From March 14 to April 22, the Sony Square NYC location will host an interactive exhibit called The Sony Music Experience. The experiential campaign invites guests to step into the shoes of a rock star by posing for album covers, dancing in a music video or recording a vocal track.
While the installation is designed to promote Sony’s musical artists, the company says it’s not concerned about resulting purchases.
“The purpose of SSNYC is absolutely not to direct sales—it’s about the larger picture,” Steven Fuld, SVP of corporate marketing for Sony Corporation of America told AListDaily.
Fuld likened Sony’s marketing strategy to kando—a Japanese term that refers to emotional involvement. For that reason, The Sony Music Experience, as with all the company’s revolving installations, was designed to elicit an emotional response rather than a financial one.
Launched in 2016, SSNYC is a gallery and event center as opposed to an outlet store. Every six-to-eight weeks, Sony redesigns the space to highlight activities, products or launches. The continuously shifting space ensures that Sony is “always on,” as Fuld explained.
“Historically, I think we’ve focused a little too much on large tentpole events and did some really great things, but we were kind of too quiet during those in between periods,” said Fuld. “Consumers never turn off. We want to have awareness in the consumers’ mind of Sony—who we are and what we stand for. We want to share a bigger story than just electronics or the next piece of content coming out.”
Each interactive option at The Sony Music Experience is designed to create souvenirs and fond memories associated with the Sony brand. Participants walk away with audio recordings, videos and photos to share across social channels with the hashtag #SonySquareNYC.
“It’s important that we create opportunities [for consumers] to get that emotional connection, and, if that’s the case, they’ll choose their own social channels and post. We don’t intentionally create selfie moments when designing the space,” said Fuld.
At the Sony Music Experience, visitors can have their pictures taken on a set that recreates the cover art for DJ Khaled‘s album Major Key. The set has been a big hit, Fuld said.
Nearby, a green screen setup allows guests to dance and be inserted into the music video for Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass.”
A custom recording booth offers recorded karaoke sessions to simulate a rock star on the job. Visitors can choose from one of 10 karaoke tracks to record and will be gifted with an audio and video recording of the session.
“We’ve found that installations associated with getting the consumer involved have been far more effective [than gallery showings],” Fuld explained.
The Sony Music Experience features a pop-up store and listening area featuring over 20 Sony Music recordings on vinyl. Music memorabilia is also on display ranging from autographed instruments to hand-written song lyrics. Limited edition merchandise will be available for sale as additional souvenirs.
Sony measures the success of each installation by foot traffic and online surveys, Fuld explained. Of course, some positive reactions are obvious, such as the 600-odd fans that showed up to meet Judas Priest on Monday. The metal band arrived on a fire truck, sirens blaring.
Previous events included props from the movie Passengers, escape rooms and a gaming night with graffiti artist ELLE who personalized PS4 controllers.
Anticipating expansion as it opens for all developers, Facebook Instant Games is adding enhanced user acquisition features, hoping to better compete with the mainstream market and promote HTML5 mobile games across its different properties.
Newzoo market consultant Tom Wijman explained that Instant Games occupies a space between mobile and PC web gaming, describing it as “one of the first real alternatives to the app stores for developers in Western markets.”
Users can browse titles from the Games tab on their Messenger app, but the platform relies on word of mouth for discovery. Users can send challenges to friends, who in turn invite others.
Facebook product manager Michael Weingert points to social interaction as the key differentiator between Instant Games and other platforms, as friends play with each other in existing conversations on Messenger, allowing the games’ user acquisition and monetization features to take advantage of Facebook’s built-in capabilities.
One of the most prominent new features is shareable links, where developers can post links that lead directly to their games on Reddit, Facebook or any other place they accrue traffic. In the coming weeks, developers will be able to supplement this traffic through paid acquisition using ad units. These ads are currently in beta, but will be the same format as the ads already appearing on the Facebook News Feed and Messenger inbox, with support for images and video.
Since the games are created in HTML5, users don’t have to download an app—they can click on an ad or link and get straight to playing. But even though this accessibility is beneficial for audience growth, Wijman points out that HTML5 isn’t necessarily tailored for game development, suggesting that downloadable mobile games will still have their niche.
