Monday, April 11, 2011

Universal Wizarding World Social and Interactive Media Campaign

I was asked to create a social media campaign for Universal Harry Potter. I did that, and then some. I created a social interactive real-life event that involves social online media as well.

quidditch balls

Harry Potter fans are mainly teens/young 20’s, and these people don’t have disposable income to spend on traveling to Universal and buying expensive tickets. HP fans are feeling Harry Potter deprived too – all the books are released and there’s only one movie left. These fans will love any opportunity to interact with other Harry Potter fans and live in the excitement again. I felt that a purely online campaign wouldn’t grab their attention, so I created events they could attend, and made it a game that took place in the real world.

This campaign gets fans excited about the Wizarding World park and Harry Potter itself. My idea is a nation-wide Quidditch game. Cars will be ‘dressed’ as the Quaffle ball and the Snitch ball from the game. The Quaffle ball/car will drive around the US, going to cities that are voted for by fans via twitter. To vote, fans will be told to mention #WizWorld_Quaffle in their tweets. The Quaffle car will go to whichever 5 cities with the most tweets/votes. Fan can dock points for another city by tweeting #WizWorld_Bludger, and then naming the city. This game format is following the rules of Quidditch, which will be fun for fans. People will not doubt tweet about seeing these dressed up cars too.

What’s the incentive to having the Quaffle car/ball come to YOUR city? With them will be a Harry Potter band (fans will know who they are). At the concert, one fan will win a discounted trip for 4 to Universal Themepark. The 150th person to spot the ‘Snitch vehicle’ will also win discounted tickets.

Harry and the Potters band

This campaign will be introduced via blogs and HP websites, and wait for the media to pick it up. Twitter fans will be tweeting about this, spreading the news. Ads will appear on relevant profiles of different social media sites, and keywords will be used to utilize SEO.

This is a great campaign because it brings fans together online and in real life, getting them excited about Harry Potter, making them want to visit Wizarding World even more and putting it on the forefront of their minds. They will participate because it is possible to win tickets themselves, and because they will be having a good time interacting with other HP fans and enjoying a concert in their city.




Click here for my slide-by-slide presentation.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Brand Monitoring for FeltBeats.com

FeltBeats Logo

(image source: http://www.facebook.com/feltbeats)

I'm monitoring FeltBeats (the music of Tom Felton, best known for his role as Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies). I will monitor this 'brand' and see what people are saying about him and his music.

Tom and FeltBeats both have a large presence online. FeltBeats.com has large buttons on the home page saying "Follow Tom Felton on Twitter" and "Follow FeltBeats on Twitter," so you know they're big into tweeting. From reading them myself, I know that Tom and the FeltBeats update a lot and already interact with fans a lot.

To monitor FeltBeats, I first created a HootSuite account and made a stream for @FeltBeats and @TomFelton and also for keyword "Tom Felton." I can read people's comments about Tom, his music, and other activities he's involved in, like acting and Tom in the press. Later, when I began my RSS feeds on Google Reader, I added the Twitter feeds to that site. I will likely use primarily Google Reader for all my RSS feeds.

I created an RSS feed on Google Reader to follow sites about Tom and his music (FeltBeats blog, blog and news mentions of Tom and FeltBeats, and Twitter mentions). Following these different categories will give me a wide range of information about Tom and his music. FeltBeats blog will all be positive information from their POV about Tom and his music, whereas the other blogs and news mentions are anything that anyone writes about him, his music, his acting, or even his personal life. They could be positive or negative. Knowing all attidtudes about a brand is great for the Brand, because they can see what their buyers dislike about their Brand and act on that knowledge, without conducting focus groups or surveys.

I am also using Social Mention to Follow everything online about Tom Felton. It was suggested by this blogger from Conversation Media not to rely only on Social Mention, because it misses some things. Also, it mixes all form of mediums together: Twitter, blogs, news. Because so many people are tweeting about Tom and Feltbeats, it's a Twitter overload on my Social Mention RSS feed.

All of this will help the FeltBeats brand, because those at FeltBeats, if they follow everything that I am now following, will know how Tom and his music are perceived in the public. What people like about him (to take into account when marketing him and his music) and maybe what people don't like about him, that they can downplay or fix when promoting FeltBets.

Thanks to Conversation Media for their blog on "Social Media Marketing for Beginners #1: Listening and Brand Monitoring" for helping me through this assignment!

