iCrossing social media video release (SMVR) case study

March 6th, 2008 by Andy Merchant

At the beginning of the year we developed and launched a spin-off to the SMPR, which we coined the SMVR or social media video release. We debuted the template last month for our client iCrossing UK (formerly known as Spannerworks), for its brand integration announcement.

Re-brand announcements can often be tricky - they are incredibly important to the client, but are never going to set the news agenda alight. So between the client and ourselves we came up with the idea to use and harness the power of social media, in the form of an interactive video, which bloggers could easily embed into their own blogs.

Below is the case study:

iCrossing brand integration SMVR case study

Overview:

Following Spannerworks’ acquisition by iCrossing, Liberate Media was tasked with communicating the digital marketing agency’s integration into the iCrossing brand in 2008.

Communications objectives:

Develop a hook that would interest target audiences in the UK and US
Educate key audiences in the iCrossing proposition in the UK
Communicate the strength of iCrossing’s worldwide presence
Introduce iCrossing’s vision for the future of digital marketing

Challenges:

Brand integration alone is not newsworthy due to the acquisition announcement a year earlier
Limited time prior to launch
Limited availability of US and UK spokespeople

Campaign:

To deliver on the key objectives for the brand integration, Liberate Media felt that a new approach would be needed to reflect iCrossing’s forward-thinking approach. It was agreed that the communications messages should be conveyed in an innovative and easily accessible format, utilising a social media-focused strategy to assist message delivery and distribution. One option was to prepare a social media press release, but the PR team felt that a more visual and audible format was needed to communicate the intricacies of this announcement.

As part of its ongoing social media research and development, the team at Liberate Media had been developing a new social media platform that it has titled the ’social media video release’ (SMVR). The SMVR contains the key elements of a social media press release combined with interactive video, allowing the viewer to click through to supporting data such as relevant sites, key statistics and research that supports the narrative. iCrossing would become the first brand to utilise this new form of communication.

Liberate Media worked with iCrossing in the US and UK to develop the storyboard and the video element, while collating relevant evidence that would be made available via the interactive interface. Following international agreement on the storyboard and having briefed the key spokespeople, the SMVR was professionally shot, edited, coded and had links inserted to achieve the desired social media-focused announcement.

Launch:

On launch day, which was coordinated with US and UK offices, the video was launched via iCrossing UK’s blog and seeded on relevant news channels, linking all traffic back to iCrossing’s corporate websites. The SMVR was also made available to the web via interactive video site asterpix.com, and of course mainstream sites such as YouTube.

Results:Below are the page views from the major video publishing sites that we aggregated the SMVR to.

Asterpix - The main SMVR interactive site, and url (embeded code) was forwarded to all relevant bloggers and key journalist. It has had 566 views at the time of publishing.

Youtube - 1839 views up to publishing date

Metacafe - 139 views up up publishing date

Honours:

#34 - YOUTUBE - Most Viewed (Today) - News & Politics - United Kingdom - 28-01-2008
#36 - YOUTUBE - Most Viewed (Today) - News & Politics - United Kingdom - 29-01-2008

Page click results:

from the Spannerworks / iCrossing announcement blog post can be found here.

Example coverage:

- NMA - http://www.nma.co.uk/Articles/36623/Spannerworks+rebrands+as+iCrossing.html
- Media Week - http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/779818/Spannerworks-icrossing-rebrand/ -Travolution - http://travolution.co.uk/Articles/2008/01/29/1241/Spannerworks+becomes+iCrossing+UK.html
- Brand Republic - http://www.brandrepublic.com/login/News/779670/
- ClickZ news - http://blog.clickz.com/080128-113619.html

Example blog coverage:

Feedback from Arjo Ghosh, CEO and founder iCrossing UK

* How did you find the process of producing the video?

“If I’m honest I found the filming process a bit stressful. The format would have worked much better for us if we were being interviewed. Talking ‘to’ camera is really difficult if you have no experience of it.”

* What did you think was most interesting/innovative about the SMVR?

“Links interwoven into the talk. Asterpix and YouTube as the platform.”

* What results have you been most impressed with?

“Over 2000 people viewing is impressive.”