Case Study: Contest Marketing Stories from Cisco

Marketing 2.0 Evolution of Contest Marketing at Cisco
A Case Study From Cisco Marketing Organization’s Perspective
September 2010

Meet the Contests
‘What If Your TV Could..?”
Digital Cribs
‘Heaven or Hell’
http://bit.ly/d7O4nj
www.ciscocontest.com
‘Why I Want Cisco
Telepresence’
http://bit.ly/9eUAdI

The following case study compares three video contests led by three different organizations within Cisco over the past two years who collaborated to showcase best practices and the overall impact of social media video contests on marketing.
Please keep in mind that there are several differentiating factors between the three contests as new social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn have developed and been more heavily used by businesses over the past two years.

Cisco Service Provider Game MarketingContest Comparison

Cisco Service Provider Contest MarketingMarketing Comparison

Cisco Service Provider Contest MarketingContest Comparison

By the “What If Your TV Could…” campaign, we learned how to promote a contest at less than 1/3 the cost of the “Heaven or Hell” promotional budget and reached more people
BUT…
How well did the new marketing techniques used for the “What If Your TV Could…” contest work?

We Planted the Seed by Creating a Cisco TV Contest Brand…
Twitter. New Account @CiscoContest
Objective
Contest-specific account
Follow targeted audience
Results
155 followers in 10 weeks
Total reach: 488,636
174 Tweets
* Twitter only. Excludes 1000’s of mommy blogger followers, write-ups in many other online publications and blogs, and Facebook.

…Which Many Have Embraced: WOM* Promotion Appeared on Over 47 Sites
*WOM = word of mouth

Mommy Bloggers: 12 Influential Bloggers
Objective
Increase reach by engaging a pre-determined set of influential mommy bloggers
Ask to promote contest to their followers, and submit their own video for Flip giveaways
Results
Over 1,293 comments on mommy blogger sites
Generated 307 hits to the Contest web page
Total Reach: 122,786

Mommy Bloggers in Action

College and Specialty School Outreach
Objective
Reach students in media programs to encourage video submissions
Mail posters (email and US post) for distribution on campus
Results
Reached over 65,000 students
Drove over 1,200+ visitors to contest page
.

Targeted Outreach via Posters at Colleges, Specialty Schools and Businesses
Traditional methods can help seed the contest even in the virtual world

Paid Promotion on Social Media Channel
Objective
To extend the reach of the contest via social media channels
Strategy
8 sub-campaigns for test and deployment
The 2 strategies to place media within Facebook are based on cost-per-click and cost-per-thousand impressions payment methods
Results
203.5 Million impressions – with slightly over 50,000 converting to the landing pages and campaign visitors
The ROI for this program has been 3-4X the performance of similar programs
The net CPM basis was $0.08 per 1,000 impressions vs. $0.63 + for comparable “Cisco” programs

Key Marketing LessonsProgressively Getting Better Due to Lessons Learned
2009
“Why I Want Cisco
Telepresence””
2008
Digital Cribs
“Heaven or Hell”
2010
“What If Your TV
Could…?”
Global tax laws must be considered for contest marketing and legal terms and conditions
Multiple prizes helped boost awareness and video submissions
Clearly identify your target audience prior to contest to ensure promoting to relevant outlets
Promotional spend helped increase awareness of the contest
Video syndication and blogger outreach helped promote contest
Announcing more than 1 winner was a good idea but a higher-value grand prizeaugmented with more smaller prizes would have helped boost participation
Determining stakeholders is crucial to contest success
Promotional spend critical behind success of campaign
Created an easy-to-remember URL
Ensure contest rules are put-in-place early on to (example: using the popularity vote to create a community and spread virally)
Duration of contest is very important to sustain momentum
Blogger and college outreach were very effective and helped increased awareness
Go-to-market strategy was fully integrated and worked well
Not only did introducing the contest internally first helped with testing but it also helped increase “pass along” effect
Creating an event to announce winners not only helped extend the life of the contest but also provided a platform to share Cisco’s vision of video, thus directly tying back the contest to related solutions
Early seeding with sample videos submissions spurred ideas and provided content from day 1

Extending the Life and Impact of the Contest
Live UStream Event Combined with Talk2Cisco
Cisco’s Murali Nemani, Director of Video Solutions Marketing, Cisco Service Provider Marketing, will announce the contest winners and discuss Cisco’s role in helping to develop new television platforms that give consumers more of what they want.
ObjectiveUse opportunity to announce via a live social stream broadcast to position Cisco as a thought leader in the video market & to give ‘share of voice’ to the greater community.
Impact?
Achieved 15x playback rate during the post-live broadcast period
Tweets around live broadcast reached over 50,000 followers on Twitter

Contest + Event Combo Has Exceeded Expectations for Cisco TV Contest…
Video submissions: 178
Video requests (# of times videos were viewed): 5,900,000
Comments/Ratings Average: 22,000 ratings, 1,000+ comments
Event attendees: 1,609 attendees
Total reach: 488,636
…BUT we wish we had known or done a few things sooner

9 Lessons Learned
Test: Test and test front and back end web functionality and video loading in all browsers. (If your contest requires a certain browser, make sure you state it up front)
Metrics and Rules: Ensuring that clear metrics and contest rules are established before you begin your program.
Start of promotion: Beginning blogger outreach one week prior to the contest versus during the contest will help further increase word-of-mouth marketing.
Resources: Estimating amount of time and effort it takes to sustain social media momentum throughout the contest period.
Continued Momentum: Lining up team members dedicated to engaging in social media long term and splitting the workload among them. Making this part of somebody’s job responsibilities, hiring part-time and/or temporary help would help further.
Timing of announcement: Leaving two weeks before announcing winner in order to get winners on Telepresence.
Budget: Promotional spend is critical to the success of the campaign. Don’t underestimate budget. A video contest including promotional spend and building out the website costs an average of $100,000.
Prizes: Make sure the prizes are motivating & the contest is FUN.
Collaboration: Willingness to learn from and share with each other to develop a successful benchmark.

Many Thanks to…
Doug Webster, Robert Barlow, Murali Nemani, Deborah Strickland, Sara Cicero, Stacy Melillo Spognardi, Mike Kisch, Richard Mullen, Jeffrey Marusak, Steve Lau, Paul Lanyi, LaSandra Brill, Heike Stabenow, Karen Snell, Dennis Marpuri, Petra Neiger, Leslie Lau, Don Nelson, David Deans, Rhoda Rosales, Martin Hardee, Alex Pista, Brian Gin, Patricia Klein, Stephen Liu, MerwinShanmugasundaram, Janet Starkey Wallin, and Lindsay Kniffin of Cisco for their contributions to this presentation and partnership on the Contest.A very big thank you to everyone who promoted the contest using social media channels.
Supporting Agencies:
3Marketeers-Social Media Support & Facebook Ads
New Marketing Labs-Social Media Support
Somnio-Video Design
Solution Set-Back end vendor
The Platform-Front end vendor
Artua LLC / "STK BIS" LLC-”TV” logo designer
By ZoyaFallahzfallah@cisco.com

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Case Study: Contest Marketing Stories from Cisco

by Petra Neiger on Sep 12, 2010

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