by Aurélien Gaucherand et Cyril Huet , published on 29.03.2011

Digital marketing aims to create an emotional connection between the image of a brand and its targets. A strong trend in 2011 to reach this goal, is the development of branded content, a brand produces content destined for an audience sharing a certain type of affinities or passions.

In order to go beyond a simple buzz, this content has to be articulated around a narrative story (storytelling), developing audience loyalty to a program over the longer term. The concept of a web-series is an answer to this challenge.

While writing such a web series on the theme of snow sports, we imagined a system using social gaming to transform a passive audience into one of active participants.

This Social Reality Game (SRG) is played online, it allows its participants to have an influence on the script and the product content, almost live.

 

 

Why use a Social Reality Game ? The goal is to recruit, develop loyalty and transform the passive audience into contributors and therefore ambassadors of the program.

 

1) Make the content dynamic

The production of branded video content is a big investment for brands and automatically generate strong expectations for the visibility incurred. No matter what the quality of a video of a series is, using the Internet as a simple broadcasting channel is a mistake, because Internet is not a broadcast media but a place of interactivity. The concept of Social Reality Game allows us to bring content to life.

 

 

2) Stimulate the participative creation

If the term “social media” is often used inappropriately, it takes on its true meaning when the community of users has a real impact on the media produced. The Social Reality Game’s (SRG) final editorial purpose is the creation of a social media – a participative media, where a part of the audience participates in the creative process of content production.

3) Valuing the users

Games mean prizes. The encouragement to participate is presented to users as a challenge where there will be finalists and winners. Of course, prizes are planned to reward the most active contributors. However, it’s through an editorial animation highlighting the contributing players, that the users will feel valued and want to become ambassadors of the project: the image of the project is now part of their personal image.

Social Reality Game in a few lines

The call: at the end of each episode, the actors of the web-series send out a call for script propositions for the following episodes. The suggestion: the users can make their propositions by publishing a comment under the video.

The recommendation (sharing): for the propositions to make it to the shortlist of scripts that get passed on to the production team, it has to be evaluated by a system of votes by other members of the community. The system of votes retained is the Facebook “like”, allowing the propagation of this proposition on the social network. The user who makes this proposition will naturally share it on his Facebook profile, calling his network of friends to vote for him.

Evaluation: each user can vote for several actions that he wants to see enacted.

Shortlist: at the end of the script submission period, a list of scripts is passed on to the production team, who decides the ones that will appear in the next episode of the web-series. An alternative consists of integrating two propositions, one chosen by the production team and the other one being the “public vote”.

Winners (those whose script was chosen) aren’t notified. The only way to know which actions were chosen is to view the next episode, during which the actors thank the winners, among other things. This active participation to the content of a media is already, in itself, a prize. The brand can also offer products to the winners: an original way of promoting its products with its new ambassadors.

Benefits of the Social Reality Game

Recruit ambassadors Speed up recommendation, Develop audience loyalty

Published by united-spirit.com The United Spirit Agency is producing an interactive web series project. Two professional free riders take a three months tour around the world, guided by the cybernauts immersed into a “social reality game”. This is the chance to strengthen the relations between your brand and a young audience, thanks to these authentic ambassadors. Discover the project presentation video here and contact us for more information: http://www.united-spirit.fr/contact