There’s a helpful post by Rob Salmon on the IAB Social Media Council blog on how to deliver effective Facebook Pages. He shares 10 tips which Randi Zuckerberg, Head of Consumer Marketing at Facebook, presented at the recent ‘Facebook for Good’ conference. I’ve summarised the 10 tips below but for more flesh on the bone check out his blog post.
I really enjoyed Philips Carousel when it came out 12 months ago and felt it thoroughly deserved all the accolades, not just because of its inventive cinematography but also because it showed just how powerful online video can be as a brand building and buzz generation exercise when executed well.
So like the rest of us, I was looking forward to the next iteration of this campaign and pleased to say I wasn’t disappointed! Instead of approaching one director, Philips have teamed up with five directors from Ridley Scott Associates and challenged them to create a cutting-edge short film in any genre they liked. The one stipulation they had to follow was that they all had to use exactly the same script! It’s quite an ingenious way to articulate the core proposition that there may be numerous ways to tell a story but only one way to actually watch them – on a Philips TV.
For your viewing pleasure I have included all five films below or you can view them in HD in the Parallel Lines microsite here. Enjoy.
One of the things I particularly like about this campaign is the way they’ve seamlessly integrated multilple disciplines and digital platforms to maximise the social capital of the campaign. Each platform within the mix fulfils a very specific role to the overall campaign whether that’s to build anticipation or hype around the launch event, encourage consumer participation and collaboration or facilitate the conversation in social media to extend the overall life of the campaign. I’ll attempt to explain each role in turn from what I’ve gleaned so far.
Building anticipation through blogger outreach
So to build anticipation for the launch, Philips have undertaken a blogger outreach campaign where they’ve sent out intriguing boxes to influential film bloggers. Inside each box was a note from RSA Films founder Ridley Scott inviting them to work out what the script is and attend the premiere screening.
Hosting the event on YouTube
To celebrate the premiere on 8th April, the homepage of YouTube featured the first ever media player in cinematic 21:9 format featuring scenes from the ‘Parallel Lines’ trailer. From here consumers could access the dedicated Philips Cinema YouTube channel where the films can be watched on Philips unique ‘Ambiplayer’.
Encouraging participation through crowdsourcing
This year, they’ve also introduced an interesting crowdsourcing element to the campaign where consumers are invited to submit their own short film via their own branded contest channel on YouTube. I think this is a very clever idea. No doubt most submissions will be complete dross but I’m sure we’ll see some very intriguing and original interpretations from budding film directors, keen to get the exposure in front of their peers and Sir Ridley Scott!
Extending the life of the campaign through Facebook.
Finally, Philips have also created a dedicated Facebook page to support the campaign which is proactively moderated to produce lively debate and keep the conversation going. It’s already attracted a captive audience of 50,000 fans and shows promising signs that it will capture the buzz and generate further excitement around the campaign, not to mention a healthy pool of potential new prospects.
Credits: The Parallel Lines project was developed at DDB London. Digital agency was Tribal DDB Amsterdam. PR Agency was One Vision.
