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VIBE Media Group
http://www.vibe.com/vibeverses/
MarketingSherpa Summary:
This VIBE contest drove young and hip viewers to an urban music and
culture website. Participants in an online rap music contest created
and submitted videos to be voted on by the VIBE community. They
received MySpace widgets to share their videos with friends and
drive voters to http://www.vibe.com
where they could interact, view and vote on more entries. VIBE saw an
800% ROI on their efforts and captured 60,000 new registered members.
Agency: UNBOUND Technologies
Client/company: Vibe Media Group
Brand campaign was conducted for: Vibe Media Group
Launch date of campaign: May 1, 2007
Target audience/demographic: 18- to 30-year-olds who are interested
in urban music and culture
Campaign Goal:
Expand brand awareness, grow site traffic and drive incremental ad
revenues for VIBE.com, owned by the VIBE Media Group, a music/lifestyle
media company and a preeminent brand in urban and music culture. Vibe's
other media properties include VIBE magazine, the VIBE Video-on-Demand
channel and VIBE TV.
Creative:
Working with UNBOUND Technologies, VIBE created VIBE Verses - a rap music
contest sponsored by the new AT&T. Independent hip hop artists were
invited to record their lyrics and post a video on the VIBE Verses.com
website. They were also given a widget enabling them to share their videos
with fans, friends and their friends' friends. Friends then went to
VIBE.com, where they joined the VIBE community, viewed the contest entries,
voted for their favorite artists, and communicated with other community
members.
Seed Strategy:
VIBE's seed strategy was to leverage UNBOUND's social search and social
analysis products to identify individuals in its 70 million-person social
graph with an affinity for hip hop and rap, as well as artists who were
the most socially connected to them and, therefore, potentially the most
influential. This strategy, coupled with widget technology that enabled
viral dissemination of artists' videos on MySpace, was the key that
ignited this contest.
Buzz Generated:
The contest generated significant buzz within the young, urban community.
For more information about the campaign and to hear from John De Marchi,
GM, VIBE Digital Media, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n56N-H9oSsg.
Specific (Goal-Related) Campaign Results:
The VIBE Verses campaign went viral in 36 days. Some key metrics:
- 800% ROI for VIBE Media Group
- 60,000 new members registered with the VIBE community
- More than a 100-fold increase in video streams per month (from 10,000 to 1.2 million)
- 375,000 unique visitors to VIBE.com
- 775,000 media views (widget views, display ads, images, etc.)
- 5 million monetized ad impressions from premier brands, including Microsoft and Miller
Biggest Learning:
The biggest surprise in implementing a contest, such as this one is the
amount of "gaming" or cheating that goes on to try to elevate one's
favorite artist to the top of the list and/or push other artists down
the list. Based on this, we are implementing new technology within our
widget platform to minimize this activity.
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