Additionally, developers will need to use an upcoming API called Game Switch in order to cross-promote their other titles. As the name suggests, the tool lets developers decide on the right time to encourage players to switch over to a different game.
The vast majority of titles on Instant Games are either puzzle or casual games, with standouts such as Words With Friends and Tetris.
While word-of-mouth will likely remain the platform’s primary growth driver for the foreseeable future, Facebook intends to supplement it with a dynamic ranking system that uses machine learning to surface new games. In much the same way the News Feed pushes up stories based on the pages users like, the ranking system will surface games according to what users play.
Bob Slinn, Facebook’s EMEA head of games partnerships, said that other signals will come from how well a game is performing, so popular games may be surfaced more frequently too. He also added that retention is a good signal as well, and on that end, Instant Games is taking another play from mobile gaming’s playbook.
Playing an Instant Game automatically subscribes players to related game bots, which send notifications through Messenger in the same way mobile games use push notifications. However, the Instant Games approach may prove to be more flexible: Weingert explained that since game bots live within Messenger, a platform where users interact with bots on a regular basis, the format allows more options for customizing bot messages, such as including images along with the text itself.
Even with Instant Games’ steady growth, mobile is likely to continue growing as well. Although Weingert expects that many Instant Game players are new to gaming in general, Newzoo’s data shows that there is a great deal of overlap between Instant Games users and other platforms in the US. According to Wijman, of those who played Instant Games on mobile devices, 63 and 75 percent also play PC and console games, respectively. This overlap goes up with people who play from their News Feeds on computers, with 98 percent playing mobile games and 84 percent playing console games.
Wijman warns that the huge reach of the Facebook platform may become a disadvantage for some developers.
“A game can grow very quickly, but can die out equally as quickly,” he said. “Player retention is a major issue, especially because it’s essentially an app in an app. Players don’t have instant access to the game and are not reminded of it by seeing it on their home screens.”
Next steps for the platform include increased emphasis on Facebook’s video features. Instant Games added livestreaming and video chat in December, and the company is currently working on a way to integrate gaming into Facebook’s personal video calling so that users can play together while talking face to face.
Slinn said that Instant Games is also experimenting with livestreaming, allowing developers to better connect with audiences and strengthen community engagement. On Monday, Facebook launched a new livestreaming API that lets developers give out in-game rewards to viewers, smoothing the transition between watching and playing.
Hating on SXSW has become a major tech industry pastime, with floods of Twitter and LinkedIn users claiming the Interactive festival is irrelevant.
But SXSW Interactive hasn’t jumped the shark—it’s evolved into something larger. And stranger.
The festival is no longer the tech industry’s senior prom, where giants like Twitter and Facebook launch their newest and greatest products. But marketers can still fully embrace the SXSW of 2019 and beyond as a giant, sprawling beast focused around massive, high-budget experiential campaigns—like this year’s Westworld and Ready Player One activations. And these days, formal talks and panels are arranged almost a year in advance by large public relations agencies leveraging SXSW’s PanelPicker to maximum advantage.
Here are three major tips to keep in mind as you approach SXSW planning for next year:
Embrace The Size
SXSW has steadily grown in size and scale, and SXSW Interactive most of all. There were approximately 71,000 formal attendees for last year’s Interactive, Film, and Music conferences. That same year, there were more than 5000 speakers and 2000 conference sessions. By comparison, there were approximately 32,000 registrants at SXSW Interactive and Film in 2011.
While SXSW does not release detailed metrics on the number of Interactive visitors, anecdotal evidence suggests that SXSW Interactive has become the main economic driver for the conference. Marketers hoping to reach everyone and everybody who doesn’t have a hot pop culture property like Westworld will be out of luck; instead, reach out to specific audiences (such as food, gaming, and healthcare—all of which had separate speaking tracks) and tailor audiences to them.
Strategize For PanelPicker
PanelPicker is SXSW’s official user-generated panel selection event. According to SXSW, they will begin accepting proposals for 2019 sessions in late June of 2018, with the process expiring in mid-July. Nearly 4,400 proposals were received in 2017 for approximately 2000 slots in 2018.
Votes take place in a weighted process where the public has a 30 percent vote, SXSW’s advisory board has 40 percent, and SXSW’s employee has 30 percent.
