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Sportswear manufacturer Oakley worked with Bigballs Films to create a social campaign aimed at building its Facebook and social media fan base. 'You Vs.' enabled users to pitch themselves against Oakley athletes including Mark Cavendish and Rory Mcllroy.
Bigballs Films Senior Digital Producer Sam Becker talks to Figaro about personalisation, engagement and users' attitudes towards branded content
We all know innovative interactivity is vital in raising and maintaining engagement, but conceiving and implementing those strategies can still be a challenge for brands and their creative agencies. The sheer volume of information swirling round the social sphere means creative campaigns need to appeal to users on an immediate and personal level, tying them into the brand and nurturing that emotional connection. Whacking a game up on your Facebook page and hoping it generates a few 'likes' isn't going to impress users or CMOs.
Building the community
The 'You Vs.' campaign Bigballs Films conceived and produced for Oakley, is an example of innovative interactivity in action and is carefully designed to provide users with a – literally – unique experience. Drawing on social functionality, video and gaming, users are pitched against some of the brand's own sporting stars in a series of Facebook face-offs, created using Bigballs Films’ expertise in point-of-view video.
The first instalment, ‘You Vs. Mark Cavendish’, stars the world champion cyclist on a frantic pursuit through the Tuscan hills. Users register at youvs.oakley.com. Using Facebook's social graph API, personal information is then pulled in: your name, profile pictures and pictures of friends. That enables the game to create a tailored experience, unique to every user, and for those who beat Cavendish online there's a chance to compete against the cyclist in real life. The campaign represents Oakley's biggest digital investment in Europe so far, and the objective is a 100,000 strong Facebook community. As well as Cavendish, users can take on Irish golf champion Rory McIlroy and future iterations will feature cricketer Kevin Pietersen and rally driver Sebastien Loeb. So how did the creative evolve and what were its creators hoping to achieve?
Taking the challenge
"Aside from Oakley's products," says Sam Becker at Bigballs Films, "the biggest attractor to the brand is the sheer number of top athletes they have. So it was about leveraging that talent. We began thinking about how to tie these names in – creating competitions and so on. Then we said, what about making some sort of experience – not necessarily a game per se – but something which pitches you against those athletes? We really wanted to integrate personalisation, and to tie the athletes into the experience."
Personalisation is indeed woven into the entire process. At one point Cavendish leafs through users' Facebook photos, only to dismiss one with a cheerful "you've got to be joking." So how did Bigballs Films create the POV video footage that makes the user interactivity such a striking experience?
"It took just over two days to shoot," says Becker, "though we only had Cav for about three hours on one of those days. Fortunately, we have a lot of experience of POV. We have a modified scooter helmet with a mount on which you can attach to a DSLR for shooting. It's pretty hefty, because there's the helmet and then a weight-belt to keep it stabilised. The rider we had shooting the 'You' perspective was an ex-pro. Huge respect to him because he did massive descents and climbs wearing that helmet. The team also came up with a lot of clever stuff during the shoot itself. The shot of your name on the bike frame – that's only a one second shot in the finished version - but the guys on the shoot were up until 3am building another rig to attach to the frame, just to get a shot of that in motion."
Fit for purpose
Ingenious and entertaining though this certainly is, how did the campaign fit the commercial brief?
"Each experience is conceived with a specific piece of Oakley gear in mind," explains Becker. "For the Cavendish one, it's his eyewear and at the end you can click through to the store." But, he concedes, that may be more of an ancillary metric. How many of us, after, all are likely to buy a pair of specs without actually trying them on? Instead – and in answer to the ever-relevant question about the precise purpose of social campaigns such as this – You Vs. is designed to build a community around the brand.
"With every kind of media above the line," says Becker, "it's hard to know how what you're doing translates. Initially it was very hard to get companies to invest in online advertising, but the rise of social media has bridged that so that clients now feel they have some sort of concrete metric. I'm still not sure how effective that is – people coming to your Facebook page doesn't necessarily translate into actual worldwide sales. But it's a good step that's been taken and it's a way for people to get an idea of the reach of their message. And for any brand that's achieved critical mass with five million people – the law of averages says there's going to be some sort of perk. Five million is better than five, right?"
Blurring the lines
A significant issue within integrated marketing right now is the notion of 'channel agnosticism': think not about the medium, but the message, and the people you want to receive it. Traditional distinctions are ceasing to apply. Interestingly, something similar may be happening to users' attitudes towards branded entertainment. Whereas once it was clear when a game or video was designed to promote a product or a brand, sophisticated experiences liken You Vs. suggest that marketing and entertainment are evolving into a single leisure strand.
"Absolutely," says Becker. "We're so saturated with media and branding and things like that, people are more savvy about such things." By way of illustration he points to another project Bigballs Films are involved in: branded online video football game I Am Playr – launched in Beta earlier this year and live from October - which lets the player live the life of a professional footballer from recruitment to celebrity, both on and off the pitch. There, he explains, the brands – from Nike to Alfa Romeo – are woven seamlessly into an authentic narrative. Given the value placed on realism and credibility, it'd be strange if players weren't wearing Nike footwear or driving an Alfa Romeo MiTo. "It feels like a proper holistic relationship in that context," says Becker. "It's great exposure but it also adds to the authenticity of the experience."
For Oakley, these early stages of the campaign have proved successful. According to New Media Age the Cavendish game had recruited 30,000 Facebook fans by August, and there are plans to roll out a similar model in the run up to the 2012 Olympics. As marketing gets to grips with the creative as well as the commercial opportunities afforded by social media, it may well be that it's not just channels that become more integrated, but our whole notion of what constitutes branded marketing within the social sphere.
Article by Jon Fortgang
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