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London announces social media strategy for 2012 Olympic Games

This week came the first announcements of the social media strategy that will accompany London’s 2012 Olympic Games. The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) will work with the sponsors of the Games to launch a social media campaign in the run-up to the games in three years time as part of it’s campaign to get younger people to get involved in both the Games and sport more generally.

They are currently negotiating the involvement of the various official sponsors, and Adidas will be the first to launch a project as part of the campaign. Their involvement will include what is called an “online sports activation project”, a set of online social media activities, and presence in social networks, that will sit alongside a campaign offering free gyms to London schools and communities.

According to Alex Balfour, head of new media at LOCOG:

“The main driver for it will be around social values. It will be focused less on the people who are already active in sport or aspire to be lead sports people and more on those who have some interest but don’t see the social rewards in it.”

So what can we learn from this?

The announcements to date seem to be focusing on ways to engage younger audiences, through online communities and social networks. They appear to be building social media elements into their broader projects to encourage mass participation in sport and hope that this will help their drive to get young people involved.

This is undoubtedly a laudable effort. It is great to use the focus that the Olympic games provide to encourage and promote sport; and especially to motivate younger people to get involved. Social media undoubtedly has a significant role to play in any activities like this and I look forward to what I hope are well-planned and well-executed activities online. The Olympics is a big deal, and it deserves great and innovative use of social media.

Of course, I really hope that London 2012′s social media strategy goes much further than what we have seen announced so far. Whilst it is great to try to engage young people in this way, I hope they will try to engage the rest of us too! As we wrote earlier this year, the Olympics should be the perfect social media event. As we wrote at the time:

…if there were ever a perfect candidate for coverage in social networks, online communities and social media, then the Olympics surely must be it.

From my experience with clients, the aspects that are common in successful online communities typically include:

1. A shared or common interest or goal
2. The subject may be broad but allows interest groups to form
3. A subject people are or can be passionate about
4. Enthusiasts and leaders who will help to shape the community
5. An experience that is or can be inherently social, that people want to share with others
6. A subject that can create strong opinions and passionate views
7. Regularly changing and updated content
8. Media and varying content types so different people can interact in different ways
9. You can be more interested in the issues as you are in the people you are discussing them with
10. An ability for the online experience to be supplemented with offline experience

A full social media strategy should look at ways to engage and involve people before, during and after the Olympic games. If Beijing this year was the first time people have been able to use social media to report on events, London in three years’ time should be the first games to fully integrate social media into the Olympic experience. That’s why I’m looking forward  to watching LOCOG’s social media strategy develop and to more elements of it being revealed. By 2012, social media will use tools we don’t even have yet in ways we can’t imagine. I hope London is ready to make the most of them.

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Some more reading

• London 2012 will be mobile
• Olympic Games: Halfway to the opening ceremony, London 2012′s progress report

Sony crowd-sources name for new online community

Sony this week launched a beta version of it’s new online community this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The site combines company blogs with videos, photos and polls as well as allowing users to create profiles; it’s a site for users to engage with Sony as a brand and as a company. They’re using the site at the Show both to report on product launches but also to allow people to engage with their bloggers and content. From the perspective of launching an online community, many of the usual criteria appear to be met. The community is missing just one thing: a name.

Sony are looking to co-create the name for their online community, working with those people who are first to use and try the site both to get feedback on the content and the interactions, but also to suggest a name for the community. As their chief blogger and senior vice president of corporate communications, Rick Clancy, says:

We want to get feedback from users and also we thought it would be great to reach out to users for suggestions on a name for the site. My favorite so far is ‘Sony No Baloney,’ which I used for the very first blog post, but some of my colleagues disagree. Hopefully, the community members themselves can suggest something more clever.

So what can we learn from this?

There are many things right about how Sony are launching their online community. Getting the strategy and launch right can really help to maximise the chances of success, including:

• seeding the community with content and members even before the beta launch
• bringing together the ways the company interacts – making the user experience simple and not making them do work to find out where to interact
• launching  alongside an event – capitalising upon the PR the event will bring and also establishing the clear relationship between the online and offline community of consumers – they are the same people after all, just engaging in different ways
• using the first members to help you finalise and develop the community

By working with these first members to co-create the name for the online community itself, Sony is allowing them to have real input into a significant part of the community member experience – what the community is actually called. There are many ways to engage community members and confer a feeling of ownership of the community too them, but I particularly like the idea of getting them to name the site. Naming conventions in society are important – those who help to name something feel ownership of and responsibility for it. By getting these first community members to work together to name the site they will create a set of people who feel responsibility for the success of the site and who want to work to make it a success.

