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We’re going to talk about a couple of case studies, using social media in
quite different ways, but actually complementing traditional marketing
disciplines at the same time.

So, hopefully, the first one.

All right, okay.

Here we go.

So, the first thing we’re going to talk about is a campaign that we ran for
Transport for London.  Second set of bullet points of the day.  There is
no celebrity in this one, you’ll be glad to know.  Very simply, we had to
raise awareness of road safety, cyclists, and to drivers, and, really,
specifically raising awareness of the fact that it’s very easy to miss cyclists.
So, what we had to do was work with a very limited media budget.  We
worked with our sister company WCRS to develop a [?] that
could work on TV but could also work online, something that had the
potential to go viral.  Now, viral is a bit of a dirty word, it sounds a bit,
sort of, 2004.  But the reality for us is that a viral is something that creates
a catalyst for conversation.  If you can create a good enough piece of
creative work, then you’ve got something that, by the very nature of
social media, people will be able to spread more effectively.

In the context of this kind of campaign, social media, quite simply, is
about people being able to maintain a much more wider circle of friends
and people that they talk to, and talk to them more regularly, and , in fact,
pass things on more easily.

So, the creative, that we created:

This is an awareness test.  How many passes does the team in white
make?

The answer is thirteen, but did you see the moon-walking bear?

A very simple message at the end of it, obviously.  But, in producing a
piece of creative that has the kind of hook, that people have that kind of
moment of, “Wow, did you see that?”  It creates that kind of social
currency.  They want to pass something on.  They want to, kind of,
challenge people that they know, “You’re not going to believe this.”
“You’re not going to believe what happens.”  “I know the secret.”  “I
know what it’s all about.”  It gives it a very, sort of, a very, sort of, pass-
on-ability, whatever you want to call it.  It’s got that kind of social
currency.

So what we had to do is, we had to seed it.  We had to seed it very
effectively.  We knew it was a very strong piece of creative.  We had
to think about how we got it out there.  Our first challenge, that was set
by TFL, was, you know, put it out to some cyclists, because cyclists,
as many of you may know, are quite active bloggers, or, quite a lot of
them are.  And there are some very well read cycling blogs.  But,
actually, really, our audience were people driving.  That was the primary
audience for us.  We needed to think about people who were driving in
London.  And we needed to think about what their media consumption
was online.  So, where were they going?  Where were they spending
time?  Where were they talking to each another?  And so, for us, it was
about taking a strategy of, yeah, let’s seed the cyclists, because they can
spread this message for us, and they’re quite easy, that sort of low
hanging fruit.  But, also, let’s look much more at where the media is being
consumed by the people that we want to hit.  And a lot of that was about
seeding in the [states?].  So…

So, in term of getting out there, there were two strategies.  One was,
first of all, social media optimization and the second was social media
marketing.  So the optimization was making sure that it was very easy
for people to find it, hitting all of the social networking sites, making sure
that it was on Digg, making sure that the YouTube and the share facility
was enabled, things like that.  Social media marketing was based on
connecting with people.  So, it was making sure that you were in social
spaces where conversations happen and also reaching out to the core
tag audience, which was hard-core London cyclists.

So, the results.  The key KPI’s for this campaign were to raise awareness,
which is very broad.  So, obviously, numbers were a key factor.  But,
also, it was relating to an attitude change, as well, which is a little bit more
difficult to measure.

The numbers, however, were very easy to measure.  To date, there have
been sixteen million views on video sharing sites, reaching a lot of people.
And, of that, you have people sharing on blogs, with it being the second
most blogged video on March the nineteenth and March the twentieth,
just behind Barrack Obama.

We also reached the core target audience, which was your cycling
enthusiasts.  And, reaching them through views on video blog sites.

Of the sixteen million views, one point five of them came through social
bookmarking sites.  So that was proving that social media optimization
worked.  Making sure that it’s there, people could then share it very
easily.  And, it was a help with the search results.  A couple of people
in there have been talking about SEO and social media.  Well, here’s the
first example.