In the last few years, panels assembled either by high-profile public figures or by large public relations agencies have had a disproportionate share of the final panels selected. Because large PR firms and celebrities can leverage high numbers of voting employees or social media followers, this gives them a possibly unfair advantage in maximizing their PanelPicker odds.
To maximize your odds of success with PanelPicker, make sure your panel has a unique topic, a unique argument for voters, and enough differentiating points to make sure your panel will receive votes from audience members interested in a potential topic.
Fewer Activations, More Small Dinners
The days of SXSW as a public debut for marquee startups like Twitter, Foursquare and Meerkat are long over. While Rainey Street businesses were eagerly rented out for activations by Twitter, Pinterest and others, and downtown Austin bars made plenty of cash by rebranding themselves as SXSW tech or entertainment clients, SXSW’s no longer the place for brands to make a big public splash.
Instead, strategize around having investors, media, analysts and other influencers all in one place. Putting together a group dinner for 15-30 handpicked attendees may well have a better return on income than a splashy public event that gets lost in a sea of endless dance parties.
In the future, Austin will still remain a sea of branded wristbands every March. But the demographics are shifting: As SXSW becomes less startup-centered and more a San Diego ComicCon-style celebration of the intersection between technology, marketing and pop culture, attendees are more likely to be affiliated with larger companies or to come from less entrepreneurial or engineering backgrounds.
According to data collected by Parrot Analytics, which tracks global “demand expressions”—the number of people discussing shows across multiple channels and platforms—Star Trek: Discovery crosses trend lines and makes a strong case for how weekly shows can be used to grow fledgling services such as CBS All Access.
According to Parrot’s The Global Television Demand Report, Discovery drove the platform’s biggest month for signups when it premiered in September. The report also indicates that the show generated over 44.8 million demand expressions in the US and over 3.8 million in Canada, making it the third most popular SVOD show in both countries behind Netflix’s Stranger Things and 13 Reasons Why, respectively. Discovery ranked in the top 10 for the UK, Germany and Japan, but Stranger Things tops almost all the charts in the countries covered by the report.
Netflix set the standard for binge watching when it first decided to release entire seasons of its original shows all at once instead of at a weekly pace, proving that simultaneous releases have a tremendous payoff, with social activity hitting huge spikes during these launches before quickly dropping down to baseline levels within a month or so. Linear shows see lower, but more sustained activity throughout the season and often end up surpassing the baseline of binge-watch shows.
Star Trek: Discovery may constitute a third category, as it has shown that programs can have the best of both worlds: high social activity for the premiere that is sustained or grown over time.
Simultaneous launches mainly benefit subscription video on demand (SVOD) services such as Netflix, whose only goal is to acquire and keep subscribers, with the trade-off being that the platform needs to produce much more content to keep audiences entertained and space out the spikes of activity.
Conversely, weekly shows are ideal for broadcast channels because they rely on advertising and want viewers to return, but premium cable networks such as HBO also rely on linear content to maintain subscribers. Some digital subscription platforms do feature weekly programs, with one of the most notable being Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, but they haven’t seen the same level of global success due to a host of factors including limited distribution due to the fact Hulu is only available in the US and Japan.
In addition to being well-received by critics, Discovery has a great deal going for it, starting with how it’s part of the globally recognizable Star Trek franchise, which has a 50-year legacy that was bolstered by three blockbuster movies in recent years. Additionally, CBS aired the two-part premiere on its regular broadcast network with the third episode immediately available on All Access, where all subsequent episodes were shown exclusively.
Parrot also confirmed that the show hit a major stride in January, when CBS All Access became available as a subscription channel on Amazon Prime Video, noting that boosting demand expressions through increased accessibility isn’t something that’s unique to Discovery.
However, it might be a sign that accessibility could be a significant factor when launching a linear SVOD show, as demonstrated by another All Access exclusive, The Good Fight. The legal and political drama spun off from The Good Wife is CBS’s first scripted show for All Access, and it premiered in February 2017 in much the same way Discovery did. Data provided to AListDaily from social media analytics firm NetBase shows there were almost 50,000 mentions of the show when the first episode aired on both broadcast channels and All Access. That activity saw a major drop when season 2 premiered in March exclusively on digital platforms, generating 7,610 mentions. On the other hand, that doesn’t mean Discovery will see a similar drop when its second season airs since it is based on a considerably larger franchise.
