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#8. Beacon Street Girls
http://www.beaconstreetgirls.com
MarketingSherpa Summary:
B*tween Productions wins the try-and-try-again
award for this Beacon Street Girls branding effort. To coincide with book releases
and school holidays, they launched several games for girls, each tied to a different
Beacon Street character. While the first two were mind-challenging (sigh, who
wants to think during a school break!), the third game -- Katani's Fashion Frenzy
-- created a forwarding frenzy. Noticing the activity, B*tween Productions
switched gears and rolled out two more fashion-related games, and more are on
the way.
Agency: Pod Design
Client/company: B*tween Productions
Brand campaign was conducted for: Beacon Street Girls
Launch date of campaign: Aug. 14, 2006
Target audience/demographic: 'Tween girls ages 9-13
Campaign Goal:
B*tween Productions challenged Pod Design to create a website that
would be an entertaining destination for 'tween girls and a trusted
resource for parents. The site needed to build awareness of and familiarity
with the BSG characters and, ultimately, the BSG brand. The series of
interactive games was designed to bring the BSG characters and world to
life and provide an interactive, dynamic and fun environment where girls
would want to get involved and share with their friends.
Creative:
The Pod team created several new games, one appropriate for each of
the primary characters' personality and designed to be viral to keep girls
coming back. A diverse set of games was developed to connect with the
variety of personalities represented by each character from the books.
Results are measured by brand exposure (page views), involvement
(game play and membership to Club BSG) and pass-along value (send to
a friend).
The Games:
Charlotte’s Friendship Bracelet:
Charlotte hosts a friendship bracelet beading game where girls can build a
bracelet for a friend using a set of lettered beads. After the message is
complete, it is scrambled and sent to the friend. The friend receives the
empty bracelet string and a pile of lettered beads. The challenge is to see
if they can restring the bracelet to read the secret message. They can then
make their own bracelet message and send it back or send it on to
another friend.
Sudoku: Avery Style
Avery's sudoku game was designed to appeal to the thinking side of
Beacon Street Girls fans. The game has multiple online options allowing
players to customize the look of the tiles and level of play. There is
something for everyone with the new Beacon Street Girls Sudoku. The
game also has an option to send your score to a friend.
Katani's Fashion Frenzy
Katani's fashion game allows her to invite fans to her fashion show. Girls
create outfits by mixing and matching, selecting from more than 60 fabric
patterns and colors *styling* the look with actual accessories from the BSG
Shop. Katani models the new look, and girls can send their outfits to a
friend. The fashion design game was so popular and encouraged so much
activity on the site that it inspired spin-off fashion games for the other main
characters, Charlotte, Isabel, Avery (yet to be released) and Maeve (yet to
be released).
Charlotte in Paris and Isabel's Spring Break Fashions
Designed as extensions of the popular Fashion Frenzy game, Charlotte's
and Isabel's games include outfit, pattern and accessory options that each
individual character would wear. In the first book of a new adventure
series, Charlotte jet-sets to Paris, and her new dress-up game includes all
of the couture fashions and cute travel clothes she'll need for the trip!
Isabel helps girls gear up for warm weather and beach fun with her spring
break fashions; her game also features many new accessories available
at the BSG shop.
Seed Strategy:
Launch dates for each game were strategically scheduled to coincide with
book releases and school holidays, times when 'tweens would have more
time to spend online. Each game was launched with its own specialized
seeding strategy. The bead game was sent to kids clubs. Sudoku was
seeded to every online puzzle directory, and kids entertainment and
education sites and dress-up game directories were given advance notice
of each fashion game launch. The seeding list also included a number of
general gaming sites, mommy blogs and youth marketing blogs and
newsletters. Members of Club BSG were given prerelease VIP access to
games, and press releases with links to the games were issued.
Buzz Generated:
The new Beacon Street Girls website was launched on Aug. 14, 2006; the
viral games were launched individually as a series from Aug. 25, 2006,
through March 1, 2007, with two more games scheduled for late spring
2007.
Each launch caused surges in site traffic with an overall steady growth in
daily traffic. Since August, the site has been viewed by more than 2.2
million people and has been featured on more than 2,000 websites,
directories and forums. Top referring sites include:
www.dressupgames.com, www.fashion-game.com, www.puzzles.com,
yahooligans.yahoo.com, kids.aol.com, www.discoverygirls.com,
www.stumbleupon.com, www.kids.gov and www.agirlsworld.com
Other strong referrers include search engines and email services, showing
that our games and website earned attention online and offline. Also, more
than 180,000 emails were sent through the email options in our games;
the pass-along value of the interactive and entertainment elements of the
website encouraged further buzz.
Traditional media also showed interest in the website, book releases and
games, and Beacon Street Girls earned coverage in a number of outlets,
including:
* TD Monthly:
http://www.toydirectory.com/monthly/article.asp?id=2300
* The Canton Repository:
http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=324660&Category=8
* Paramus Post:
http://www.paramuspost.com/article.php/20061201114051403
* North Shore News:
http://www.nsnews.com/issues06/w111206/113206/parenting/113206pa1.html
* 002 Magazine:
http://www.002mag.com/main.html (page 32)
* Forrester Blog: The Groundswell:
http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2007/01/social_marketin.html
Specific (Goal-Related) Campaign Results:
Since launching the campaign, average monthly traffic has increased by
more than 700%. In total, 2.3 million people have been exposed to the
brand through the website. More than 90% of them have played at least
one of the games spending anywhere from three to seven minutes each
time. At least 70% of all entrance pages to Beacon Street Girls are one of
the games, and membership to club BSG has increased 71% over the
past eight months.
Biggest Learning:
If given the opportunity to do it again, we would act faster to capitalize on
intense interest in a specific game. It was a few months between the first
fashion game and the second, and traffic began to fall during that time
period. Following a tighter release schedule may have resulted in even
larger viral numbers.
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