Babelmachine

Mobilizing online communities for your brand

Nov 17, 2008 15:12

Last week, from November 10-14 at 10am to 6pm, our company launched an online project which we believe is something groundbreaking, for the Philippine market, at the very least. Dubbed Reliving LIVE: The LIVE 2008 Experience, this was an online show that combined video footage from our successful Level Up! LIVE 2008 online gaming event last month at the World Trade Center (over 20,000 attendees at the actual event, with over 12,000 unique readers following the action via the live blog, and 55,000 viewers from 27 countries watching the live video stream) with a live feed from our studio.

Tying all this together was our live blog which allowed people to chat with our guests, post comments, join polls, see photos, listen to music and watch clips (apart from the video stream). Through the live segments, viewers could watch our guests while chatting with them, request which songs our guests could sing or dance to (talk about instant gratification), watch a mini concert, and join online promos.

Here's a photo of musical artist Diwa De Leon a.k.a. Master Diwa, an avid gamer and the grandson of one of the Philippines' national artists, who performed video game themes in our studio for the live video stream while cosplaying as a Ragnarok minstrel.

I'm not here to talk mainly about our event, which has ended, though readers can click on the Replay to catch up on the blog entries. Rather, I'm here to share our belief that your company's online play should not just try to replicate an existing medium like TV, and that mobilizing your online community is key toward promoting your brand and those of your partners on the Web.

While we created an online show and made use of video streaming, we weren't attempting to compete with TV. TV has its own space and strengths, and it's a mistake to think you can simply get existing TV content, post it online, and have an instant online hit.

I'm fond of saying that while content may be king, context is queen. You have to understand your online audience and tailor your content and services to their taste. You have to give your community a stake in your service, particularly by showcasing the content they have generated. And you have to remember that if you have an existing online community, you have employees or members who have already become online celebrities.

For instance, in our case, we have community managers and brand managers whom players already look up to because they're gamers themselves, interact with the community on a daily basis, and have built trust over the years.

They have more online cred/gaming cred than a real-world celebrity whom you might invest in just to endorse your brand, but who knows nothing about your content and service, and who hasn't built that kind of rapport with your audience. As the YouTube generation knows, the best online content doesn't necessarily come from the giants in mainstream media, but from ordinary users and online celebrities.

Here's a photo of (L-R) me, GM Cydie of our game RF Online, and our producer Niel Caruncho during one of the video chat sessions.



Here are (L-R) GM MeiShen and GM SamHok of Perfect World, GM Misty of FreeStyle, and GM Cydie of RF Online.



And here are (L-R) GM HaTtRick of FreeStyle and GM Atma of FlyFF pretending to be waking up just for the video chat session.



And while we weren't able to schedule a live video chat session with her because she was at work, we played a previously recorded video interview with one of the instant celebrities at our Level Up! LIVE event, Zeph Espino, who was one of the winners of the cosplay competition with her Cora armor from our game RF Online.



Let me tell you, our viewers asked us to replay again and again that brief video interview I conducted. What all of us who are part of the online revolution are doing in our different ways is changing the mindset of people. I'm not saying that mainstream media will no longer have a role, because obviously each medium has its own strengths and loyal followers. The reality, however, is that fewer and fewer people, especially among the youth, are relying on mainstream media. Chances are, young people would rather watch YouTube than CNN.

If your brand wants to reach out to the youth, you also have to tap the channels they are frequenting, including online games, mobile, social networks, blogs, and the like. The key here, however, is to be open to change, and not just pay lip service to these new tools. You may already be big in other media, but the online world has a way of leveling the playing field and eliminating the posers in favor of those who are willing to become part of the community.

This is the playing field we have created, and we are bringing our partners with us into this brave new (digital) world. It's the kind of interactivity that would be hard or too expensive to replicate on, say, traditional TV. How much would it cost to air a show like this five times a week?

How can you hold promos for your sponsors (we gave away in-game items, T-shirts, USB drives, Webcams and an MP3 player during the online show), where the minute you ask the question, 10 or 20 entries have already been posted? And how can you offer the kind of instant gratification where someone from South Korea who's watching the show can instantly suggest a song for your studio guest to perform on the live video stream?

Plus, how can you transform your reader/viewer into an instant online celebrity, like what happened when one of the winners in our promos, Chimoy, went to the studio to claim his prize? He became one of our guests, and viewers were tickled pink by the fact that here was someone who was posting comments on the live blog along with them, and now they were watching him!

Here's Chimoy (center) with GM MeiShen and me.



In a world where everything is becoming a commodity (breaking news is old hat. Everybody blogs, everybody does online video, etc.). What will differentiate your brand is what your competitors cannot replicate. To me, that's the community you have created and the unique experience you create for them.

In the end, you can't be everything to everyone--but you should be everything to your community.

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