Understanding the social dynamics at play in online communities is important, and if you capitalise upon them you can really help maximise the potential for success at launch and whilst you grow and develop your site.

Read all our Social Media Diary entries

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Some more reading

• Sony’s 2009 CES Press Conference In HD
• Live from Sony’s (first) CES 2009 press event
• Sony bolsters Web presence with social networking site
• Sony Electronics Launches Community Site
• Sony’s Social Networking Site Needs a Name
• Consumer Electronics Show: Myspace social networking site to be available through TV sets

Skype launches video cards in Facebook

Just in time, perhaps, for those of us who haven’t yet sent all our Christmas cards, Skype this week launched Skype Video Cards, as both an application in Facebook and also as a standalone feature at SkypeVideoCards.com.

The concept is quite simple and it works well as a Facebook application. You choose a basic card, record your video message and send this to your friends. They receive a personalised flash video message from you (and with Skype branding!). It’s a nice application, and out with good timing as we enter the festive season with a force. It’s simple to use (in four clicks you can create a card), creates a personal message and sends a flash video card which means it can be viewed directly from a web browser.

So what can we learn from this?

One question that this application raises is why is Skype doing this? As some people have noted, the video card tool doesn’t make use of any Skype technology, it doesn’t even integrate with your Skype contacts list to send to your friends.

For me this doesn’t matter, especially not for the Facebook application. If this were only a standalone feature, then it would be odd that it didn’t actually showcase the product whose brand it carried. But in Facebook, and indeed in other social networks, it is not so easy to market and product-place in this way.

As we’ve written about before, it can be very difficult to advertise in social networks. Primarily because social networks are social environments with social rules. People are there for their own, personal reasons – to upload their photos, network with their friends, plan their events and talk about issues that are of interest to them. It’s a ‘me’ space and when brands enter this they need to be fully aware of the social rules they must abide by. It’s not that easy to just place your product in front of people or pump your marketing message to them.

This is why the Skype Video Card application works for me. Rather than trying to integrate their actual product and develop an application that people will use and forward to their friends. Instead they opted for the solution of creating an application that creates real value for the users (especially those who have forgotten to send holiday greetings already) and allows the Skype brand to be associated with this.

Facebook and other social networks can be scary places for brands, and difficult places for them to succeed in. My advice: think first how you can add value to the users experience and then put your brand on it. You have a great chance of being successful, and of getting that brand forwarded round the internet faster than you could hope for.

Read all our Social Media Diary entries

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Some more reading

• Brands, social, clutter and the sundae
• Social Media Isn’t Anti-Social
• Flash Skype Video cards = Flash Skype Client in the Near Future?
• There Are No Dancing Elves. But Skype’s Got A Video Greeting Card App For The Holidays
• Skype video cards: holiday cheer with a side of humbug

Sony launches online community for PlayStation gamers

After many years in development, this week Sony launched PlayStation Home, an online community for Playstation gamers.

The community is something of a virtual clubhouse for PlayStation owners. All registered PlayStation Network users will be able to create their own avatar and then interact with others in a 3D environment. Some are calling this a cross between Facebook and Second Life, but this is really an online community of gamers. Members will be able to chat with and text each other, build their own ‘home’ and explore those of other members, and take part in mini games and special events.

Building on the popular chat functions that sit alongside many online games, the concept of a central community that allows members to meet and join games has been in development for a number of years. The beta launch of PlayStation Home this week shows us what Sony has to rival Microsoft and to enhance the gaming experience. As Kazuo Hirai, president of Sony Computer Entertainment, says:

PlayStation Home is truly a promising network community service. We are committed to providing PS3 users with exciting gaming experiences with PlayStation Home and together with our partners and users, expand the new world of interactive entertainment as we move forward.

So what can we learn from this?

To some extent Sony is providing its gamers with something they have wanted for some time – a way to meet and exchange with other gamers, to easily identify and join multi-player games and to extend and enhance their experience of using the PlayStation.