Comparison between Star Trek: Discovery and The Good Fight. Credit: NetBase
Even without the precedent set by Discovery, there is a growing case to be made for offering linear television programs on SVOD platforms. The binge-watching model still appears to be the strongest at generating high global demand, as demonstrated by Netflix’s February launch of Altered Carbon and other high-profile streaming shows, but it should be noted that the extraordinarily high demand expressions for Stranger Things is specific to that program.
Although season 2 saw a significant drop off in the weeks following its premiere, it still managed to generate high demand months after, which may be related to fans continuing to demonstrate enthusiasm and support on social media. According to Parrot’s findings, other recent Netflix releases, including Altered Carbon, Dark, Sense8 and The Crown, didn’t come close to matching the global peak demand expressions the second season of Stranger Things saw.
But don’t discount linear programming because they might see delayed spikes in demand as The Handmaid’s Tale did. Hulu launched the first three episodes of the dystopian drama on the same day, with subsequent ones releasing weekly, but peak demand for the show occurred months after the season finale aired when it won multiple Emmy Awards. Parrot explained this kind of delayed demand might speak more to a show’s global popularity than immediate spikes do, as some shows need time to be discovered and develop long-running appeal—a comment that also happens to describe the Star Trek franchise’s rise to popularity.
SVOD platforms are also experimenting with different release models to maximize their potential. For example, Amazon Prime Video split the first season of The Tick into two parts, with six episodes releasing simultaneously in August and the final six coming out in February, in an effort to bring back a sense of episodic anticipation. The strategy seems to have worked, as confirmed by Parrot Analytics. The company told AListDaily that the split release resulted in a near-identical peak demand between the initial launch and the mid-season premiere, averaging around 7 million daily demand expressions. However, audience anticipation leading up the mid-season premiere is shallower than the initial launch, and it is spread out over more weeks before hitting peak demand, meaning there was strong buildup on social media leading up to the second half of the season.
Peak demand expressions for The Tick, Marvel’s Inhumans, Marvel’s Runaways and Jessica Jones. Credit: Parrot Analytics
In January, Amazon revealed The Tick was one of its top five most popular shows, with The Grand Tour remaining at #1, and the series was renewed for a second season. Even so, it faces stiff competition from Marvel superhero-themed shows across multiple platforms. Parrot added that Marvel’s Inhumans, which began airing on ABC in September, generated three times the peak demand expressions of The Tick. That was beaten slightly by Hulu’s original weekly show Marvel’s Runaways when it debuted in November. But Netflix’s Jessica Jones is poised to surpass them all, having matched the peak demand expressions for both shows during the lead up to its second season premiere on March 8. Its demand is likely to shoot up much further over the subsequent week.
Still, it’s a close race between the benefits of binge-watch shows and linear ones. In 2017, one of the most talked-about shows on social media was Game of Thrones, according to Brandwatch. The fantasy-themed show was in its seventh season, and weekly episodes aired simultaneously across HBO’s broadcast cable channel, website and apps. A later report published by data science and media technology company 4C Insights showed that activity for season 2 of Stranger Things quickly rose to become a close second before tapering off almost as fast. Game of Thrones won’t be returning until 2019, giving shows such as Stranger Things ample time to pull ahead and perhaps claim the social media throne.
Facebook made its Instant Games and Ads API available to all developers beginning Wednesday, making it possible to develop, launch and promote HTML5 games across Facebook Messenger and News Feeds.
The timing of this announcement was planned around the Game Developers Conference (GDC), which begins next week. Facebook will host its annual Developers Day March 19 at the conference in an attempt to attract more developers—and by extension, ad revenue—to Instant Games now that it’s open to the public.
The Instant Games platform supports turn-based gameplay, monetization and livestreaming capabilities. Facebook recently rolled out ads-based monetization to all beta-partner developers, and it will be open to everyone starting on Wednesday in addition to the Ads API.
Developers can now cross-promote new games or game updates to its existing player base across the Instant Games platform. Developers can also create deep links to directly send players to their game outside of Facebook and Messenger channels.
Ad campaigns will become available “soon,” according to Facebook, making units that take players directly from clicking on an ad to playing the game.
In-app purchases were announced in October and will continue to be tested, according to the company.
