since you indicate this is an interested area, allow me to add what I think I see.
Education is composed of a string of “learning moments.” The problem is that like the buying event, it appears quickly and can disappear just as quickly.
The fact is that timing is everything. The best one can do as a teacher is to create an environment that maximizes the emergence of learning events. The best one can do as a salesperson is be readily accessible when the buying event occurs.
If a teacher had the real time information on a students behavior, timely interventions can be made. The primary issue is time. In the world of high school dropouts in the States, it’s clear that failing a course in 9th grade is a pretty good predictor of a student falling into a higher risk bucket that will play out with the student dropping out. Bad attendance is another clear early warning sign.
The real problem is not curriculum, textbooks, are most of the things that fill the public discourse. It’s a relatively simple signal v noise problem. The educational enterprise is too filled with noise to act on the clear signal of 9th graders failing a course. Unless the intervention happens immediately, it becomes a huge sink of time and money.
Consider this use case: A kid gets a homework sheet with a RURL customized to them. A “click” with a scanner or cell phone, indicates if it was done or not. As appropriate it triggers an SMS message to mom’s cell phone.
The particular configuration of the tech sensitively depends on the situation on the ground. But in every case the principle is to get real time behavioural metrics in front of the person with the power to do something about it.
Many have been blind to this opportunity at the bottom of the pyramid, because of the noise about curriculum, teaching practices, etc etc. There is also a common meme that kids and parents at the bottom of the pyramid “don’t value education.” That notion is merely another version of blame the customer that we see every day in the world of selling.
David,
First a congratulations on demonstrating an elegant solution connecting Twitter and Print. This is the first time I’ve seen it done, instead of being told it can be done. In the context of the goals you set it sounds like you met them admirably.
My quibble is when you say you have identified “prospects.” In fact I think you have identified suspects. To my mind a prospect is someone who has expressed a need for your service. A qualified prospect is someone who has the power to pay for your service.
A suspect is someone who has contacted you. It’s a necessary, but not close to sufficient, event for a business justification.
From a business owner’s point of view, what matters is a well defined path to revenue streams. That requires numbers at each stage and a thought model showing how what can work on a small scale can also work at a massive scale for a global or at the appropriate scale for any enterprise.
The new opportunity for print connected to the web is to deliver real time process metrics for the “sales” process.
It holds the promise of tracking the movement from many suspects to fewer prospects to fewer customers to fewer clients to fewer evangelists. As the numbers and models are refined through testing, it becomes easier for a brand to move a person from one bucket to the next.
On a more general level, most of the important events in education, health and government can also be modeled as a “sales” process. In education the student gives time to get something of value. In health the patient gives time to get information or comply with a treatment protocol.
The more real time actionable information can be delivered to brands, the closer one gets to the “why wouldn’t I want to do that” stage of decision making.
I look forward to other demonstrations and more and more sophisticated applications of a pretty cool technology.
Thanks for your comments. Where we can go from here – and potentially how we can use this to educate and help others is an interested area.