Building your brand through community sites and social networking

Online has come a long way; from the days of the static banner and frustrating dial-up to the broadband ‘wonderland’ of today, rich in information and interactive content. With the proliferation and increased popularity of online communities the internet is becoming incredibly similar to Berners-Lee’s original concept outlined in our introduction, and this section outlines the opportunities this presents for advertisers.

Last year, the focus for advertisers wanting to be perceived as ‘cuttingedge’ and forward-thinking was very much on blogs and podcasts; this year the spotlight has been on building and exploiting online communities. As such, there is no use in attempting to exploit these markets simply to appear one step ahead of the game. Campaigns that tap into the power of online communities need to be carefully executed and in keeping with the overall brand message and values, as well as those of the site.

When implemented effectively, compelling branded content within this area has its own viral properties and will live long beyond its original execution. Advertisers that have successfully used the medium in this way are seeing that consumers are taking brands, interacting with them and making them their own - accepting them into their own online world. Through this advertisers are able to establish a real dialogue with their audience, establishing loyalty and driving sales.

What are online communities?

The IAB broadly defines online communities in two ways:

• ‘Broadcast’ online communities
  This type of community tends to have a larger audience, the membership of which has a range of characteristics, interests and reasons for subscribing. They are still social networks, yet involve a broad exchange of personal information with a wide group of individuals, e.g. MySpace, Bebo and Friends Reunited.

• ‘Specialist’ online communities
  This type of community is more niche and specialist than the broadcast variety, and advertising can be far more targeted. Members interact with each other with a shared common interest or goal for the benefit of the whole community, e.g. Ebay, Catster and Gamespot.

The key players identified in the past year or so have been MySpace, Bebo and Faceparty (all predominantly social networking sites), YouTube (a video sharing site), Flickr (a photo-based community site) and more corporate and business-focused sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook. However there are a wealth of both broadcast and niche or specialist online communities that can guarantee an already-engaged audience seeking entertainment.

Challenges for site owners

These sites face challenges of their own in order to maintain consumer loyalty, summarised below:

• Staying fresh – this requires regularly updated, relevant content, not only to maintain consumer interest but to maximise Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
• Growing/retaining audience – advertisers need assurance that the community membership base is large and loyal enough to market to. Site owners need to consistently interest and engage their audience, who will then recommend the community to their peers. Word-of-mouth recommendation is one of the major ways in which a community site grows its audience.
• Making the site ‘sticky’ – although in the main content is generated by consumers, site owners need to ensure there is enough new editorial content and opportunity for interaction to keep consumers interested, thus encouraging significant ‘dwell-time’.
• The site navigation should be intuitive, often with a user-friendly, personalized ‘account’ page.
• Audience research – in order to continue producing compelling and relevant content site owners must understand their consumers. Similarly, it’s advisable to gauge what they want/need when developing new products and services. Site polls and audience research can help achieve this.
• Balance between content and advertising – this is one of the most important issues for site owners. Advertising shouldn’t be intrusive, and should be engaging whilst relevant to the audience. In order to win-over the consumer, branded content should have less of an overt advertising message.

Wikis

Wikis are a revolutionary manifestation of the community aspect and immediacy of online, and provide an invaluable internet research tool that must be considered when evaluating your online presence.

The definition of a wiki, predictably taken from Wikipedia (the definitive online encyclopaedia) is a type of website that allows the visitors themselves to easily add, remove, and otherwise edit and change some available content, sometimes without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative authoring. The term wiki can also refer to the collaborative software itself (wiki engine) that facilitates the operation of such a website, or to certain specific wiki sites, including the computer science site (an original wiki), WikiWikiWeb, and online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia.

If you search for brand names on Wikipedia, you’ll find the majority have pages of their own, often detailing company history and product ranges. This has real significance considering that Wikipedia appears in Google’s first 20 results for 88% of the top 100 global brands (Spannerworks research based on BusinessWeek/Interbrand 2006 brand survey). Therefore marketers must ensure that not only do they have a presence on Wikipedia, but that it is correct.

