What is creative commons? Who is it for? What does it do? How to use it? Understand copyright and licenses to what we are best at: BE CREATIVE!

The celebration was marked by the biggest event in Harley-Davidson India’s history – the first National H.O.G. Rally in Goa, from  31 January to 3 February, 2013. To amplify the event further, since the entire community couldn’t be with us in Goa, we took the celebrations to them via Facebook.  To create buzz and build anticipation for the event, an exciting cover photo campaign was initiated. We also shared live content from the event, in the form of quotes from the participants, photographs and videos.

The celebrations continued even after the ride with the ’110 Years of Freedom’ Facebook application, inviting the fans to share what freedom meant to each one of them, and we received 770 amazing entries.

The campaign so far has added over 190,000 new fans, reached 4.8 million people, and created 10.4 million impressions. More than 354,000 people engaged with the brand.

The celebrations continue with more events planned through the year. Watch the video of the case study here:

You can also read the detailed case study here.

Allen Solly played the role of the ‘Fashion Wingman’, as there was plenty of interaction with the fashion experts and people sharing style advice. A hashtag #SchoolOfStyle was seeded and people live-tweeted from the event. Apart from integrating the Twitter community, there were real time image uploads on Facebook. Further, the event was live-streamed on the Facebook page, which enabled the Allen Solly community from all over the country to be tuned into everything that was happening at the venue.

Several different looks were showcased, ranging from ‘corporate’ to ‘party’ and ‘quirky’ to ‘ethnic’.  Each look was also complemented with the selection of the perfect combination of accessories. Each of the fashion bloggers who attended also wrote about their takeaways from the event. Some of these can be found here and here.

Here are the highlights of the event, shared by Allen Solly:

Stay tuned for a more detailed case study!

My colleague and co-presenter Amita Malhotra had shared The Content Challenge Talk at #Sankalp Unconvention 2013 (Part 1) here.

From a dip-stick research by Intellecap, Engagement was found to be another area of challenge for social enterprises in their endeavours on social media. Through this section of our workshop, we identified and suggested workarounds for the following issues at hand: 

-      How to choose and ‘bet’ on the ‘right’ platforms

-      How to amplify and strengthen via strong network of ambassadors and influencers

-      How to leverage social beyond online

-      How to resolve the ‘Facebook Problem’

Here’s a slide deck for ‘Block 2-The Engagement Challenge’

Do share your thoughts.

The presentation was in two parts – The Content Challenge and The Engagement Challenge and as part of the segment, Alister D Monte from the Milaap team shared a case study from their learnings from their programme.

Here is the slide deck that I presented alongside my colleague Jyotika Malhotra at the workshop. These were some key themes we spoke about -

- Issues at hand with Content
- Approach for Content Scalability
- What is Curation
- Process flow for Curation
- Some tools for Curation – basic, intermediate, advanced
- Scaling content creation – becoming a nimble publisher using technology and tools
- Tools for photos, video, transmedia showcase
- Repurposing Content

The second part of the slide deck was focused on The Engagement Challenge. My colleague Jyotika would be sharing this soon.

Take a look and do share your thoughts too.

Background – Workshop Agenda

The organising team from Intellcap team had shared with us findings from a dipstick with a set of social entrepreneurs where 3 key challenges emerged post-adoption of social media in their work – content, engagement and scalability. Below is the agenda that we had crafted for the talk basis the same.

From generating awareness, fundraising, building and engaging with the ecosystem, leveraging research and insights and co-creation, social media is playing a key role at different stages of the lifecycle for the social enterprise. The proliferation of ‘voices’ in the social web has also contributed to higher ‘noise’ levels in the recent years. A sharper focus on the ‘purpose’ and emphasis on meaningful and differentiated ‘message’ is what is imperative for every social enterprise or social entrepreneur to be able to leverage the medium to their advantage.

This session will focus on hands-on tactics and tools that can enable a social entrepreneur through the three crucial stages of their journey on social – creating compelling ‘content’, building mutual value and relevance in‘engagement’ and making the first two aspects ‘scalable’ for programme to be sustainable and impactful. It will cover a wide range of formats and third-party tools that can help you showcase your initiatives and message more powerfully. It will include conversations with social enterprises who have successfully leveraged the medium and understand from them specific tactics that have helped them achieve results. 

You can view the full case here.

Owned media includes all of the pages managed by your brand on the internet. Owned social presence is becoming more important than the brand’s website. According data recorded in May 2012, visits to websites were 23,000 while visits to Facebook were 320,000.

Question 1:  With so many people moving to social media, how do we make them stick to our brands/spend more time with branded content?

Paid media – social is no longer free. Drive properties to owned properties. Supplementing social with paid is essential. Paid media strategy is evolving from an option to necessity.

Question 2:  We are seeing incredible amounts of social advertising. Also, increase in ‘noise’.  How do we stand out as a signal in that noise?

Earned media – World of mouth is still considered the highest form of marketing. It’s the most trusted form marketing for consumers. You can’t create it, can’t buy it, but you can try to influence more of it.

When the brand talks about itself – level of trust is 58%

When a friend is talks about the brand– level of trust is 92%

Source: Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising Survey, 2012

Example, Pepsi’s marketing strategy is hugely dependent on spreading the word. They are very engaging in their approach

Question 3:  How do we harness opportunities to extend the effect of earned media?

The solution – Convergence

1. Owned – cross network social programs, media libraries (album, photos, editorial content), promotions and campaigns (apps)
2. Paid – real time optimised ads, conversion and attribution options (different types of people respond differently. E.g.: For ads to increase fans – target people who are mostly likely to click on like, advanced targeting (e.g. single, urban, female) sponsored stories (endorse what consumers are saying about you and spread to the ears of everyone else), sponsored posts
3. Earned – You can’t buy it, you can only influence and hope for it. Boost by user posts, engagement campaigns (e.g. essay contest, photo contests), user generated content and incentivised sharing (e.g. giving rewards)

Extend the impact of your owned engagement activities (e.g. Benefit cosmetics). Amplify voices of your most loyal fans – sponsor reach, quantify your media impact. Influence and celebrate earned media creation (e.g. Timberland – showcases photos submitted by users, reward users)

Here are examples of brands which are performing ahead of the curve

1. The Academy – employs an integrated paid, owned and earned  strategy across multiple networks emphasising paid traffic to topical campaigns leading up to the big night
2. Tuttorosso – drives brand awareness with user generated content initiatives, influencing valuable earned media. It also pairs the activities with social ads, increasing traffic to owned social properties. Recipes contest. They had 900 recipes in a month
3. Rock Resorts – marketing team wanted to grow database of high value leads. They wanted to increase books. They created a variety of campaigns and used the ability to target to their advantage. Graphically in a strategic way, optimized for conversions. They started a sweepstake for a grand prize of 50,000 and it grew bigger with every 5000 fans.  It encouraged applicants to post.
4. Nicole Miller – was looking to grow fan engagement. High end fashion designer. They used social apps product. Automatically pauses the ads that are not working and reallocates budgets. So if the black dress gets more traction than the yellow dress, they know what works

Actionable Insights

1. Create an engagement campaign centred around user-generated content and run ads to extend its reach and awareness
2. Create ad creatives and copy that speaks to the purpose of the campaign, not with generic branding – try a ‘call to earned action’ like ‘watch this 30 sec video’.
3. Reuse and recycle your earned media for new owned and paid asset, the way Timberland does. Don’t just store it in albums.

You can read the full story here.