Jan
2010
Platforms of Choice
The first step in developing a campaign for a client in the world of social media has been the identification of a platform of choice, usually based on knowledge about the segmentation of different users, their preferences as a group for a platform or the desired campaign behavior being native to one.
With the ever increasing number of changes to facebook, the API, the page layout and the rules around using the platform to communicate with real life people are starting top wake agencies up to the issues around committing a campaign to a single social platform. What used to be a choice made for manageability might now be a big risk to success.
Social contests, competitions, content production, interaction and crowdsourcing seem as though they’ve become staples of the marcomms landscape with larger players moving money away from traditional ATL into the social web. The social web as newsmaker also seems to be growing in importance, with message integration needing to be as current and as relevant to get the “viral” multiplier effect that we’re chasing as both brands and agencies.
Which brings me to the inspiration for this post. When G-Star and their agency got together to talk about fashion week they chose a very different direction when the got to the platform of choice conversation. They decided to build a platform of choice for the targets of their campaign.
The concept is to find four citizen journalists to cover fashion week in NYC (here’s the link, if you’re keen)
Where the departure from tradition happens is that they’ve asked people to self idenity the channel that best fits them.
If you’re a facebook queen, you need to connect your profile and upload a photo of yourself that shows your love of denim (create personalised, engaging content your friends will comment on.)
If a tweet seems more your style you’ll need a big audience that listens to at least some of what you say and you’ll need to craft 140 characters that get the team at G-Star interested (prove your ability to write platform specific, engaged copy.)
Flip camera owners will need to connect to their YouTube account and share some quality documentary footage that already exists, or some new stuff especially for the content. (Be able to cover the event in a way that really brings it to life.)
If images that are still seem more your style, share your best fashion shot from flickr. (Stylishly capture fashion.)
This to me has real potential, tagging or submitting your photo on facebook should give them the opportunity create an engaged group ready to disseminate content when Fashion Week hits. Cheery picking a twitterer should allow for furious coverage when folks are looking for the lowdown, leading to a bigger share of voice in traditional media. Tie these two amplification strategies to two quality producers of moving and still imagery, house it all on a microsite with inbound and outbound links from the platforms they’ve engaged and you might have a property that leads Google ratings for the year to come.
The real nugget of value is if you’re making a decision about platforms of choice. Try making it about your audience not your administrative overhead.