How online communities can work for you

The best way to explain just how you can incorporate your brand within an online community or social networking site is through examples, and the following are just some if the ways in which you can engage these audiences. We’ll also illustrate instances where brands have successfully cultivated their own communities. For further examples and to be kept up-todate with developments in this area try www.Adverblog.com.

MySpace, Wendys, Miss Helga and She’s the Man

MySpace is an online community site described as a place were people gather to express themselves, connect with friends and discover popular culture. Given the incredible amount of press attention the site has received, and the fact that in 2005 they were purchased by Newscorp, is astonishing to think that MySpace is still very much in its infancy.

With over 2.3 million registered members in the UK, MySpace is the 8th most visited site, with 13,000 new users each day. The audience is 51% male, 49% female, and they attract the all important 16-34 age banding.

Some typical MySpace occurrences are:

• Gnarls Barkley debuts their album on MySpace.
• A MySpace user sells her car using MySpace classifieds.
• MySpace friends post bulletins and plan to meet at the hot new club.
• MySpace user chronicles his latest musings through his MySpace blog.

Of course, Myspace already carries banners, skyscrapers and MPUs, however in order to penetrate the audience even further, some advertisers have taken to creating their own pages on the site, and encouraging users to become their ‘friends’.

The Wendy’s page on MySpace is an excellent example of an organisation refreshing their brand for the digital age. An American fast food vendor, Wendy’s is renowned for its square-shaped burgers. The myspace page was created by ‘the square’, citing his likes, dislikes and surprisingly very little else. However the page has proved incredibly popular, with almost 80,000 friends welcoming the square into their own personal online space.

Pages on community sites can also work well for product or film launches, for example this page dedicated to the launch of US movie ‘She’s the Man’including a film trailer, information about the film and downloadable extras that MySpace users could take to their own page.

Volkswagen also ran an award-winning campaign, which featured a dominatrix-esque female character called Miss Helga. VW’s creative agency Crispin Porter created a MySpace page for Miss Helga, featuring the TV ads (which also featured on YouTube), downloadable ringtones and a Miss Helga soundboard.

YouTube and Dove Evolution

Regarding YouTube’s potential for marketers, Guy Phillipson, chief executive of the Internet Advertising Bureau states that:

“The site already carries traditional display advertising, but it also presents a further opportunity for marketers to build their brands online. Increasingly we’ll see Youtube doing deals with the big studios to provide premium full-length content – making the site a key destination for video on demand (VOD) and the wonderful ipTV we’ve all been talking about.

It’s essentially TV on a smaller scale - which marketers understand - and a number of brands are already testing the water. Take VW with their ‘Unpimp my Ride’ campaign, uploading extended or alternative versions of their TV ads to a huge response and great success. Both now and in the future, success favours those who understand how to turn advertising into social currency.”

The most recent example of YouTube being used by brands to engage online audiences is the recent posting from Dove, entitled ‘Evolution’. This video clip (which is just over a minute long) features a ‘normal’ woman being made up, photographed and airbrushed to appear far prettier, dispelling the myth that all models and celebrities are naturally that way. Not only has the video been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people, but they’re also talking about it too – a Technorati search with the keywords ‘Dove Evolution’ presents 4,583 blogs referring to the campaign.

Pigsback - cultivating a community for an FMCG brand

Pigsback.com, an ‘online club of brands and consumers’, launched a campaign last year in association with Kellogg's Special K cereal and their 'Shape Up' initiative. The site is unique in that has a subscription base of internet users aware of the fact they are being actively marketed to, and their attention is rewarded with personalised, exclusive special offers and ‘piggy points’.

This campaign was fully integrated with a wider range of cross-media activity, including TV and radio and won the 'Best Online Marketing Campaign' of 2005 at the Digital Media Awards.

