How to Crowdsource Consumer Engagement
For marketers looking to get a new brand campaign off of the ground, making sure their fans are onboard with the new messaging is key.
Whether it’s something as practical as an in-store promotion to drive sales or as ambitious as a global rebranding to mark a new strategic direction, having a engagement plan that solicits input before, during, and after a launch ensures that a campaign will benefit from what groundswell arises from the most involved segments of your consumer base.
A responsibility once relegated to support call centers, branded schwag and one-off mail-in sweepstakes, consumer engagement is now central to marketing success in a competitive, fragmented digital media landscape. Fortunately, the web affords brands a host of new tools, practices and media to listen and offer interactive experiences.
With consumer loyalty at its lowest rates in generations, creative approaches are needed to earn attentions and forge stronger bonds with what audiences you’ve attracted. Broadcast-based tactics based on an “interrupt and repeat” approach continue to lapse into obsolescence. Today’s marketing campaigns need to be collaborative by their very nature in order to fulfill their maximum potential.
One practice that Zooppa helps brand marketers integrate into their marketing mixes is crowdsourcing video and visual content through an open contest format. After working with nearly 250 clients, we’ve found that, especially in the realm of video production, crowdsourcing can be especially effective in contribution to an engagement plan around a new initiative that a brand is rolling out.
In most cases, the results are imaginative fans and creative professionals producing content while sharing and voting for their favorites – all within a forum devoted to the new branding’s approach.
Lately, we’ve had a number of clients launch campaigns on Zooppa riffing off of this theme: crowdsourcing engagement to promote a new initiative, so I thought I’d spotlight three of them here on the Crowd Creativity blog.
Dungeons & Dragons “Next Playset”
Dungeons & Dragons, the iconic tabletop roleplaying game that launched the entire roleplaying game genre, is currently staging a video contest this month to excite fans about the next iteration of the game, which is currently in development. Participants in the contest are invited to create a 60-second video that will get D&D fans excited about being part of the “D&D Next” Playtest, a groundbreaking initiative that invites D&D’s legions of fans to help shape the future of the game’s rules – through crowdsourcing no less. Read the contest’s brief here.
Harry Potter™ for Kinect™: A WB Games Original Musical Score Contest
Also currently, WB Games is offering fans a chance to be a part of the world of Harry Potter™ through its original musical score contest on Zooppa. Participants will produce and upload a “contemporary, up-beat and aspirational music track that captures the unique, magical experience” that players will have in the new video game Harry Potter™ for Kinect™, exclusively for the XBOX 360® gaming console. Winner’s work will be featured in a globally-distributed trailer for the game and the deadline for entry is August 8, 2012 – read the entire contest brief and rules here.
IHOP “Everything You Love about Breakfast”
IHOP asked fans to provide their own take on the breakfast restaurant’s new anthem based on its new tagline “EVERYTHING YOU LOVE ABOUT BREAKFAST™” with a video contest. Whether they were “smitten with syrup or taken with bacon,” participants were asked to create a one-minute video showing everything they love about breakfast for a chance to win cash awards and, better yet, breakfast for an entire year at their restaurants.
There’s no doubt that consumer engagement is hard and it’s only getting harder with the additional more networks, platforms, screens and devices. This approach is especially difficult when you’re tasked with getting users engaged with a new initiative like a new tagline, feature or product.
As marketers, we know consumers are empowered in the digital age, but the challenge is being able to channel that empowerment in way that can contribute to a new generation branding from the ground up.
Crowdsourcing is just one tactic in a toolbox of new online tools that can help marketers do this, taking advantage this “uprising” of content creator.
