Branded entertainment is one of the most effective ways to achieve brand awareness and audience engagement, especially when today's consumer has a shorter attention span as well as fewer dollars to spread around. By making your brand a celebrity, you can cut through the clutter to reach a dedicated audience and develop a relationship to enhance and support your other online and offline marketing and public relations efforts Throughout this presentation you will learn: 1. What branded entertainment is 2. How and where branded entertainment is used 3. How organizations are achieving success through branded entertainment 4. How you can develop your own branded entertainment campaigns to make your brand a celebrity

1. Is Your Brand A Celebrity @damiennavarro #eduwebconf Is Your Institution’s Brand A Celebrity

2. What You’ll Learn (at least I hope so) What branded entertainment is “for higher education” How and where branded entertainment is used How organizations are achieving success through branded entertainment How to determine where to use B.E. using social listening

3. Do you feel like Oprah or Lohan these days?

4. Does your brand Pride itself in being “in the know”? Have an active voice? Have a fan base who creates content FOR you? Take advantage of positive PR and battle negative PR? Support a Cause? Establish trends?

5. Or is your Brand Out of touch, “old school” and/or boring? Having trouble creating engaging content? Struggle from the “silo” effect? Suffering from brand confusion or lack of awareness? Attempting to increase it’s digital footprint?

6. What is Branded Entertainment Branded entertainment, also known as branded content or advertainment, is an entertainment-based vehicle that is funded by and complementary to a brand's marketing strategy. It give a brand the opportunity to communicate its image to its target audience in an original way, by creating positive links between the brand and the program. (Not so commercial)

7. The Theories Behind Edutainment! 7 Persuasion Theory - Psychological characteristics affect the response of a person to messages. Aristotle

8. The Theories Behind Edutainment! 8 Theory of Reasoned Action – Social influences “content” affect behavior, including beliefs and perceived social norms Ajzen, Fishbein

9. The Theories Behind Edutainment! 9 Diffusion Theory – Television may plant the idea, but social networks reinforce it and cause it to grow Rogers

10. Survey Says… 80 percent agree B.E provides for alignment of brand with relevant content 72 percent believe B.E. has the ability to make stronger emotional connections 72 percent believe B.E. builds brand affinity with a desired target group/demographic 48 percent says B.E. provides for protection from increased consumer control Association of National Advertisers survey on branded entertainment: Madison+Vine: Branded Entertainment Survey, [1] ANA Advertising Financial Management Conference, 05/03/05

11. Branded Entertainment Timeline Soap Opera Sponsors – 50’s 30 Second Ad Spot – 60’s Product Placement – 1896 – Today Cause Campaigns & Events - Early 00’s Games / Viral / Webisodes – Late 00’s UGC, Social & Experiential - 2010

12. Relevant Uses for B.E. Content Student recruitment, acquisition and retention Capital campaigns and Alumni engagement Staff and faculty recruitment “Customer Service” –overcoming objections, FAQ’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & ranking New market entry / test theories / pilot projects Reputation management and positioning Publicity and Awareness

13. Setting the Context 13

14. 14 DistributionIs Free and Diverse

15. 15 Because visiting social sites is now the 4th most popular online activity – ahead of personal email. (Nielsen, Global Faces & Networked Places, 2009) Time spent on social networks is growing at 3x the overall internet rate, accounting for ~10% of all internet time.

16. 16 Because 2/3 of the Global Internet Population are on it (including soccer moms, billy-bob and grandma) (Nielsen, Global Faces & Networked Places, 2009)

17. 17 Because social media intelligence can predict trends better than traditional research at much lower costs – Hp Labs, 2010

18. Content Sharing Continues To Grow 18 Over 1.2 Billion YouTube videos viewed per day 20 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute 50 million Tweets per day, 600 Tweets per second Over 4 billion images hosted on Flickr

19. Which Direction are you Going? Celebrity to The World vs. Celebrity to Us Appeal to the Ego of your audience Deepen the connection through acknowledgement What channels do you use, for which audience? What assets and content can you leverage? Yours, theirs? How is brand loyalty rewarded? put on the box? Who do you

20. Inspiration & Observations

21. Opportunities using Branded Original Content Demand for “edutaining” content and control Take advantage of compelling stories “fans” tell Make the institutional impact more accessible (Mobile to Global) Unprecedented opportunity for to re-use content via technology

23. Utilize niche and searchable content

24. Authenticity and visibility is critical

25. Challenge the community to engageWhat we measure Traffic & “Stickiness” Engagement / Shares Revenue / ROI

27. Huge multidisciplinary opportunity

28. Challenge the community to create and share

30. Enhances awareness and relevancy of the brand

31. Often uses the “Day in the life of” approachWhat we measure? Lead Generation / Traffic Pathways / Conversion Cost Per Inquiry / Acquisition

33. Can reach an audience just outside of your target

34. Give choices on formats and media type

35. Makes the user the celebrity What we measure? Lead Generation / Traffic Self-Identification Research Sharing of Content

37. Works well with highly niche markets

38. Increases visibility and relevancy online

39. Authenticity and transparency is critical

40. Harvest ideas and popular trendsWhat we measure Traffic Call/E-mail Reduction Search results / SEO Content Sharing & Downloads

42. Grow digital real-estate and brand equity

43. Sharing extends the reach further

44. YouTube gives accessibility to national audienceWhat we measure Awareness / Footprint Sharing of Content Engagement Chatter & Buzz