There has been much discussion over the last couple of days about the actual functionality and use of PlayStation Home. Microsoft called the technology as “outdated” and some features are not yet live – streaming video and music will be in a later release. But overall response from gamers themselves has been quite positive.

Undoubtedly Sony hope that Home will be a success, and for me success would be if they retain gamers for longer periods of time because of this. They can monetise Home quite easily, either by selling functionality or features within the environment itself (such as selling houses or other property to users or taking a cut of peer-to-peer sales). Or they can monetise through charging for downloads, streaming music and video and entry to special events and games. And let’s not forget the benefit they might be able to get from advertising if they so desired.

This kind of online community may seem like a clear candidate for success, and it is certainly true that the members share a common interest and goal (something that is critical to success of any community). But perhaps the real marker of success will be if the community fills a real need that the members have. Home needs to focus on gaming and on making gaming, easier, more fun and perhaps more challenging. They’re not building a new Second Life (or Facebook, Bebo or anything) as some people have suggested. Rather they’ve identified a need that their gamers have and are using social media and online communities to help meet this need. Always a good strategy.

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Some more reading

• Sony Answers Some Key PlayStation Home Questions, Dodges Others
• PlayStation Home Launches Everywhere December 11th [Ps Home]
• Home Launches On December 11 [Home]
• PlayStation home opens its doors
• PlayStation Home beta adding more users this Fall — in other words, delayed
• There’s no place quite like Home
• PS3 Virtual World Finally Finally ‘Here’
• Sony unveils PlayStation community site
• Here’s What You Can Buy In ‘Home’ So Far, For A Total Of 26 Dollars
• Microsoft says PlayStation Home ‘feels like 2005 tech’
• 10 Things You Need to Know About PlayStation Home [Ps Home]

Orange launches ‘Film Club’ online community

I’m a big fan of mobile operator Orange‘s involvement with film and cinemas in the UK – from their amusing adverts in cinemas (including this with Rob Lowe) to their Orange Wednesdays offer where Orange customers can take a friend to the cinema for free.

To date they haven’t formally used social media to engage people around their film associations, but this week they launched The Film Club. In Facebook and Bebo, this ‘club’ is actually an application that gives users access to free preview screenings, exclusive competitions, trailers, reviews and other film related content. The Club also lets you see which of your friends are taking advantage of the Orange Wednesdays offer, and if you’re not an Orange customer you can poke your friends who are and ask them to take you.

For Orange this move is all about capitalising upon their association with film and being seen as providing a place for people to share this passion with them. As Spencer McHugh, head of brand communications at Orange, says:

The new Film Club communities give movie fans on Facebook and Bebo a place to come together and chat about the things they love most.

So what can we learn from this?

At FreshNetworks we talk a lot, and have indeed posted a lot in the past, about the difference between online communities and social networks and about how building a community online is as much about building an actual community of people as it is about doing it online. What Orange have done with their Orange Film Club is to cleverly and astutely leverage social networks (in this case Facebook and Bebo) to help connect their users and act as a portal for all their film-related  content and activities. But building a true community in these social networks is notoriously difficult for a brand to do.

People invariably spend time in social networks for very self-centred issues – it’s a ‘me’ place where I upload my photos, plan my events, talk to my friends and join groups that reflect me. From this angle it is clearly a great place for Orange to bring together all of its members who engage with it on film – taking advantage of their offers or watching their content. This one-to-one relationship between Orange and individual fans or customers will continue. Building a real community, where it is these fans who also grow the discussions and content and where they talk to each other and form bonds might prove more difficult.

A community tends to have a common purpose or something they are all contributing to, it tends to have no leaders but everybody (brand and fans alike) being equal members) and it needs careful design and guidance to make it grow and flourish (a bit like a garden can grow on its own but needs a gardener to look at its best). In Facebook (or any social networks) it’s difficult to do the latter and as a very public space people are often unwilling to start discussions and build that real community feel.

So if Orange wanted to build and grow a large and flourishing film community, they may find doing it in Facebook or Bebo hard. If, on the other hand, they want to bring together all their activities and fans in this space into a convenient place then things will be much easier to do. I suspect this is what they want – making it easier for both parties to find content and engage on film. However, I hope this is the precursor to something. I hope they are planning an online community here. It could be great, and their brand could really help it to work – online and on the go.

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