Case Study: How Sony Leveraged A Popular “Vampire” Facebook Widget To Reach It’s Community

Categories: Case Study, Facebook Strategy, Web Strategy, Widget StrategyPosted on January 29th, 2008

A Widget Case Study
Yesterday, I gave a teleconference on Facebook as a ready-made marketing program. I gave a few examples of success, and the audience was hungry for success metrics and numbers. One of the case examples was about rebranding an application/widget in this case, Rock You’s vampire application.

Sony rebrands popular Vampires Widget with 30 Days Night, upcoming Vampire movie
Vampires, which you may already know as the RPG where members bite each other to receive points (and duel) was already popular with over 3 million installs in Facebook.

Sony pictures, the parent company of the very scary 30 Days Night vampire horror film rebranded the existing application, and launched a sweepstakes contest to generate registrations and glean intelligence. The grand prizes? 4 wheel ATVs and $1500.

Specifically, they placed banner ads on the rebranded vampire applications which promoted the movie (one could assume that those who opt-in for the vampires application would also like a vampire movie) promoting the sweekstakes.

The measurable results?
The campaign was only live for 3 weeks, and there were 59,100 sweepstakes entries. (success was deemed at 10k, this clearly moved beyond that)
The visits (I don’t know if they were unique or repeated) were 11,642,051 for the bite page, and 17,652,567 for the stats page (I believe these are part of the interactive experience of the game.
Sony was happy, it exceeded expectations, and users of the application weren’t over branded.

RockYou asked me to keep the price confidential, but based upon the results they told me, I suggested they double the rates, this is despite what Mashable reports on.

What worked?

Fishing where the fish are: Sony figured out where the already existing community was (remember to fish where the fish are) and rather than trying to rebuild something completely by scratch, they leveraged an existing successful application.

Rely on specialists for new arenas: In my many briefings with vendors and clients, specialized firms often provide something a general interactive firm or corporate web marketing team can’t. They have experience, know their area, and in this case, they knew to rely on someone that already knew Facebook.

Compliment the existing user experience: Sony didn’t beat the 3 million existing users with heavy advertising (and I’m sure RockYou wouldn’t have let them) over the head, instead offered value by giving away prizes, and tied in a movie that already existed.

What could have been better?
In my opinion, it would be great if:

The campaign lasted longer than 3 weeks.

Rather than simply embedded, Sony could sponsor elements from the movie and integrate within the game. (vampires could fight at different scenes from the movie, key characters from the movie could become non-player characters, etc). They already have a multi-player game that could have tied in.

A spin off game could have emerged just around the game, where members could give virtual gifts to each relating to the movie, then cross-selling other sony products and merchandise.

Also realize there are very few applications in Facebook that are this popular, don’t expect these type of results to occur every time.

Widget Network Developers
Looking bigger, RockYou isn’t the only vendor doing this type of work, also see Slide, Clearspring, Gigya, and a bunch of others. If you’re in the space, feel free to leave a comment below adding to the conversation.

For those Forrester clients who attended the webinar, I hope that clears up the question (as I promised to find the answer), and thanks to Ro Choy and team of Rock You for the details. If you need to know more, read this weekly digest of the social network industry, or see all posts tagged Facebook.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 4:57 am and is filed under Case Study, Facebook Strategy, Web Strategy, Widget Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

What a great example of knowing your target market and then utilizing the tools they are already using to reach them.

Posted by C.C. Chapman on January 29th, 2008 at 6:43 am

Wow, that is really clever target marketing, whats also great is that nothing was forced onto the customers, because it didn’t need to be. Very slick, from concept to the end result.

Posted by Francois Harris on January 29th, 2008 at 7:01 am

Creative and smart. Any harder of a push and it probably wouldn’t have worked. Great example of “fishing where the fish are.”

Posted by Amanda Gravel on January 29th, 2008 at 7:12 am

Jeremiah, this is a very helpful case study. I also think your recommendations on how it could have been better are spot on!

