The document provides recommendations to improve a marketing campaign for Big Fish Photography (BFP) to encourage LSU students to interact with their brand. It suggests simplifying the campaign by focusing on one platform (Twitter), providing value to participants through prizes, and increasing awareness by posting regularly and incentivizing referrals. Key recommendations include limiting the campaign to Twitter, offering a prize for the best selfie, and giving participants rewards for sharing the contest on social media.

2. Objective
To encourage LSU students to interact with Big Fish’s brand.

3. Key Characteristics
of the Target Market
•
18-25 years old
•
Student
•
Unemployed or Part-Time
•
Selfie-Addicts

4. Project Constraints
•
Limited Budget
•
Limited Time
•
Quick Turn-around
•
High ROI

5. Rubber to the Road
The contest is built on a good idea - the majestic headshots that BFP created turned a lot of heads. However, the campaign, I found, needed three things:
1. Condense
simplify
, narrow options, build community
2. Entice
eliminate excuses, advertise value, engage
your target market
3. Share
build awareness, incentivize engagement

6. Condense
1.
Lack of Simplicity
2.
Too Many Options
3.
Lack of Community

7. 1. Lack of Simplicity
I want to start at the beginning - simplification. Sadly, with our short attention spans, we are easily scared off or distracted. We scour social media looking for content which we can quickly scan for value.

8. Solution
If you’re like me, you like to see instructions in numerical order, short and sweet.

9. 2. Too Many Options
As an extension of the simplicity point, because there were three platforms on which to post and three different ways to tag BFP, it gave the contestants too many options. You’ve heard of the concept of “Overchoice”? When faced with multiple options and limited motivation, it is often easier simply to not participate at all.

10. Solution
I would have limited the platforms to one which, consequently, limits the platforms BFP must keep tabs on as well. New instructions:
1. Take a majestic selfie
2. Tweet it to us at @bigfishpresco
Why I chose Twitter:
After running analytics on BFP’s Facebook and Twitter pages, it was obvious which was the more engaging platform:
Facebook Posts per Day: 0.3
Twitter Posts per Day: 2.83
Facebook Engagement: 1.1%
Twitter Engagement: 8.7%

11. 3. Lack of Community
When people are called upon to look a bit foolish, they like to know others are in it with them and (perhaps more importantly) that people who might judge them for their goofiness can see they are part of a similarly goofy crowd of people. There wasn’t a central location to post their selfies and see others’ selfies leaving people to post “Majestic Selfies” with no “backup”.

12. Solution
1. As people send selfie’s via Twitter, I would re-post them to a FB
album which allows you to engage multiple platforms while keeping
the instructions simple and limited to Twitter.
2. Tag them in their selfie which would help expose BFP to their
friends via their pages.
3. Write the 2-Step instructions on how to participate in the caption
of the image which allows you to increase brand awareness and
get others involved.
4. The album of majestic selfies allows people to check out oth-er
people’s selfies and justify their goofiness. Encourage them to
share the album on their wall.
5. In order to get the ball rolling, I would have had the BFP staff
wrangle a few friends each to put up at the launch of the contest so
no one has to be the first person.

13. Entice
4. Too Many Excuses
5. No Advertised Value
6. Small Target Market
7. Split-Second Judgments

14. 4. Too Many
Excuses
Social connections (particularly Facebook) are more apt to click a “like” button than to write a comment or follow a link. Why should they bother following through when it’s easy to “engage” with a thumbs up or a star? There was nothing convincing them to follow through.

15. Solution
By targeting Twitter (See #2) users they are, more than likely, already on their smartphones which means they don’t have to switch devices to take a selfie. Now, people are still apt to “Favorite” your post rather than participate in the contest, so you have to remove all excuses. People already are taking selfies for Instagram, Snapchat, SMS... heck, even Twitter! Remind them of that fact.

16. 5. No Advertised Value
Only one Facebook post and one Twitter post actually stated what was in it for the contestants. Most of the posts asked something of the would-be contestants without providing value in return.

17. Solution
Write posts that present the value up front:

18. 6. Small Target Market
The pool of people who need professional headshots taken is rather small. The reason is that most people do not bother with them unless they are specifically requested. This limits your target market to people who are in immediate need of headshots.
Even if people get a good laugh out of the creative headshots, they aren’t necessarily inclined to put in the effort to get some of their own. Out of the people claiming “I wish I had a fun headshot like that,” few are actually motivated to find out how to get one.

19. Solution
Who is likely to need headshots? Young professionals. Leverage LinkedIn and post the contest to various local groups such as:
•
Baton Rouge Small Business
•
Baton Rouge Area Chamber
•
Louisiana Business and Technology Center
•
LSU Student Incubator

20. 7. Split-Second Judgments
As a follow up to the previous point, even people who need professional headshots taken would more than likely make a split-second judgment call and choose an established photographer simply on the basis that BFP does not specialize in professional headshots.

21. Solution
You can help prevent this quick judgment by posting some pro-fessional
headshots along with the fun ones in a diptych image.

22. Share
8. Lack of Awareness
9. No Referral System

23. 8. Lack of Awareness
After scouring BFP’s social media awareness of the contest, I found:
-8 Tweets
-1 Instagram post
-3 Facebook posts
Combine them all together and you still don’t have 1 post per day for the 2 weeks of the contest. At least 7 days during the 2 weeks didn’t have even 1 post about the contest. Even if you are putting out 1 Tweet per day for 2 weeks, that’s 14 Tweets which doesn’t amount to a whole lot when you’re competing with hundreds of other Tweets in a feed.

24. Solution
To quote Mad Eye Moody from J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, “CONSTANT VIGILANCE!” You are in constant danger of your contest fizzling out because people suck at remembering things they don’t have a vested interest in. We’ve all heard the “7 Impressions” concept in marketing. A simple way of doing this is by making sure that you post at least twice per day about the contest. It doesn’t have to be a hard sell style tweet. Remember those friends that BFP’s employees wrangled into helping in #3? Post one of those selfies per day until others begin participating, then feature the new guys!

25. 9. No Referral System
Campaigns designed to raise awareness should build an organic referral system into the participation process. BFP gave participants no incentive to share or pass-along the contest which limited exposure to the 8 Tweets, 3 Facebook Posts and 1 Instagram Post.

26. Solution
Taking a page from Harry’s Razors’ playbook, provide an incentive to sharing. They offered free product to those who persuaded others to sign up.
What if you also told your followers that if they simply Retweeted your contest announcement their selfie would get a rating boost? All of the sudden, participants who have no reason NOT to retweet you, are boosting your impressions by the amount of followers they have.
Then, tell them for each person who they can get to participate, they would get another rating boost.

27. Project Details
Cost: Free
Time: 2 Hours to Start, then 10 min/day
Platforms: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

28. Cheers!
Thanks for the opportunity, gents!