The Shape Up Challenge objectives were:

• To support offline communication of the Shape Up Challenge.
• To promote awareness of the challenge and its elements.
• Identify women with a BMI of 25+ (approx 50% of the population)

They met these objectives through targeting female Pigsback subscribers and offering them entry into a blog-style competition, which involved taking part in the challenge and posting regular updates on their experiences on Pigsback.com. Pigsback visitors then voted for the competition finalists and the winner was chosen by an official panel after a two-week period. Throughout the promotion, Pigsback members were able to post comments and provide encouragement for the 4 finalists.

The nature of the campaign activities ensured that the depth of interaction and dwell-time was significant, with a range of accompanying offers designed to build the Kelloggs brand and drive offline sales.

Almost 20, 000 women visited the site, which saw just over 55,000 visits in total. The competition itself received 2,868 entries. The winner was then announced across media platforms, featuring in both radio and press ads. All participants were then emailed a follow-up coupon for redemption in-store.

For the advertisers, the advantage in using an online community to raise awareness is the fact that the audience is able to interact with the brand at a time and place convenient for them. For both brands and site owners, the key is to create a sense of belonging whilst also fulfilling commercial objectives.

Creating your own community – Mazda case study

As early as 2001, Mazda Motors Europe pioneered an online brand community to cultivate a relationship between them and MX-5 roadster enthusiasts (23% of visitors are British, the highest proportion). Key interactive elements included a Q&A dialogue with Mazda engineers, ecommerce functionality, bulletin boards and a forum to facilitate member interaction. The site is at www.mx-5.com.

Membership grew steadily, but in line with an increased commitment by Mazda Europe to digital marketing in 2005/6 (12.5% of its budget, up from 5.5%), it saw the community as a prime opportunity to conduct an exercise in brand experience, affinity and awareness raising.

Challenges
Many unofficial MX-5 fan sites and clubs existed across the world. A key challenge was to not only add value but differentiate the community from the others. Mazda could also not afford to be seen to be overtly marketing to this dedicated group: Sales or lead conversion was not an explicit goal. Finally, there was the issue of measurement: there were no universally accepted metrics to gauge success. The growth in user numbers could only tell part of the story.

Solution
Strategically, Mazda’s interactive agency Syzygy recommended capitalising on the site’s unique ability to allow direct access to Mazda, increasing levels of engagement by Mazda and making user input central to the content and evolution of the site.

The principal innovation recommended by Syzygy was the introduction of a ‘community editor’ in November 2005 to facilitate the strategy. She was based at Syzygy and represented Mazda, becoming actively engaged with members in the forum for example.

She also oversaw distinct projects. One, to generate excitement around a new product during the July 2006 London Motor Show, saw the new Roadster Coupe unveiled exclusively to members in near real-time online. An online pre-order facility meant the car was pre-ordered within one minute of its unveiling. A forum member was invited to the show to put membernominated questions and suggestions to a senior Mazda representative.

Results
The MX-5 community site’s success is evidenced by increasing levels of interaction with the site and more active community involvement. Since November 2005 visitors per month have increased four fold, average visit times are up 53% (to 5.65 minutes), monthly community newsletter emails have high open (40-50%) and click-through rates (40-60% of those access the community or main Mazda site) and forum membership is growing at 10% per month.

Following member feedback, a revamped site in November/December 2006 will have more sophisticated forum software, personalisation features and a blog from key Mazda insiders. Perhaps uniquely amongst such sites, valuable member feedback is now being fed into Mazda Motor’s research and development process.

Conclusions and recommendations
The approach taken by Mazda and its interactive agency Syzygy has proven particularly suitable for the MX-5 community, which is relatively small yet enthusiastic about the model. A similar site is being considered for the RX-8 community. However, drivers of the RX-8 have a markedly different attitude to their cars so important changes would have to be made.

The community editor proved an essential part of the process. Listening to members has allowed the site to evolve according to their needs. Members have been universally enthusiastic about the active involvement of Mazda but it’s recognized that much greater membership or a different community on a massive scale would require the role itself to be evolved.