How do you do, SCVNGR?

Say hello to the new form of customer/corporation interaction: location-based marketing. SCVNGR, and other location-based marketing platforms are valuable to brick-and-mortor businesses of any size. Maybe you've heard of them, but how do you do them?

scvngr logo

Let's say I'm participating in a 'trek' on SCVNGR, to go into 5 of the competing cafe's in my city and take a photo of their most delectable treats. One reason it is beneficial to me to do these 'challenges' is because I can earn points with each challenge, and then earn rewards, like discounts on a cafe item. These rewards make me happy and keep me coming to the cafe, which makes the cafe happy!

Location-based marketing is a new and innovative way of interacting with the customer and getting the customer to interact with your brand in a fun way. It strengthens the relationship with existing customers as well as introduces new customers. It introduces customers who may use another brand of the product or service you provide. SCVNGR, and platforms like it, create opportunities for these customers to try our your brand.

Foursquare, another location-based marketing website, offers analysis of your brand too. You can see when people are 'checking in' to your store, who's checking in, who's most loyal, etc. You can even track brand persepction from actual customers! I can't find on the site whether SCVNGR has this analytics option, but I think it would be helpful to employers to see how their mobile-gaming systems were benefitting their business and not wasting their resources.

foursquare logo

I love how SCVNGR has not only challenges, but entire treks. Challenges gets you to one store, but treks get you to competing stores, or several locations of one store, etc. These platforms allow you to share what you're doing, with others.

Another thing that SCVNGR lacks, though, is the ability for non brick-and-mortor organiztions to participate, like Foursquare has. I think this sets them back a lot, as there are LOADS of brands without a specific location, like a TV station.

I think it's a great app and a great business opportunity! And it sounds like a lot of fun!

Top 5 Important Points for SEO

A lot of businesses try and fail to search engine optimize. They may have learned some of the basics to SEO, but what's going to really help them are these little tricks:

1) Don't use general keywords. SEO fails because businesses focus on general keywords for their business. Something like "fair trade" won't be enough for your fair-trade, Emma-Watson-designed, Indian-made clothing line. Try to focus on words more specified to your business, like "Emma Watson Fair Trade" and "Indian fair trade" and you will more likely be found.

2) Make sure your company name isn't being used by someone else. Whether it's the same industry, or even just a name of a band, it could confuse people who are searching your name on the internet. The band Princeton, for instance. They are an up-and-rising band, and I didn't know them until recently, but it was probably tough when they were a new band, competing with the school when people searched 'Princeton'. I just searched them and they're 7th on the fist page. I say, not bad. There they are, below.

Princeton Band

( http://www.brightestyoungthings.com/music/listening-party-princeton/ )

3) SEO is everything you do on the internet. This is important, because the New Rules of Marketing and PR is ALL about SEO - buyer personas, relevant content on your website, keywords and phrases, blogging.

4) The best way to SEO is to have great content on your website. If your site is specific to your buyers, with lots of content that will interest them, they will find you.

5) Have a killer landing page. This landing page should:

  • drive action
  • tell the company's story
  • describe special offers
  • be written from the buyers POV
  • and especially have information based on the keywords the buyers had used to search for you product.

Landing Site

( http://lifehacker.com/5534456/five-best-personal-landing-pages )

Oops, not that ^ kind of Landing site, this kind of landing site. You can have many landing pages, 100s of landing pages, each specific to something your buyers are looking for.

Have fun SEOing! Be careful and be safe!

Universal Harry Potter Social Media Campaign

SLIDE 1 - Universal Wizarding World Social Media Brief

Universal Harry Potter - Hogwarts Castle

SLIDE 2 - WHAT IS WIZARDING WORLD?

- Brings world of Harry Potter to life

- Like stepping into the stories

- An attraction for old and young alike

SLIDE 3 - CHALLENGES/GOALS

- Challenge: Theme parks are costly. Many HP fans are teens and can’t afford it.

- Goal: Offer opportunity for younger fans to visit park while creating excitement for HP and Wizarding World.

SLIDE 4 – OPPORTUNITY

- Teens are big users of internet, texting, etc.

