Online influencers can help raise awareness, drive interest and impressions for your brand, products and services. But how do you go about getting the relationship right? Maurice Wheeler, Planning Director and Founder of Digital Outlook, explains.
The first time someone trying to sell something spoke to someone trying to fill a newspaper with content, an interesting power struggle started. Over the centuries this power struggle has produced some fantastic characters, tactics, stunts and boycotts, with each side constantly striving to tip the balance in their favour. As long as these two ever growing needs - the need to sell things and the need to fill a channel with content - continue to exist, the game will continue to be played.
But what happens if one side decides they aren’t into this game anymore and simply walks away? Like two people pushing a swing door from either side, when one side quits the other quickly falls over. This is exactly what has happened in our brave new digital world. The content channels aren’t newspapers – they’re bloggers, YouTube users, Tweeters and Facebook group owners. They have a voice, they have an audience, and they have authority - but at no point on the journey did they need any help from people selling things, and they don’t wake up each morning pulling their hair out because they can’t get their 1200 words filed by lunch time. They make content when they want to, because they want to.
Of course, some of them do eventually sell out and walk their virtual world wearing a sandwich board and handing out flyers, in the process losing all the respect and audience they’ve gained. But the majority don’t and they are very important individuals; people who have great amounts of influence and authority but who – annoyingly for some - refuse to play the game. So to return to my earlier analogy – what do you do if the person on the other side of the door starts pushing less and you don’t want to fall flat on your face? You push less too. This is the key to working in this new paradigm: push less.
We have done many projects with online influencers, from driving awareness and interest in SeaWorld Florida or creating buzz around Disney’s Blu-ray format to promoting countless bands and musicians. However, today I would like to focus on Xbox and in particular the work we have done over the past two years promoting their presence at the games industry event E3.
Taking place every June in Los Angeles, E3 is a three day industry-facing video game extravaganza, where the key games companies make major announcements and show off their wares to the world’s media. For the past two years Xbox has had plenty to show and tell as they have been showcasing their new Kinect technology. We knew the technology and gaming press would be very excited about the product and rightfully so - it’s awesome - but the mainstream audience may have been left feeling overawed, unable to believe the hype. To counterbalance this we called upon those key influencers who could show that it’s not just gamers, technology fans and Microsoft who think Kinect rocks, but the independent man and woman on the street… or rather, on the information superhighway.
We needed to make a big impression on a broad audience, and we knew the best way to do this was via the influencers who already talk to that broad audience; so we hand-picked a team of influencers, took them out to LA and let them see for themselves. In both 2009 and 2010 we took around 15 different influencers, including YouTube stars, respected bloggers, enthusiastic and independent game fan site editors, avid tweeters and even singer/song writers. The two years have certainly been a learning curve, so here is my list of essential ingredients for getting it right.
1/ Determine your core message and work it hard
What do you want the influencers to say? What one message would you like them to take away and share? “It’s like magic.” “Young kids will love this.” “This is the future of entertainment.” Know exactly what your message is, focus on that message and ensure the influencer has the tools they need to convey it to their audience.
Taking this one step further, always have a unified Twitter hashtag. Hashtags are short words or a collection of words that people use to categorise the content of their tweet. Hashtags enable Twitter users to search all tweets and follow a single conversation / topic of interest. The most frequently used hashtags will reach the trending topics list – the tipping point where the buzz becomes self-replicating. Providing influencers with an official hashtag reduces the chance of them creating their own which can often dilute the key message and reduce your chances of appearing in the trending topics.
This became apparent at 2009’s E3 when Sony launched their ‘Move’ peripheral without an official title which resulted in multiple names from multiple users. Microsoft gave their technology the code name ‘Natal’ (later to become Kinect) and this – along with the official conference hash tag of #XboxE3 - trended in the top ten within the first two days of the conference.
For E3 2010 the core message was encapsulated as “you are the controller”. We let influencers play with Kinect, talk to the key developers and got them into all the cool parties, but we also took them on a Segway tour around Venice Beach and Santa Monica. This served a dual purpose, giving them a break from the intensity of E3 but also underlining the innovative nature of the Kinect controller via interaction with another futuristic control system, the Segway.
2/ Create content they can shout about without feeling like they are selling out
As discussed at the beginning of this article, influencers do not like to be seen as ‘selling out’ or losing their integrity. The key is to work alongside them to create great content they actively want to share with their audience, but also includes your core message. Tickets to a press briefing where the remaining Beatles and Stephen Spielberg present key messages will definitely work (as we saw in 2009) but you also need to look at more personal, creative opportunities such as giving them one on one time with a desirable interviewee. Or – as we did in 2010 - you could try something quirky and bring a comedy singer-songwriter who writes and performs songs each day based on key messaging, and then shares those songs with his audience, and with the other influencers for them to share with their audience.
2010 was also the year we invited key YouTube users to become stars of a ‘booth tour’, presenting a 30 minute live streamed tour of the Xbox booth, including live Q&A with their fans. As they were the stars of the show they shared this content with all their followers and subscribers.
3/ Get a mix of different voices, opinions and channels and create a team
It isn’t all about YouTube! Make sure you also have key bloggers, tweeters and photographers; as many content creators across as wide a variety of channels as possible. As well as giving you increased reach this also results in a cross-pollination of content, with photographers creating photos that other influencers can embed or tweet, Youtube users interviewing bloggers in their videos, bloggers embedding Youtube videos and so on – the circle of virtual life.
We spent a lot of time and effort trying to gel the influencers together as a team, as we felt a common sense of purpose and positive atmosphere resulted in better content, more passion and more involvement in the core message. In the end, these lessons are as old as that first encounter between newspaper and marketer, it’s just how we apply them in the digital age that makes a difference. Know what you want to say, say it everywhere it’s appropriate, and make sure you have the capacity and ability to do so. Don’t be overbearing, demanding or excessively corporate – work with your channels, not against them; it’s guaranteed to provide better results in the long run. The message and the medium may be different but the underlying rules are the same – so push a little less, and watch the door swing back.
Maurice Wheeler
Planning Director and Founder, Digital Outlook