There’s been a lot of debate in recent weeks about whether marketers should be focusing on campaigns or platforms online. If I had to pick, I’d pick platforms. However, the good news is it’s not a zero sum scenario.
The benefits of platforms — scalable growth vs one-off activity, basis for long-term relationships, and depth of interaction and connection with the brand to name a few — mean that they open up massive opportunity for long-term marketing success.
However for platforms to reach their potential, they can still use the galvanizing force of campaigns to build awareness and activate the community. What changes is the campaign model. The nature of the platforms offer up amazing possibilities for activating the platforms themselves while still communicating brand values through the nature of that activation.
Here’s three examples of that approach in action:
Example #1 - Nike+ Men vs Women
From a marketer’s perspective, the most famous brand platform on the web is still Nike+. So it’s a very good place to start when talking about campaigns vs platforms.
The platform is obviously central to Nike+. Nikeplus.com lives at the heart of the product, providing the statistical richness, community connection, personal goals and group challenges that have made it such a compelling example of what the future of marketing might look like.
However, Nike+ “Men vs Women” is a great example of how campaigns and platforms are not exclusive, but rather complementary.
Men vs Women was an actual challenge on the Nike+ community, but one made larger than life by an integrated campaign including OLM, print, outdoor and even an athlete-laden TVC featuring the likes of Roger Federer and Fernando Torres.
With Men vs Women, Nike was able to excite and engage their existing platform community, while elevating and hero community features and real activity into their product and brand communications.
The platform lives at the heart, but the campaign activates it.
Example #2 - McDonalds McWorld x Star Wars
In 2008 McDonald’s launched their McWorld virtual world.
Your experience with virtual worlds may be the boom and bust of Second Life, but virtual worlds are absolutely massive with kids today. And McDonald’s saw a real opportunity to build not just a HappyMeal.com microsite, but a true platform.
Although anyone can join HappyMeal.com and play in the virtual world, McDonald’s smartly tied it’s offline marketing to it’s online platform. For every new Happy Meal promotion, a code is provided along with the physical toy that traditionally comes with the Happy Meal. These codes unlock special items or areas in the Virtual World.
For example, when McDonald’s launched their Clone Wars Happy Meal toys, those toys then unlocked a Star Wars section in the Virtual World, with Jedi quests and exclusive Jedi characters.
This integration with their offline campaigns helps keep the platform fresh with topical content, as well as helps drive membership in the platform itself.
Example #3 - Skittles “Mob the Rainbow”
The first two examples are of brands activating around their own platforms. This time let’s use an example of a brand using a 3rd party platform for campaign activation.
Skittles is one of the biggest brands on the web, with over 3.6 million fans. With their Mob the Rainbow social campaign, they’ve come with up an innovative way of harnessing those fans into a campaign force, social media Flash mob style.
The idea is their “mob” of fans are given fun and wacky tasks to compete together. And in doing so, Skittles is not only going to engage their fans with their brand, but create lots of opportunities for that activity to end up in their fans Activity Feeds or even drive word of mouth, helping build brand affinity and their fan base further.
A new model of platform-centric campaigns
The above examples show how we can still do campaigns online, but by centering around these platforms, we can at once both express and fulfill a value proposition. e.g. if you get Nike+ you can participate in fun challenges to help you get fit. If you play in McWorld, buying a Star Wars Happy Meal unlocks exclusive Jedi action just for you.
In the offline / broadcast world, advertising can only express a value proposition and it’s often quite illusory and intangible (use this body spray, get a beautiful girl…not). In the online world, we can create these platforms and communities, and use campaigns to activate them and provide real value (get fit, play exclusive games).
The benefit of these campaigns is they are not just driving brand awareness, they are activating their existing platform communities and providing new value to them, as well as driving further membership, creating long-term value for the brand.
We start to then move away from building bespoke campaign experiences every time, which require constant traffic driving for no long-term benefit:
Campaign > Microsite model
To campaigns that feed and build equity in a platform, helping grow a long-term user-base while activating and providing value to the existing audience:
Campaign > Platform model
In this respect we can often end up with the platform living at the core of the marketing effort, with brand and activation layers surrounding it, but refreshing over time.
This is obviously a simplification, there are lots of scenarios where microsites or one-off destination support will still be the right choice for a campaign, or where we aren’t looking to activate around brand platforms.
But as a way of looking past using digital media as simply another broadcast channel to support a brand messaging campaign, and towards using the unique interactive properties of the web to engage and provide value to customers and brand fans over a long-term period, this is a type of campaign and marketing model I think we will start seeing a lot more of in the coming years.
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Love your model illustrations. I think the concept of activating a community online is still foreign to many brands. Ironically, building and activating a community as part of a campaign can be limited by the platform providers, themselves (even due to cost) — but I believe considerations with respect to platforms will be a more popular item that marketers pay attention to.
Interesting perspective on the use of campaigns to generate force behind a platform. I’m absolutely using this model on a day-to-day basis, but I wonder if I’m still paying the unremarkable tax…
We’ve got these media dollars to support a platform, but shouldn’t the platform be so built-to-share that we don’t need to use them?
Anyway, I like the model…just struggling under the weight of my own expectations.
This is one of the most eloquent and direct explanations of the concept I have read so far. Cheers!
It all sounds great in theory, but please everyone, stop putting creativity into “models” … It’s like creating a thinking cage
And Nike+ is a product. And Men vs. Women a campaign for that product.
Excellent article.
Is it the case now that the brand is the platform?
Therefore, all marketing tactics feed into that branded platform.
Hey guys, many thanks for all the comments!
Clay — As you say a key benefit of platforms is you can benefit from earned media, both in the sense that people keep using it after the campaign is over, and people can share their activity with their friends (both properties of Nike+ for example). However both brand-owned and 3rd party platform communities such as those on Facebook definitely see a big boost in membership and usage from a well-run campaign. Facebook is probably the most transparent example of this, where you can see fan numbers and participation rates sky rocketing after a paid media campaign. This ultimately translates into more earned media from the fans that stay on.
Peter — half my day job is strategizing/conceptualizing/planning and the other half is building things and making them work, and definitely appreciate the sentiment that a nice-looking model does not a good plan or product necessarily make. However I find it useful for getting my head around concepts and frame potential approaches, to make it easier to turn them into a plan of action, as long as we don’t confuse the two! Your milage may vary though.
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