Instant Games launched in closed beta in 2016 with 17 games and now hosts almost 200, including a Messenger version of Tetris. Other retro games were developed for the platform, including Space Invaders, Pac-Man and Galaga, using nostalgia to engage players.
Basketball FRVR, one of the early titles on Instant Games, has been played more than 500 million times.
Between esports partnerships and the addition of livestreaming, Facebook is on a quest to become the top gaming platform. The company reported that across web and mobile, an average of 800 million people play Facebook-connected games every month.
Beginning Thursday, Twitch Prime subscribers will have access to five free video games per month through Free Games With Prime, a new program that offers Twitch Prime members access to free games, in addition to regular perks such as ad-free viewing and in-game exclusives. The service is positioned to compete with Xbox Live Gold and PlayStation Plus.
According to Twitch, Free Games With Prime is a response to community support for the Twitch Prime Indie Amplifier program that kicked off last month. The community event is an attempt to support indie titles on Twitch’s popular streaming platform, which is usually dominated by AAA games like League of Legends and Hearthstone.
Twitch Prime members were invited to vote for one of eight independent titles through March 11. The winning game will be announced on March 15, and will then be given to Prime members for free. Twitch has now extended that gift to all eight titles over the next few months.
Twitch has just over 15 million daily active users, so it has a ways to go before outshining Xbox Live’s 59 million active users or PlayStation Plus’ roughly 27 million subscribers. Twitch declined to share its Prime membership figures with AListDaily, butTwitch Prime memberships are automatically granted to Amazon’s 90 million US Prime members, which includes one free subscription to any Twitch channel each month and discounts on new release box games on Amazon during the pre-order period or first two weeks following launch.
Despite its late start to the monthly game subscription industry, Twitch taps directly into the in-demand industry of game video content—worth an estimated $3.2 billion in 2017.
Free Games With Prime titles for March include Superhot, Shadow Tactics, Tales from Candlekeep, Oxenfree and Mr. Shifty.
As SXSW coincided with the 100-day countdown to the 2018 World Cup, Fox Sports saw an opportunity to kick off an experiential marketing strategy. The network built a studio activation designed to further test its content strategy before leaving for the games in Moscow this summer.
The network’s marketing goal for the World Cup is to better reach general sports fans through its programming—especially since the United States did not qualify for the competition this year. The network attempted this by raising awareness and creating excitement among fans with the Fox Sports House, a four-day activation that celebrated the lifestyle elements of soccer through livestreamed shows, film debuts, panel discussions and art.
“Having TV rights to the World Cup is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so we had to do justice by properly marketing it, and SXSW was a great place to do that,” Lee Blevins, brand director of consumer marketing for Fox Sports, told AListDaily. “We have tremendous reach across all of our platforms and screens to promote the event, but we wanted to have a physical manifestation that created a lifestyle to market a cosmopolitan consumer group.”
Fox Sports’ content strategy for the World Cup consists of going beyond just linear TV by modifying unique opportunities on social platforms. So earlier this year, the network partnered with Twitter and Snapchat with a deal designed to amplify its live-event programming among digital natives.
At SXSW, the network produced four 30-minute livestream shows on Twitter so that it could further test and refine seamless viewing experiences and better learn what kind of content is resonating on each channel. The live Twitter shows and video clips included advertising packages that were also available for sponsors.
“It’s critical to have distribution partners to make our content accessible and for us to better reach our marketing goals,” said Blevins. “We want to tell stories the right way, but we also need reach different audiences.”
ABC is at SXSW promoting the return of hit show Roseanne with a pop-up eatery tapping into viewer nostalgia. The activation recreates several of the show’s locations, including the Lanford Lunch Box, which the Roseanne Conner and family opened during the series, as well as the Conners’ living room, kitchen and garage.
The food and beverage menu on the Lanford Lunch Box activation consisted of popular eats from the show menu, like loose meat sandwiches, pie, coffee and Canoga root beer. The network’s marketing team also threw in customized sofa pedicabs—replete with miniature afghans blasting both the show’s theme song and Roseanne’s distinct laugh around downtown Austin—and a street team passing out branded koozies.
Fans seeking some star power were also able to rub shoulders with the show’s cast and play Roseanne trivia with Lecy Goranson, Michael Fishman and Emma Kenney.