- REACH them through social media

SLIDE 5 - THE IDEA

- Nation-wide Quidditch game

- Target: 16-25 year old Harry Potter fans

- Vehicle, dressed as Quaffle ball, drive around US during 2-3 week period

- Quaffle has 5 destinations, each new destination voted on by fans via twitter during ‘game.’ i.e. the Quaffle is ‘hit’ from one city to another.

- Quaffle will arrive at top voted city, event with concert by Harry Potter musicians (fan will know them), and winner selected from those who tweeted to receive 4 discounted tickets to Universal Studios.

- Fans also get to ‘hit’ a Bludger ball at cities to dock votes for that city (making it more likely for theirs to win)

- After the 5 destinations, a Snitch ball vehicle is ‘released.’ Fans will tweet photograph and tweet when they see it. The 150th person do tweet it also receives 4 discounted tickets to Universal Studios.

SLIDE 6 – IMPLEMENTATION

- Blogs: Campaign will be introduced via HP blogs and websites (Leakynews.com, Mugglenet.com), with link to landing page

- Twitter: Fans will tweet to vote for their city, vote against other cities, about sighting of the Quaffle and Snitch. Each Tweet must include #WizWorld_Quaffle, etc. so that we can track and tally votes

- Facebook: Ads on relevant profiles, with link to a landing page

- Pandora: Ads for those listening to music popular amongst target market, linking to a landing page

- StumbleUpon: On relevant profiles, with link to landing page

- SEO: Blogs to use keywords.

SLIDE 7 – MEASURING SUCCESS

- Google Analytics - measure website visitation and demographics of users

- Google Reader - measure what people are saying

SLIDE 8 – BUDGET

- Vehicles:

  • Gas: $800
  • Cars (2): $30,000
  • Quaffle and Snitch constructs: $5,000

- Online Ads:

  • PPC - $0.60/click, approx $5,000 total

- TOTAL BUDGET = $48,000

SLIDE 9 – MEDIA SCHEDULE

- BUSY. Continual heavy advertising beginning 2 weeks before launch

- HP sites, Universal Studios site, travel sites, music sites (Pandora)

SLIDE 10 – THE END.

(This is a theoretical campaign, created for the New Media Drivers License class at Michigan State University.)

East Lansing FIlm Festival Google AdWords Campaign

I’ve been asked to create a Google Adwords campaign for the East Lansing Film Festival. Below is a brief of suggested tactics and the benefits for using Google Adwords that I believe will result in increased awareness and sales for ELFF.

Sincerely,

Beth Berens

East Lansing Film Festival Creative Brief for Google AdWords

ELFF poster

WHO: East Lansing Film Festival


WHAT: Increase awareness of films and film competitions to locals.


TARGET: East Lansing, Lansing, Okemos communities and surrounding areas, with a focus on those intereseted in film and local activities.


COMPETITION: Other local theatres and local activities.


OPPORTUNITY: To reach target via online ad as they’re searching keywords relevant to ELFF.


BENEFITS: Users are doing their searching online, and therefore must be reached via online marketing. Google AdWords will be an effective medium for reaching potential customers because it will reach them as they’re searching with relevant keywords.


KEYWORDS: film, film festival, east lansing film, east lansing activities, things to do east lansing, film competition, film contest, independent film, documentaries, etc…

- Keywords should be grouped by different targets. Examples could be “Users interested in Film,” “Users interested in Local Activities,” and “Users interested in supporting local events.

- Also consider misspelled keywords

ADS:

1) East Lansing Film Festival

10% off pre-ordered tickets for

Independent Films showing near you!

http://www.elff.com/

2) Local Film Contest!

Make a 5-minute film in 48 hours.

Enter Your Team Today!

http://www.elff.com/forty-eight-five


LANDING PAGES: All landing pages should link to ‘about us’ and ‘contact us.’

(keywords) Seeing Local Film: A page consisting of the local films by the ELFF

Student Filmmaking/Competitions/Entires: A page about the 48/5

Filmmaking/Competitions/Entires: Call for Entries page

Upcoming Film: About the East Lansing Film Festival page – where/when/what

Festivals: About the East Lansing Film Festival – where/when/what

Independent Films: About the film series

COST:

$0.20 per click

Max CPC: $20/day

Check minimum bids for keywords constantly


MEASURING EFFECTIVENESS: Google Analytics collects data that will help you analyze and track effectiveness of your Google AdWrods campaign.

(This is a theoretical campaign, created for the New Media Drivers License class at Michigan State University.)