which movie should we watch tonight?

The Sky HD Party is a fantastic mechanism for engaging their existing audience and using them as advocates to recruit new subscribers. The premise is simple:

Give an existing Sky HD subscriber a free Box Office movie and £10 M&S voucher (for eats) if they get three friends to commit to watching the movie with the subscriber.

HD owners tend to be big fans on the quality and keen advocates of the technology  since they’ve normally invested quite a bit of money in it (TV and Sky). This activity is a great way for HD owners to show off their TV set up to friends and get a free, good movie to boot. The main issue with the Sky parties though is how Sky make it so awkward for party hosts to invite their friends and that by simply hooking up customer data they would generate significantly higher conversion rates on the number of parties hosted and new subscribers from them. Let’s look at some of the mechanisms below:

1) Web: First, the host has to pick the movie

pick the movie

Then the host has to invite their friends. Simple enough but the issue here is that the only option for inviting friends is email. In today’s connected (Facebook) world, how many people know their friends emails by heart? It’s like friend’s phone numbers – most have no idea! To get a friends email address most people will need to open up their email client and then start typing their friends name to bring up the email address, copy, go back to web browser (or tab) and paste. This seems so awkward. By simply adding Facebook Connect, a host could just click a bunch of friends and message them directly. The other benefit of inviting several people through Facebook is:

1. It appears on friend’s newsfeed
2. More people can be invited at once – increasing the visibility of the event
3. Three people must confirm so, more invites equals more chance of success
4. By a friend agreeing, Sky could also gain data on the user based on their Facebook ID

2) Mobile: Sky use the iPhone a lot. They have  several Sky apps, from TV Guide and recording shows to streaming TV to News and Sport. Subscription to these apps is listed in customer account data. Sky could let hosts organise the HD party as an alert on any one of the several app. The benefit for the host is that their friends email addresses are already on their iPhone. So clicking ‘add friends’ and then just tagging people in the address book is simple and easy. It also gives Sky the data they seem to want.

Finally, Sky should be doing more with the social data. Most people are pretty open about movies the love or loathe on their social profiles. I know I’m pretty active on social channels and have used those channels to communicate the following: that I enjoyed Inception. I have two young sons. I hate Sex and the City. On this basis, Sky could easily offer me a preference on the type of movie to watch and even give me a deal to ‘buy’ the second one at a special rate. Not doing this is the easy option but definitely an opportunity (and revenue) lost.

So whilst the HD party is a good idea – and I look forward to my 3D parties – Sky are ignoring simple social CRM techniques that would increase the user experience, engagement, reach, and importantly revenue.

The king of pop is back

Neoco are going to be working on promotion of the Michael Jackson Experience video game from Ubisoft. Our activity will focus on blogger outreach, engagement and events along with some other activity. To celebrate and re-familiarise ourselves with the king of pop we took the account team and clients to the Thriller Live west end show (just around the corner from our work).

Thriller Live curtain

Emanuel Rosen, the author of the very much talked about book “The Anatomy of Buzz” and expert of word of mouth marketing, gave an eye-opening talk with examples from his books and life experience. He claims that there are two main factors that contribute to the success of generating word of mouth – how contagious the product is and what action are made to accelerate its buzz. Rosen shared his top list of characteristics that will ‘make it contagious’ including compatibility, making things simpler, allowing for creativity and also evoking emotional response. Note that many of these are internal factors that derive from the product itself.

Emanuel Rosen on Buzz at WOM UK

What about the external factors? What could we do to accelerate contagiousness? Here are a few actions that could help in increasing word of mouth for your product:
•    Wide scale seeding. We live in small social clusters, so by seeding the product into multiple social clusters in different areas will increase the chance of the product getting buzz.
•    Surprise. This may seem old and used but it always works! The element of surprise will always catch people’s attention.
•    Find a hook. Introduce an interesting or unique conversation piece about the product and people will talk about it.
•    Uneven distribution of information.  When you know something that others don’t know about, word of mouth will happen. Secrets tend to spread…
•    Stimulate interactions.  Whether in forms of competitions or viral campaigns, if you can get people to interact with each other then buzz will emerge.
•    Connecting to passion. Take the example of American Express’ and their campaign to renovate local landmarks in different cities in the US. By introducing a poll to the public they were able to get communities that are passionate about landmarks to gather up and vote.

Do you have any other useful hints and tips for creating buzz? Do you think that the effort marketers put in to producing buzz will see results if the product itself is not contagious?

