James Gross

NAMS –> Not Another MicroSite

Eric Eldon, of VentureBeat, has a nice write up on the Dell Graffiti Execution that we did over the last two weeks in January.

Excerpt:

The contest, which ran over two weeks in January, generated more than 1 million votes on more than 7300 Graffiti entries. Check out the top 150 here (as well as the ones pictured, above and below) — you’ll be impressed.

This campaign was a success because Dell both promoted something people cared about and reached out to them through a medium they cared about. The Graffiti application has more than 8.6 million total members and 253,830 daily active users (as of today). Because Graffiti is a Facebook application, users also learned about the contest through Facebook’s news feeds and user profiles. Federated Media (which, in full disclosure, runs ads on sites like VentureBeat), also featured ads about the contest on sites popular with Graffiti users, including sites like Boing Boing and Make. These ads pointed users back to the Graffiti application.

I really liked how Eric positioned the campaign as a win for not only Dell, but also the Application Developer, Graffiti. In a time when not a lot of applications are creating compelling campaigns for marketers, instead, most are being forced to rely on remnant inventory from ad networks.

I also found the comments puzzling and figured I would write down my own thoughts over here. A few of the comments wanted to quantify the over 1.1 million votes be backing it into an eCPM(interesting). Joe Marchese of MediaPost made a few points that I wanted to specifically talk about, because, I think they are important to address and represent a shift in media.

Joe:

The other question would be; Was exposure limited to the 1 million votes? Or, was this are work distribute to friends and contacts (what Rex Briggs would refer to as the potential for a Momentum Effect)?

As Eric laid out, the campaign we created was extensible and stretched far beyond the millions in Facebook. By allowing the Facebook community to literally create the messaging for the ReGeneration campaign, we ran the community driven “ReGenerating” ad units on sites like BoingBoing and Make(FM partner sites), but we could have also run these ad units on any site that accepts an IAB 300X250 ad unit. Effectively taking this engaged community driven message to anyone on the web. More on the momentum effect below on the next point.

I do love the FM example, however Sam makes a good point. This contest could easily have been set up using a dedicated microsite.

As we like to say around the office, NAMS. This project would have never have happened at a “built from scratch micro-site” without a much larger investment in money, partners, and time. By engaging with an install base of 8.5 million on the Facebook Graffiti App, we had an enormous base to pull from to help create the message of “What Does Green Mean to You?”. Not to mention, the application itself, requires an intense amount of coding and hosting capabilities with most people spending hours on drawing each individual Graffiti. Another metric that wasn’t talked about but important to think about, time spent within a branded enviornment. (See video of Graffitis being drawn)

Joe in his comments earlier talked about the Momentum Effect; again, this is exactly what we were looking to do by leveraging our assets outside of Facebook with community driven creative and conversation/announcements happening back at ReGeneration.Org. With Facebook as the central node for this community and some of Facebook’s action item updates; it helped us create an additional effect, the Network Effect. So when Joe draws on the ReGeneration Contest Page, his profile and river of news update say,”Joe just drew on the ReGeneration Contest Wall. Go check it out here.” And when Joe becomes a fan of the ReGeneration Contest brought to you Dell, his profile and river of news update to say, “Joe just became of fan of the ReGeneration Contest Wall. Go check it out here.”

Think about these numbers, if 7300 drew on the ReGeneration Contest, and each person that drew had an average of 200 friends. There is potentially an additional 1,460,000 people that saw this campaign. This law can also be applied to the over 1,170 people that became fans of the campaign and the thousands of people that commented on the brand page and art work.

These types of numbers can’t be acquired with a microsite.

But. There is an opportunity still do go further with these NAMS. How can we create campaigns that still leverage these engaged communities that create the Network Effect inside of Facebook, while also having this contest/app and the central node live on the Brand’s Platform?

With this solution we can gain “brand members” and the search equity from people creating art, tagging it, describing it, linking to it and also harness the conversation that is happening all around the Brand Platform. Just like I am doing right now…….

Stay Tuned.