45. Commentary – Publishing, Twitter & Blogging THINK LIKE A PUBLISHER Talk about Institutional Culture Share content, make it easy on yourself Live a day in the life of … Reveal industry insights – offer knowledge Recognize staff, influencers and partners Ask questions, take suggestions and ideas 28 What we measure Followers / Subscribers Engagement Content Syndication http://www.onlinedegreeworld.com/blog/2009/top-100-edu-tweeters/

47. Added a Facebookand YouTube page

48. Added Self-Diagnosis Widget

49. Community Content Rating/Recommendations

51. Gained over 3000 friends

52. Increased revenue by $4,000,000 (6 months)

54. Getting Started 5 Questions to Consider Where our we challenged in our business process? How do we increase our positive digital footprint? How do we enable our “fan” base How do we guide an audience through our process? How do we influence decision making? 31

55. Student Lifecycle Evaluation Framework Phase 1 Initiator or follower Phase 2 Introduction to idea & awakening of needs Phase 3 Research and self identification Phase 4 Self Assessed + Brand Search Phase 8 Fan & Loyalty Or Disgruntled & Disengaged Enroll/Yield Apply / Conversion Alumni / Retention Opportunity Target Search Lead Qualif. Lead Vulnerable and Emotional Framework for guiding strategy and tactics

56. Student Lifecycle Evaluation Framework Phase 8 Fan & Loyalty Or Disgruntled & Disengaged Phase 5 Deeper Research, Experience, Community Phase 6 Q & A, On-Site, Examination of sentiment & reputation Phase 7Final Decision, Seeking Influencer Opinion Cost, Payment Enroll/Yield Apply / Conversion Alumni / Retention Opportunity Target Search Lead Qualif. Lead Educated and Influenced Framework for guiding strategy and tactics

57. Student Lifecycle Evaluation Framework Phase 1 Initiator or follower Phase 2 Introduction to idea & awakening of needs Phase 3 Research and self identification Phase 4 Self Assessed + Brand Search Phase 5 Deeper Research, Experience, Community Phase 6 Q & A, On-Site, Examination of sentiment & reputation Phase 7Final Decision, Seeking Influencer Opinion Cost, Payment Phase 8 Fan & Loyalty Or Disgruntled & Disengaged Enroll/Yield Apply / Conversion Alumni / Retention Opportunity Target Search Lead Qualif. Lead Educated and Influenced Vulnerable and Emotional The flow of influence from Retention & Alumni can be just as impactful or detrimental

58. 35 Popular for Wrong Reasons Remember Them D-List Who? A-List Measurement & Listening

59. Evaluating Your Celebrity, Content and Influence Standard Awareness Metrics – Tracking impressions, video views, page views created through social campaigns Quality of Audience – How does social media traffic rank in terms of quality compared to others sources of traffic? Engage/Disengage Ratio – With respect to social profiles, tracking drop-off or lack of engagement in “fans” and followers

60. Evaluating Your Celebrity, Content and Influence Actions Taken - Create promotions, events, and tasks specific to an audience or campaign “Customer Service” Metrics – How do you measure the success of other customer service or reduction in FAQ’s, e-mail, etc.? Volume of Conversation – Did you create something that got people talking? What is the volume of that conversation, the influence?

61. 5 Ways to Start Monitoring 38 Set up alerts for general branded keywords monitoring Google Alerts Yahoo Pipes General monitoring on social media search engines Free Services: Social Mention Keotag Paid Services: Radian 6

62. 5 Ways to Start Monitoring 39 Search Twitter Twitter Search Twitter Alerts: Twilert and TweetBeep Twitter dashboards: TweetDeck and Twitscoop

63. 5 Ways to Start Monitoring 40 Search Blog Posts and Comments Backtype – tool for monitoring blog comments Cocomment – tool for comments management Yacktrack – search for comments on your content from Blogger, Digg, FriendFeed, Stumbleupon, and Wordpress blogs

64. 5 Ways to Start Monitoring 41 Find industry / program specific discussion boards BoardTracker– get instant alerts from threads citing your name Boardreader and Big Boards

65. 5 Ways to Start Monitoring 42 Track your Institutional brands' affinity to other brands with Social Bookmarking Del.icio.us Digg Reddit StumbleUpon

66. The Process at Work

67. As of 3/8/2010 We listened 7 Day Conversation Snapshot

68. As of 3/8/2010 We observed 7 Day Conversation Snapshot

69. We noted the positive

70. We noted the negative

71. Observations:B.E. Opportunities Amplify and broadcast student excitement upon acceptance Mobilize student population to participate in dialog around schools Mobilize students/alumni to act as ambassadors to student prospects Proactively support positive online brand awareness

72. Wrap-up & Q&A 49

73. My Top Ten Identify your audience and business needs first (remember it’s not you) Be honest when evaluating what you’re capable of sustaining Look across alternative industries Observe what’s the audience is watching, sharing and creating Gain momentum through small, measurable, experiments Leverage your resources – talent? Task and Reward the Community to Promote Protect Your Users – Protect Your Brand Continually Monitor, Measure and Manage your Community & Endeavors Silence the “Devil’s Advocate”

74. Thank you for your time! PPT available at: http://www.slideshare.net/EarthboundMediaGroup Damien S. Navarro Managing Partner dnavarro@visitemg.com @damiennavarro