Slides for my keynote at: WARM Workshop on Advanced Research Methods Department of Communication Studies University of Urbino, Italy September 30th 2010

1. WARM
Workshop on Advanced Research Methods
Department of Communication Studies
University of Urbino
September 30th 2010
The Text as Corpus:
Social Network Marketing, Audiovisuals
and UGC
Emanuela Zaccone
University of Bologna

2. Background
Semiotics Marketing
 Reconsider the idea of  Tribal Marketing theories
text as finished and (power of fan relationships
complete product with the text)
Audiovisuals promotional strategies
on Social Networks
Emanuela Zaccone - WARM

3. Text as a whole…or not?
 Top down productions
 UGC
 Contests
 Social networks profiles
 Applications
 Bottom up productions
 Fandom
 Comments
 Other activities
Emanuela Zaccone - WARM

4. Questions
 If the text is a whole completed product, which is the role
of the so called ephemerals?
 What kind of products can be considered relevant for
our research?
 Does still exist a separation between top down and
bottom up contents, or we can identify a “middle” are in
which participative culture products create another
“piece of text”?
 Example of application: my PhD research
Emanuela Zaccone - WARM

5. Social (too) big data
 Necessity of a philtre  what is important to both the
community and the producers?
 Practices of user engagement and productions (The
FlashForward Experience, Glee Photobooth)
 Prosumers go into the story as part of it
 Prosumers interact with the story or part of it (social network
profiles)
 Prosumers recreates some dimension of the story (True Blood
ultimate fan experience)
 Cases of “delegation”
 The user becomes part of the supply chain (Lost: fanart and finale promo)
 Rewards (eg. exclusive sneak peeks)
Emanuela Zaccone - WARM

6. Tribal marketing
 User engagement strategies empower prosumers for
marketing purposes
 MARKETING AS PHYLTRE
 PRODUCTIONS RELATED DIRECTLY TO THE TEXT
 WIDER IDEA OF TEXT
 USER GENERATED MARKETING
Emanuela Zaccone - WARM

7. Consequences
the volume of social big data to
 Reduce
consider
 Connect tribal marketing
strategies and semiotics
 Rethink the concept of text
 Limit research field and open a new possible
area of investigation (cultural
industries and value of corporate driven UGC)
Emanuela Zaccone - WARM

8. “Markets Audiovisuals are
conversations”
THANK YOU!
emanuela.zaccone@unibo.it
Emanuela Zaccone - WARM