Stories, passions and actions – How BRAVIA Bunnies inspired the social media conversation

by Katy Howell, Managing Director, Immediate Future

Of the plethora of emerging models and methods for engaging with social media, amplifying a brand marketing campaign can often be the simplest way to start the conversation. A company can maximise existing assets, build expectation, heighten awareness and create an ongoing dialogue that can be the beginning of a strong relationship between brand and online influencer.

Sony Europe’s BRAVIA team proactively engaged the social media consumer with its advertising campaigns and inspired high levels of buzz and chatter. Establishing relationships with influencers enabled the electronics giant to maintain trusted dialogue with advocates long after the campaign ended.

The final advert in the Sony BRAVIA trilogy was eagerly awaited by bloggers, forums and power networkers alike, so it was imperative that the brand met expectations. Moreover, with the increasing numbers of active social network consumers there is always an opportunity to engage with new advocates.

Consumer action: See it, trust it, do it

Amplifying a campaign is a great way to start participating in the conversation, but there is a great deal more value for the brand.

As a discrete programme, this technique increases visibility across search engines and popular sites ensuring greater awareness, even before the advertising launches, whilst the proliferation of positive comments banks brand equity and safeguards reputation. Finally, whilst conversation is not a comfortable place for an obvious call to action, peer recommendations do drive traffic to websites, encourage views of video and inspire downloads of content to share. The result is an enrichment of the whole marketing campaign by intensifying the messages and deepening the communications.

Talkability: stuff that inspires the chatter

A key element to triggering the conversation and inspiring ongoing dialogue is the need for a value exchange. In social media the value comes from providing social currency or social objects. This is sharable content that encourages bloggers, networkers and chatterers to talk about a brand. Sometimes it’s content that is entertaining, often it’s informative and increasingly it’s participative. It could be video, photographs, a game, an infographic or even a tech spec – anything that is easily exchanged and has value for the brand’s network of influencers.

In an integrated marketing campaign, content is being produced by many marketing disciplines from above the line through to digital marketing. The opportunity is to pool the assets and create simple extensions such as ‘behind the scenes’ and outtakes. For Sony BRAVIA, the multi-coloured ‘Play-Doh’ bunnies pouring through the streets of New York (made possible through the use of ‘Stop Motion’ animation, seen in films like Wallace and Gromit) to a thumping track by the Rolling Stones, provided ample assets for triggering online chatter.

Storytelling: quirky, exclusive and shareable

If social currency is the trigger, then it is storytelling that is the bullet that carries the invitation for dialogue. Social media consumers want to tell stories. Whether it’s a blog post, a comment or a tweet, it is the story that inspires the passing-on of information. Make it secret, exclusive and shareable and the brand story will take on a life of its own as it is told across the web. Add keyphrase rich content and link to relevant landing pages and you also create a vehicle for search engine optimisation. Then as the stories spread, they connect a network of influencers discussing the brand and products that benefits SEO and raises awareness.

Passion: connecting to people

Conversations don’t focus on groups of networkers that fit into neat demographic profiles. People follow passions, and creators and influencers tend to be the most passionate conversers. Finding these influencers starts with uncovering all the conversations associated with the brand, its campaign and relevant topics. For the BRAVIA campaign, core interest groups were discovered that included advertising, technology and style communities. Clusters that were also relevant were New York networks (the shoot location), film production and arts and culture groups.

Within each interest cluster two types of influencer were identified using clear and measurable metrics: those that had popularity and those that had authority. This allowed stories and assets to be tailored to relevant interest clusters and for conversations to be had with influencers that would spread the word and raise awareness, as well as influencers whose endorsement of the brand would be valued in their community.

Timing: optimising the conversation

For Sony, the key to campaign success was the timely nature of conversations – picking the right points to ignite discussions. Anticipation was built throughout August and September, ahead of the October ad launch.

Stories were carefully released as teasers and sneak previews, exclusives and insights: supplying influencers with new information about the advert and distributing assets such as the ‘making of’ video and ‘limited’ images of multi-coloured bunnies. By the end of the campaign, storytelling, distribution of assets and consumer sharing, generated in increase of almost 700,000 brand mentions.

To introduce the advert to a wider online audience, the ‘teaser’ for the ad was posted on video sharing sites such as YouTube and DailyMotion, driving further interest ahead of the launch with over 200,000 views. Post launch, the full commercial was posted - attracting more than half a million views.

One step further: real world and real time

Meeting influencers offline can deepen the engagement with social media. Sony brought a select number of bloggers to the ad shoot in New York, where they were given the chance to meet members of the production team to gather exclusive content for their postings.

Micro blogging site Twitter was used by Sony’s Ruth Speakman to keep influencers updated on events as they happened across the course of the shoot, providing a live feed of exclusive content to followers.

Sony listened to the conversations from the start of the campaign. Questions were answered, issues addressed and requests for further information always met.

Benchmarking: establishing metrics for ongoing communications

Beyond the hard numbers of views, brand mentions, coverage, sentiment and search results, Sony gained recognition within the blogosphere for its willingness to engage with influencers.

The data also provided Sony with clear benchmarks for continuing the conversation and creating further campaigns. Sony Europe now has a continuous programme of social media engagement that manages the brand reputation and maintains conversations throughout the year.

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