The results from the blogs, the forums, the discussions, the tributes,
they’ve all brought together and reached over fifty-two thousand search
results on Google, for a term that didn’t exist before this campaign,
‘dothetest’, all one word.  And, it inspired people, as well.  People
created their own fan groups on Facebook and shared the content
through Facebook, as well.

But, importantly, the results were more than numbers.  Key KPI was,
obviously, attitude change and raising awareness.

Oops.  Jerked a little bit.

But, one third of London motorists and cyclists recognize the campaign.
So, obviously, in terms of raising awareness it’s been incredibly
successful.  But, importantly, it related to an actual attitude change.  You
have motorists saying that, who had seen the ad, saying that they will
check their blind side more often, and cyclists stating that they will avoid
being in the blind spot, not wanting to be that moon-walking bear.

And, if you look at the step from awareness through to attitude change,
you can actually see results in terms of a reduction in fatalities,
year-on-year, and a reduction in serious injuries, year-on-year, which
is a nice little three-step way of looking at how this campaign was more
than just numbers.

So, the key learnings.  To integrate on and offline for maximum impact,
this campaign started on TV, which created the first wave of awareness.
And it’s a wonderful campaign where, you know, TV and online are not
enemies, which is, I suppose, a bit of a risky thing to say at a social media
conference.  But, it’s definitely helped with the impact, getting that first
wave of awareness.  Making it easy for your audience.  So, getting in
touch with them directly.  If you want them to share the content, if you’ve
made the content that’s relevant for them, get in touch, showcase it with
them, talk with them, build that relationship.  And then, also, optimize
through sharing facilities.  So, again, making sure that it’s in the places
where they are and make it easy for them to pass it on.  Engage in the
content yields more.  So, the key to this was the creative.  Obviously, it’s
a fantastic piece of creative.  It’s funny, it makes you want to pass it on.
And, affecting real change.  So, it’s a lot more than just numbers, as you
can see.  You know, there’s, a few less deaths is not a bad KPI for a
social media campaign.

Okay.  So, again,very quickly, we’re running over

I’m going to allow you to have sixty seconds to speak with that slide.
One more slide, if you want.

Really, okay.

Kleenex.  This is all about, actually, doing something that wants a payoff.
Using social media is a pay-off stunt.  And what we did, very simply, is
we refer to the Hay Fever map.  We used Twitter and we used Google
maps to create a mash-up around the hash tag of tissue. So, if any of
you remember the Snow map from earlier on in the year, a very simple
idea.

That’s two slides.  I’m flying through them though.

And, we created this lovely hay fever map, here.  Very simply, what we
had to do, we asked people to put in a hash tag of tissue, score out of
five for how bad their hay fever was at that particular point in time and
created this wonderful map of the UK.  Now, this was about hitting a
peer audience [?] the traditional press.  And that’s exactly what we did.
We got coverage everywhere.  By also making it something that was
embeddable, it meant that people like the London Evening Standard could
stick it on their web site, bloggers could embed it in their own sites.  So it
creates that kind of spread for us.  But, fundamentally, it got the press
coverage that we were after, it was about, it really was about stunt.  So,
key learnings.

Last slide.

Social media campaigns can be newsworthy.  They can work as stunts in
exactly the same way that a traditional PR campaign can work as a stunt.
Technology can help you provide content.  We’ve combined a feed-list
technology there with some news to effectively crowd-source this
information.  We got what we needed.  And it’s great to take advantage
of proven behavior.  So, the Snow map, a lot of people understood the
concept of putting a post code and putting a score out of five.  It had
been done already.  We were just using that idea and that mechanic in a
different way.  And, finally, utility can be as powerful as entertainment.
It’s not all about funny videos.  Creating tools that are useful can actually
get people engaged, as well.

Thank you very much.

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