October 18th, 2006 | |
Posted in Projects
If you’ve noticed my blogging slowing a bit lately, it’s because we’re starting up a new project for Dirt (the upcoming FX show). This project is a continuation of our work with FX using our Big in Japan Fancast system.
Fancast is one of the Big in Japan social tools that gives users and brands a unique way to connect to each other. The Fancast system is based on the highly popular PodServe podcasting platform, and combines a highly scalable Ruby on Rails application framework with a VoIP-based traditional phone system capable of handling more than 30,000 traditional telephone connections.
This summer the Big in Japan team began working with the producers of nip/tuck, the Golden Globe winning drama, on their community interaction efforts. The show is cable’s top-rated series among adults 18-49, and has a reach of more than 2.6 million viewers.
When viewers visit the nip/tuck Fancast, they’re able to leave a display name and their phone number. In less than a minute, they get a call on their phone inviting them to participate with the nip/tuck Experience. From here they can do one of two things:
- Interview one of the show’s stars – Each week five of the best questions are selected by FX and presented to that week’s star to answer. The questions and the answers then get mashed up by the Fancast system into one audio file and becomes available to download via a podcast or accessible for online listening.
- Leave feedback, comments, and theories – nip/tuck fans are never afraid to tell you what they think about the show or what they think will happen next week. Now they can hear what other fans are thinking too – again, via podcast or listening on the nip/tuck Web site.
FX promoted the launch of the nip/tuck Fancast primarily using television advertising. Check out the screen shot of the section with the Fancast system. Kimber (Kelly Carlson) is waiting for your question, what are you waiting for?
Does it work? According to Arbitron/Edison Media Research more than 27 million Americans have listened to a podcast, half of whom are under 35 years old. Using the Big in Japan Fancast, the nip/tuck producers can empower their own community of 2.6 million viewers to deliver content via iTunes to more than 30 million iPod listeners. Converting just 2% of those iTunes users would deliver 600,000 viewers to the program. Additionally, FX has the option of inserting advertising into the consumer generated content as they moderate and process it allowing for additional marketing channels for their advertisers.
For more info on Fancast, drop me an email or visit the Fancast pages:
After posting a comment there, I thought it would be worthwhile to expand that comment.
How do you "value" community? Well… how do you value ethical business practices? A friendly handshake at the beginning of a sales call? A willingness to pass along a sales lead for a friend?
Value of community is like value of anything else in business – pointless to discuss without appropriate context. Community value is, or at least should be couched against the larger business objective. Google has a desire to connect the YouTube content to the larger picture of their desire to connect all pieces of Web content. Why did they buy Blogger? Because it connects them to successful content. That success is largely community based.
Before we start talking about the value of community, we must first determine what "community" means in our context. Community can be a destination or it can be a feature. For instance, Facebook is a community. Its main purpose is to build and support social connection. It directly and solely helps support my definition of community. YouTube, however, has incredible community features that support its primary focus of uploading and sharing video. While it may seem like a minor difference, it’s a crucial one for the discussion of "value".
And what does a discussion of "value" really equate to? That right, the concept of Return on Investment (ROI). Many clients have asked many agencies how to calculate and support blogging/community/social connection ROI. Like the introductory handshake, it’s hard to calculate but easy to feel when it’s working.
ROI and value in the context of community can only be calculated if you first determine what’s important to your business first. There is no one size fits all solution to the ROI discussion. Communities are based on something specific, someting personal. Even between similar community concepts, ROI can be radically different. Think about using a single metric, say total users, when comparing MySpace "value" against Facebook "value". Total users works wonderfully for MySpace, since they make money through sheer volume of site usage that supports ad rates. But Facebook makes money by putting marketing campaigns in front of a truly receptive audience. They charge more for less, and it works because their audience knows that they’re seeing the campaign because Facebook knows they’ll have interest. If you were to judge "value" of Facebook based on the metric that works for MySpace, your results are pointless.
But aside from measuring value based on the proper metric, I’m interested to see when we can stop having this discussion. We asked the same questions when the Web was new and people had to justify the costs of building a new fangled Web site. But these days, no one asks whether there’s an ROI to having a Web site - it’s just part of the marketing mix. Hopefully soon, we can stop having the ROI discussion about "community"… which really equates to asking if building projects that allow users to contribute and participate is worthwhile.