Journalists trying out the next Assasins Creed game 'Brotherhood'

Part from a great atmosphere the event also offered popcorn and icecream stands, Pimms and a proper BBQ, bringing back fond memories of childhood fun fairs. I was extra excited about the new Xbox game called ‘Your Shape’ which scans your body and offers a high level of personal training and guidance. I burnt off 41 calories in a few minutes which made me feel all the better after having eaten a very big hamburger! Our thanks to Ubisoft for a great evening, and stay tuned for more updates on the games…

The Neoco team enjoys the 3D skating game 'Shaun White'

Lovely pastries from the Foxcroft and Ginger

On Wednesday last week, Soho experienced the first (of the new series of) Neoco breakfast event, which took place downstairs at the funky Foxcroft and Ginger. We were delighted to see the RSVP’s roll in – until the point when we realised that we would have to turn a lot of people down… If you were one of them, we are sorry! The details for the next event are coming soon so please do get in touch and let us know if you can make it and we will make sure to get your name on the list.

At 8.30am (we will have a later start the next time, we promise…) it all kicked off. Apart from offering amazing coffees and homemade pastries, attendees were given food for thought on several different aspects of the digital and online social environment with Brad Little from Nielsen as the first speaker. Brad gave a comprehensive overview of the ‘value of social collection’ and several examples of how organisations will benefit from incorporating social into advertising and marketing campaigns.

Attendees enjoying speakers and breakfast

Next, we listened to Claire O’Connell who joined us from Facebook. She explained how social applications have grown rapidly, and how different brands apply these tools onto their website and into their marketing mix to increase their reach and build communities. Last but not the least was our own Benn Achilleas who gave his perspective on why organisations need to seriously consider their social CRM and identify how they can make best use of the social environment, tailored for their own specific needs.

The event was hosted by Steve Barton (thanks Steve!) who is a key figure (with Benn) of the Word of Mouth UK association – he regularly contributes to the social and digital debate in the UK and abroad. If you are curious to find out more about WOM UK and their work pop over to www.womuk.net.

Claire O'Connell from Facebook talking about Social plugins

We want to take this opportunity to say thank you to all who came along and made it such a memorable event! If you missed out, or want to recap on all of the fantastic insights then the speakers’ presentations and also a video of the event will be available at neoco.com in a few days time!

YouTube blogger Chris "Lomasca" made an appearance

After work on Friday last week the Neoco team headed up to Oxford Street and the re-launch of the TOPMAN Stylist Service. From now on TOPMAN will invite all style-hungry Londoners on the last Friday of each month for free style advice, live DJ, limited edition goody bags to grab, complimentary beer and some decent super brand discounts on offer.

We had a real good time browsing around the shop, drink-in-hand, mingling with the trendy people and checking out the S/S 10 collections. Sharps, the barbershop from New York located next to the Stylist Lounge on the 2nd floor, offered haircuts on the house, which seemed much appreciated by all involved.

If you missed it this time around, tune in on the 30th April when the next Fashion Friday is due, or for more info head over to www.topman.com/stylist

The main act, Chris Thorpe from Jaggeree, delivered a presentation on his views of the social landscape, something he described as odd shaped, in constant change and… very hard to describe! Having been a chemist prior to starting to play and work with computers/digital and online he likes to refer to the different elements of social media as our new ‘raw materials’. Examples of these materials, which are all based purely on data, include Identity [ID], Intention [In], Attention [Atn] and Location [Lc]. These building stones shape the foundation of what we call social media. He continued with asking:

But where does ‘media’ enter the picture? Is social media not in fact separated from media, and something solely produced and spread by social people?

I think that Chris is on to something here – this is why social media does not equal advertising, just as talking doesn’t equal broadcasting. The great thing with social media is how it is authentic. We find ourselves in a world where the digital life is very much identical with real life – there is just a keyboard in-between.

After the key act followed a number of 30 sec introductions by members of the audience, intended to stir up conversation. Sadly, many took this opportunity for throwing out a 30 sec sales pitch, which can only be blamed on them. I felt a little sad looking at the faces of the organisers. Cold beer and cold pizza followed, all in all a pleasant evening. Well done to Chris and Mashup*!

October Espresso Briefing: Global PR leaders Porter Novelli present their latest WOM case studies

topman ad in lights

Topman store launch for London Fashion Week went really well last night – well done to all involved. Some of the Neoco team went down and quaffed quite a lot of Moet by all accounts  They also hooked up with other agency peeps from Evoke and In Mobile before trying out the digital keycard booth to get some great freebies and Topman discount. A big thanks to all at Topman for working with us on this so far (and everything to come)

You can keep up to date with the store re-launch and beyond using these channels:

Twitter
http://twitter.com/topmanUK

YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/user/TopmanBlog

Facebook
http://www.new.facebook.com/pages/Topman/99634526926?ref=ts

Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/topmanuk/

Twitpic

http://twitpic.com/photos/TopmanUK

Check out some more photos and video from the night:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7YzBOMu-Sc]

topman stairwell

ecommerce expo banner type graphic of lurve

Ecommerce Expo hits Earlys Court of exhibition space ten days before Halloween. Don’t give your FD a fright – we can get you discount tickets to their seminars. Sorry, that was an awful joke. Anyways, we’ll be down so at least hook up with some of our team for a coffee and chat.

This year should be good as industry looks to take ecommerce beyond the obvious and monetise new channels.