70% of global social media work down to small agencies

According to the coordinators of the first international social media marketing awards, The Bees, submissions are indicating smaller agencies are most influential in the burgeoning discipline.

The awards have attracted submissions from companies worldwide, providing a barometer for the increasing use of social media campaigns in business and communication.

Significantly, although 63% of entries for the awards come from large brands, the organisers say 70% of entries come from specialised agencies; adding that small fast growing agencies are making social media marketing their focus and as a result are obtaining key brand accounts.

The Bees Awards will take place in San Francisco on 9th November. The deadline for entries is 1st October 2010.

To share expertise with other professionals in the industry, some companies have allowed their entries to be presented as case studies. This one from SANKO Partners Inc./777 interactive, based in Tokyo presents a case study of a campaign which resulted in a great return on investment for a well known Japanese manga character.

Social media case study :

Client: Lupin Steal Japan Project

Agency: SANKO Partners Inc. / 777interactive (Tokyo, Japan)

Company Profile

Established in 2003, 777 Interactive is an advertising agency specialising in the field of interactive media. Based in Tokyo, the company has worked on client accounts for a number of well known brands including Sony, Adidas and Konica Minolta.

Challenge:

Japanese manga character, Lupin III – considered the world’s greatest thief, was originally created almost 40 years ago. The client wanted to create buzz around the character in order to renew interest and increase recognition, as well as achieving sales targets for Lupin III products.

The Solution

The agency proposed a crime design and linked PR strategy, facilitating the buzz through guerrilla advertising on the street by getting fans in existing Japanese animation social networks involved.

Phase 1: A website would ask the fan base what to steal in Japan.

Phase 2: Lupin III executed the steals (A famous statue, a popular mascot doll, all products in a store, websites, a billboard of Sapporo building, and more).

Every steal was announced in advance on late night TV commercials, electronic billboards and reported on social media platforms: YouTube, Mixi, Twitter, Flickr.

The events reported by news media would then spread via regular blogs with campaign content spreading through use of social media platforms, creating a viral effect across networks.

The Results

Despite a tiny budget, the campaign created massive information exposure on news channels resulting in a viral phenomenon that achieved:

Over 40 reports on news media and Yahoo! News.

A total of over 3 million official site page views by 700,000 unique users.

Over 5,000 downloads of official blog parts

Over 800 write-ups on regular blogs

Over 2,000 comments on SNSs

Over 70,000 views of related videos on YouTube.

TV show rates increased from 12% to 17,6%

Product sales reached quota

Source: The Bees Awards