Brickfish aiming to use viral adverts to catch the attention
By Paul Taylor in New York
Published: July 3 2008 03:00 | Last updated: July 3 2008 03:00
When Kodak, the US photo supplies company, decided to re-enter the inkjet printer business with a range of printers that claim to cut the cost of ink in half, the company chose an unconventional way to get the message out.
Kodak teamed up with a San Diego-based start-up called Brickfish that has pioneered a new web-based viral marketing method called social media advertising.
Together they created a campaign dubbed "Pricey Ink Stinks" built around a competition that challenged online visitors to find another use for their old, ink-hungry printer and blog about it, take a photo, draw it or video it for the chance to win one of the new Kodak models.
The campaign was a success, generating 87 entries and more than 173,022 "engagements" which Brian Dunn, Brickfish's chief executive, claims are a much better metric than unique visitors or page views. Engagements, or a campaign's "e-score", measures consumer action defined by entries, votes, reviews and views of branded user-generated content.
Clients use the Brickfish platform to launch online advertising and marketing campaigns designed to capture the attention of consumers - particularly the young, creative and connected - and tap the power and reach of social networking.
Instead of marketing to consumers, the Brickfish advertising platform effectively co-opts consumers who become part of the campaign, generating blogs, images, video and audio content that is shared virally and voted upon. Meanwhile, Brickfish enables its clients to monitor and track the campaign through "viral map" technology that provides detailed analytics about campaign reach, performance and demographics.
"This viral, consumer-driven marketing approach has proven to be five to 10 times more effective than existing online advertising methods such as display ads and search optimisation," claims Mr Dunn.
With online banner ads stuck with their 0.1-0.2 per cent click-through rates, marketers at big-name companies including Samsung, Nike, Qualcomm and Procter & Gamble have begun to listen.
P&G used Brickfish to launch a campaign for its Aussie shampoo brand. Like the Kodak campaign, the Aussie effort was a contest site. The competition attracted 4,017 entries and more than 2m visitors, 80 per cent of whom were viral connections through sites such as MySpace, MyYearBook and SugarFoot. Brian Jochum, P&G's Aussie brand manager, described it as one of P&G's most successful engagement branding efforts so far this year.
"In order to broadly reach consumers across the internet, Brickfish provided us with a highly cost-conscious and effective method to virally spread our brand name to thousands," he said.
Using Brickfish's media platform, P&G was able to track not only the initial message sent but subsequent ones to other social networks.
In total, Brickfish has launched more than 200 campaigns for clients, including about 30 for the fashion and cosmetics industries.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
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