ANNOUNCEMENT:

• Your support for our newsletter is much appreciated. Please forward this email to your co-workers and friends. Help spread the buzz!

• 5 more days before the entry price goes up! Submit Your Work before Friday Feb 11, 2011

• MSLGroup Asia is looking for "Social Media Specialists" in India, China and Japan• Saatchi&Saatchi Los Angeles has over 10 creative positions available• Reply to this email for more information

You Like Our Case Studies?They are only available by email on Mondays.Tell your friends and co-workers by forwarding this email.They can subscribe at: http://www.beesawards.com/bees/subscribe.Thank you for reading!

THIS WEEK 5 MIN CASE STUDY:

Entry:    Clearasil goes socialClient:    ClearasilAgency:    Grape (Russia)Challenge in the Market:Modern teenagers are active, confident, and independent. They love change, but are faithful to the brands they love. It is difficult to earn their trust using TV commercials, at least given, tgiven they watch almost no TV. They are not interested in absorbing the content - they want to create something of their own. How should the Clearasil brand, which used to rely mostly on TV commercials, act in such a situation to maintain their trust?

Campaign Goal:Goal of the campaign "Clearasil goes social" was to get the attention of the youth audience to the product and push up sales. Their target audience: 14-24 years, the core - 16-18 years

Strategy:The agency Grape decided to create a space for communication and creativity, sponsored by Clearasil. They created a page to engage with teens in the most popular social network in Russia - VKontakte.ru (equivalent of Facebook). This page would become the long term social media platform and the base of all brand's communication.

Grape attracted initial VKontakte's users traffic with the help of interactive banner ads, contextual advertising, and integration of the brand's benefits in relevant applications with a large audience. They engaged with users, published interesting content in the page, hold contests - the agency created a communication area where the brand could live in social media. During the summer 2010 most of the content on the page was created by the users themselves.

View VKontake Platform

View Demo Video

Description:The VKontakte's platform includes the group called "A group of those who are not afraid to change and know what they want". Activities within the group included: discussions, sharing photos and videos, news posting, experts' advice, contests etc. Grape also crafted branded Clearasil apps for the users. All brand's activities of 2010 were organized on the base of this platform in VKontakte.

An important component of this group is an application allowing users to create cool profile pictures in Vkontakte.ru. For the campaign, which was focused on promoting Clearasil product line STAYCLEAR, Grape created the app "CLEARBOOTH" allowing users to record changes in their skin while regularly using Clearasil. After a month, users were offered to make a video montage using the pictures taken so far.

Results:

• Over 13 000 pictures uploaded on the page, and more than 120 000 comments• Users posted more than 16,000 messages on the group's wall and about 12,000 in

the discussion area• 1,118,606 profile pictures were created using the app• Over 500,000 users participated in the page and in the app• Impact on sales: Increase of 30% between April 2010 and April 2009

CASE STUDY ANALYSIS

Weekly Experts:

Heather Ann Snodgrass    Strategy Director    

We Are Social (Australia)Jonas Nielsen    Managing Partner    Mindjumpers (Denmark)Meet with our Expert Analysts.

Grape's Clearasil campaign generated impressive results: 500,000 participants on a VKontake page (in Russia only). This might be explained by the fact that the target audience (teens) are heavy social media users. As Jonas says: "The campaign was created on a place where it's natural for the target group to be: VKontakte.ru".

But a sales increase of 30% for an established product like Clearasil tells us that this campaign had something exceptional.

The quality of the copy-writing and the tonality really suited the audience. "A group of those who are not afraid to change and know what they want" was clearly appropriate. In social media, numbers donʼt lie. If the audience doesn't like your content or your tone, they simply don't participate. Leaving a webpage for another one comes quickly. The agency maintained a delicate balance between authenticity, provocation and sensitivity that teens could relate to.

Heather points out the large potential for emotional connection of this target audience:"Managing a page of this magnitude is no small feat; community management can be one of the most labor-intensive jobs in this business, but when you have an audience who is by nature, preoccupied with appearance and social networking, this approach makes a lot of sense."

The agency was keen to create an app that was innovative enough to attack traffic and automatize the content created, relieving the content team for a part of the work. A great way to scale content development is to let the users develop the content themselves. The app ClearBooth made it easy for users to develop content.

The addition of a contest increased the conversion rate. "It is unclear how many people used this app, given that people usually don't feel comfortable sharing bad pictures of themselves." says Jonas. "But the fact that it was presented within a contest increased users' motivation as well."

Taking calculated risks paid off. Seeing that your friends have pimples too is cool and worth commenting on their page. Everybody is uncomfortable with pimples and Clearasil provided a conversation space where people could relate. Having more than 120 000 comments on pictures is brilliant (as long as they are positive on the product efficiency). "Seeing the effects of the product on yourself or on a friend rather than seeing a retouched girl in a TV commercial provides trust and authenticity to a brand."Says Jonas. "There's nothing stronger than a peer recommendation" completesHeather.

Overall, the Clearasil Vkontake page was a great step in the right direction for Clearasil, but the creation of the ClearBooth app made the campaign exceptional and resonated with the audience. Interaction can be the message. Here the creation of this app speaks by itself on the company's confidence for its product efficiency.

Grape has made a great demonstration that social media can be promotional and respect the advertising traditional principle. More than managing relationships and entertaining audiences, social media can also be a marketing activity that aims selling a product.

Liked this analysis?Tell your friends and co-workers, forward this email.They can subscribe at: http://www.beesawards.com/bees/subscribe.We send new case studies every Monday - Only by email!

2011 CALL FOR ENTRY - Submit Your Work

SPONSOR OF THE WEEK

    SocialSambaSocialSamba is scripted social networking - the scalable way for brands, storytellers and celebrities to "friend" their fans and tell them an entertaining story through posts, images and videos. It's the experience of Facebook, with the friends fans love!

SPONSORS

Click to view this email in a browser

If you no longer wish to receive these emails, please reply to this message with "Unsubscribe" in the subject line or simply click on the following link: Unsubscribe

The Bees Awards660 4th Street #287San Francisco, CA 94107USRead the VerticalResponse marketing policy.