As I looked through your social media campaigns, I noticed the Viral Map® created for each entry. Could you tell me a little bit about how this helps content spread?
The advantage of the Viral Map® is that it shows where the Branded UGC in a campaign is shared everywhere on the social Web. Each creator has his or her own viral map and anytime anyone anywhere in the world engages with that content in any way his or her viral map displays and tracks this data. The GeoView portion of the Viral Map illustrates geographically where the content is being shared all around the world. Unlike a viral video on YouTube, you can see in real-time where the content is being spread. This can be really helpful for brands to see. They know X number of people saw the content in Y city or that one Web site drove a lot of the traffic. The brands see a viral map of all aggregated activity for the entire social program. This allows the brands to identify their brand influencers and also get feedback on how other consumers feel about the content and the brand. In terms of measurement and future campaigns, this information is very valuable.
Our industry moves fast. What do you think everyone will be talking about in 6 months?
Everyone is still very numbers based. Just looking at how many followers or fans you have is very rudimentary. There are a lot of people who love a brand but won’t become a fan. I think we will see brands moving away from this and embracing more meaningful metrics, such as engagement. By having consumers engage with a brand, they are becoming immersed in the brand message and actually spending quality time with the brand. This metric will grow in popularity, because it is more compelling than just a number of fans.
Also, many brands are still just listening. I think you will see brands start embracing more offensive tactics where they are driving the conversation instead of just responding. For instance, take the Coach campaign; since Coach is a large international brand, there was always chatter about its products. By inviting consumers to participate in an online campaign to design totes for them, we were able to help drive 6.5 million consumer engagements and conversations about what their next tote should look like in just a 6 week period. This becomes really powerful on moving the needle and helping brands shape the nature of conversations that are being measured on the social Web vs. just responding defensively to what consumers may or may not be saying.
Brickfish®, The Social Media SolutionTM, successfully creates ongoing engagement and conversations with consumers using Social Media. It provides a brand safe platform that energizes peer-to-peer sharing among consumers via the social Web. Using the Brickfish platform, brands can run social media programs including branded viral programs, brand focused UGC programs, social promoters programs, contests, sweepstakes and more. All engagements are tracked with patent-pending Viral Map® and Geo View technologies which provide detailed data on reach, engagement, and viral activity across the Web. Brickfish has launched successful campaigns for Microsoft, Nike, Victoria’s Secret, Coach, Givenchy, The North Face®, Qualcomm, and more.