Posted by Deirdre on January 29th, 2008 at 7:15 am

A really good case study on ROI from Facebook. How would those results compare to straight out advertising I wonder?

Posted by Richard Millington on January 29th, 2008 at 7:34 am

Richard

For the cost, advertising probably would have yielded more click throughs but this is not about advertising.

This is more about interactive marketing and social media marketing.

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on January 29th, 2008 at 7:40 am

I get numerous Facebook widget invitations every day and I have started to get into a routine of simply deleting them, almost like annoying e-mail forwards from people. I wonder if widget fatigue is something that others have experienced? It makes me wonder how sustainable these tactics are.

Posted by Jiyan on January 29th, 2008 at 7:50 am

Jiyan

Absolutely, there are ‘disposable’ widgets (Rodney Rumford’s term) where people use once then throw away.

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on January 29th, 2008 at 7:51 am

Build a Brand. Own the Network….

…

Posted by SEO Book.com on January 29th, 2008 at 9:21 am

Great post Jeremiah. This example is a rare perfect match. So many widgets have adsense or stuff like that on it that does not really fit the medium.

Posted by aaron wall on January 29th, 2008 at 9:40 am

They did this with the Zombies app and Resident Evil last summer. I think it’s a great idea. Also, I don’t think technically it’s RockYou’s application, RockYou was probably instrumental in the promotion and licensing as the app developer is an independent.

That sort of reminds me of how the video game industry started out (small indi developers and larger distributors). I wonder if the future of social widgets is going to be along these lines or if it’ll be more like the Google model.

Posted by terry chay on January 29th, 2008 at 10:18 am

Interesting. I wonder if Sony was able to link this interaction with the movie’s contents (the users’ objective being winning a prize, as in all sweepstakes) with an actual lift in moviegoers… i.e. did the likelihood of going to see the movie augment by being exposed to this, as opposed to those that were not exposed? That would show some real indication of ROI.

Posted by rafael on January 29th, 2008 at 11:32 am

thanks for sharing the case! I am wondering how Sony perceived the value of the 59K sweepstakes entrants relative to the millions of page views. In other words, is there some way to think about the value of one sweepstakes entrant relative to one PV/UV? Is the sweepstakes value predicated more on the fact that entrants are engaging at a higher level or on the customer data collected (or some mix)?

Posted by adam schoenfeld on January 29th, 2008 at 12:18 pm

Hi Jeremiah,

My company Social Interactive also builds Facebook applications and we provide consulting and marketing services as well. We are strictly focused on the social web so that we can provide the best services for our clients. I also write about this space every day on AllFacebook.com and SocialTimes.com. We have some large clients that we are working with right now and have tons of experience.

Best,
Nick

Posted by Nick O'Neill on January 29th, 2008 at 2:21 pm

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Using social applications and widgets to spread products and brands will really come into their own in 2008. The immediate feedback, quality of data and wide reach are all very compelling.

My company, Thought Labs (www.thoughtlabs.com), is dedicated to this new form of interactive marketing. We have been with Facebook system the platform launch. We also have experience porting application on the Bebo social network.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

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Posted by Zygos Community Links on January 30th, 2008 at 12:46 am

Nick

Let’s setup a formal briefing so I can take a closer look.

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I love seeing successful marketing campaigns like this. I agree that one of the reasons for it’s success is that users weren’t inundated with ads. Instead the branding of the campaign was worked into the game’s content.

Why weren’t free movie tickets offered to some of the top players in the game though? This could have provided further incentive to play the game.

Who says that people that like vampires want to ride four wheelers? That part doesn’t make sense to me.

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Posted by What’s the best way to advertise on social networks? « Ask MarketingSavant on December 3rd, 2008 at 4:40 pm

Great post. Those ROI numbers are fantastic and gives me good evidence to pose to my client. They are afraid to even look at Facebook as a serious advertising outlet.