ABC’s marketing at SXSW is an extension of the show’s overall strategy as it preps to hit airwaves again later this month. Last week, a subway car in New York City was remade to look like the family’s living room, with portraits on the walls and seats designed as the family’s couch. The exterior was also wrapped with imagery signaling the return of the show.
Pop-up restaurants are nothing new at SXSW. Showtime also brought “Harold’s Chicken Shack” as an ode to the upcoming show this year, and last year, Los Pollos Hermanos built a restaurant from the ground up in Austin to promote season three of Better Call Saul. Shows like Saved by the Bell (The Max) and films such as Coming To America (McDowell’s) have also tapped into fans’ food appreciation and debuted similarly-styled pop-up restaurants.
Sometimes our daily lives on social media may seem more glamorous than they really are, and the marketing team at Bravo TV understands that.
To promote the second season of Imposters, the TV network took over a parking lot in downtown Austin this weekend with an activation called “InstaCON.” The experience serves the premise and theme of the show and is designed to accomplish what it’s set out to do—get people posting on social media and help the network promote the premiere of season two on April 5.
The activation was made to tie into the theme of the show’s main character in Maddie (Lavi), a persona-shifting con artist, and the “Bumblers,” a trio of her recent, heart-broken victims.
“The activation is designed to offer our audience an engaging live experience and unique content they’ll want to share,” Maria Laino Deluca, Bravo’s SVP of consumer and trade marketing, told AListDaily. “InstaCON was developed with the Bravo fan in mind, but the experience is eye-catching and escapist, appealing to a broad audience.”
Elaborate sets were designed to give attendees a way to make their social followers believe they are on private jets, yachts, or even staying in an ice hotel.
Bravo also added small touches within each set from the show, like the “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen” shot ski.
Guests who chose to revel in the duplicity received two photos. The first was a luxurious close-up, cropped intentionally to look as though the photo is real. The second shot was a wider frame that exposed the con.
By posting the InstaCon reveal photos under the hashtag #ImpostersSweepstakes, participants could have the chance to win a real luxury vacation experience of their choice, but as of press time, not much traction could be seen on social. On Instagram, over 140 posts had been shared within the first day and just two on Twitter.
Starz stepped into the experiential marketing scene at SXSW this year with a different strategy than it has in the past. Instead of building on an already established property like the network did for American Gods last year, the premium cable channel set its sights on creating buzz for two new shows directed to both a diverse and female audience.
To introduce Vida and Sweetbitter to culturally savvy females at SXSW, the network took over Rainey Street in Austin with the Starz Sensory House. The space is designed to introduce each show tonally by igniting the five senses and leaving attendees inspired to tune into the premiere of each series in May.
Starz leaned into the unique environments of each show and partnered with mostly local female vendors, which included an onsite candy, wine, perfume and nail bar as well as a T-shirt and tote printing station.
Tiffany Gabrus, executive director of originals marketing for Starz, told AListDaily that the network is looking to skew away from its primarily old and male audience by greenlighting shows that serve females and women of color. Such is the case of Vida, which is for Latinas.
“There is so much competition right now and programming is saturated, but it’s important for us to be at events like SXSW,” said Gabrus. “When we go to market with these shows, we believe it’s going to be unique because it’s for an underserved audience. It a big part of our marketing strategy.”
The scheduling of the two shows also coincides with the Times Up and Me Too movement, but Gabrus said that was more of a coincidence. She did, however, anticipate that Starz should benefit of the timing because that demographic is looking for programming that represents them better.
“It will hopefully only help and not hurt,” she said, adding that Starz has enjoyed similar success in the past with Power, a show with a predominantly African-American cast.
Gabrus said since the network is trying to seize a new audience, they are also mixing their marketing strategy by testing and purchasing new ad channels.
“Whether it’s TV or out of home, we’re buying things that we haven’t bought before to better reach females and women of color,” she said.
In addition to drawing attention to the shows, SXSW served as a spot for Starz to immediately build the social media following for each series. Both are still currently in its social infancy, but according to the preliminary report from SXSW, Gabrus said the fan engagement has been “fantastic.”
“There is so much competition right now and programming is saturated, but it’s important for us to be at events like SXSW,” said Gabrus. “When we go to market with these shows, we believe it’s going to be unique because it’s for an underserved audience. It a big part of our marketing strategy.”
