A handful of Thismoment team members were lucky enough to attend Most Contagious 2014 in New York and London last week. What’s Most Contagious? In the words of the event’s website, it is a “unique, hybrid event dedicated to dissecting the trends, technologies and creative thinking that are transforming how consumers behave and the way brands and businesses operate and communicate.”

The website further explains, “[Most Contagious] celebrates and showcases the biggest innovations, the most disruptive startups, the most impactful marketing, dissecting and decoding the impact these will have on the immediate future for brands and advertising.”

Ambitious. Audacious even. Based on an informal survey of our team, we’d say that Most Contagious measured up pretty well.

From Tower Infinity visioneers GDS Architects to the developers behind the dating app Tinder, the event highlighted a colorful and compelling set of individuals and companies making waves in their respective arenas.

The range of topics and takeaways was as diverse as the companies listed above. It’s always tricky distilling a day of thoughtful discussion into blog-friendly bullet points. And while this “shortlist” certainly won’t capture the energy of Most Contagious, here are some ideas to consider:

1. Storytelling isn’t easy. Brands are seeking out and evolving their voices more than ever. Differentiating is more difficult. New non-linear, real-time, cross-platform storytelling structures are emerging in response to technological and behavioral seachanges. For example, the mobile generation switches between devices and platforms 27 times per hour (Time Inc. study).

2. Good causes are good. Consumers are acquiring a greater sense of social responsibility. According to a Cone Communications report, 91% of people are likely to switch brands if another of similar price and quality supports a good cause.

3. Feed the eyes. The rise of social visual culture continues unabated. Video is king, and “the standard for brands to provide competitive, high quality snippets of entertainment…is higher than ever.”

4. Get personal. Context is truly becoming everything. Accenture reports that 61% of millennial shoppers would trade privacy for personalized offers from retailers.

5. The crowd is the key. Crowdsourcing is now a real, strategic lever for businesses. Gartner predicts that by 2015, CPG companies using crowdsourcing in marketing campaigns or new product development will boost revenue by 1% vs. competitors that don’t embrace crowdsourcing.

For a deeper dive into Most Contagious, we encourage you to peruse the complete 2013 report packed with great graphics and data here.

Kudos to Contagious, and their partner sponsors FleishmanHillard and The Economist, for an incredible event!

The post Catching the Most Contagious Fever: 5 Takeaways from New York & London appeared first on Thismoment Content Marketing Blog.

Growing a small business is tough enough without the specter of a difficult economy looming overhead. So, in response to seeing many small businesses struggling in late 2012, Intuit set out to give $5,000 grants to 15 lucky proprietors who created multimedia content for the “Love Our Local Business” campaign.

Love Our Local Business was an overwhelming success, yielding thousands of entries and hundreds of votes per entry. The turnout prompted Intuit to double down and grant an additional 15 “wishes” to customers. How did they achieve such triumphant results?

Download the Intuit “Love Our Local Business” Case Study here.

This video explains the campaign (continue reading below for more success factors):

• Targeted design. Intuit designed the campaign to target their core customer base. Based on their research, they knew that the prize (a $5,000 grant) was perfectly suited to small businesses in need of a cash infusion. And, the prize was offered against the backdrop of challenging economic environment, which added extra incentive for business owners to engage.

• Collaborative promotion. Intuit reached out to customers on Facebook – which many small businesses use as a substitute for a company website. They also enlisted local chambers of commerce and business associations to help spread the word about Love Our Local Business. The key: promoting through channels that resonated with their audience.

• Viral reach. The businesses themselves helped promote the campaign. Winners were chosen based on votes from the general public, which motivated small businesses to spread the word within their communities. This generated tons of good karma for the small businesses and awareness for the Intuit brand.

• Easy entry. The barrier to entry was initially as low as possible. The only requirement to enter the first phase of the contest was to submit a short description of how the business would use $5,000. They also offered the option for users to differentiate their written entry by uploading a photo of themselves or their business through any device (desktop, mobile and tablet). Subsequent phases of the contest required photo and video submissions. The key learning here is to make it as easy as possible for audiences to participate in your campaign, but also find ways they can easily personalize and be creative with their entry.

• Make it personal. The campaign didn’t just change a business’ prospects, it changed peoples’ lives. Small business owners don’t just invest time and money into their ventures, they put their heart and soul into what is in many cases their life’s work. Intuit tapped into this personal connection by aiming to change not only businesses’ bottom lines, but to also positively affect loves.

There were many factors that contributed to this campaign’s success, but it all started with Intuit’s vision to help the little guy.

“The ‘Love Our Local Business’ campaign has really had a significant impact on our business,” said Betsy Eshoei, Senior Marketing Manager at Intuit. “It has allowed Intuit to give back to the small businesses that have always been so important to us—while also engaging the local communities that support them. We’ve received a lot of very appreciative feedback, and importantly, the results for our business have just been phenomenal.”

Gain more insights into how Intuit and Thismoment worked together on this user-generated content campaign — and how you can boost your brand with similar programs — in the above video and case study linked below.

Download the Intuit “Love Our Local Business” Case Study here.

The post How Intuit Made Dreams Come True By Turning Customers Into Content Creators appeared first on Thismoment Content Marketing Blog.

Gamers have rallied to Rockstar Games’ “Grand Theft Auto V.” Despite fans’ enthusiasm for pillaging, mayhem-making and other misdeeds in GTA’s virtual world, they happily poured over $1 billion dollars into publisher Take Two’s coffers in just the first 3 days of the game’s release.

The notorious franchise’s long and colorful history, as well as a Metacritic score of 97 out of 100, helped to stoke demand. An estimated marketing spend of $150 million didn’t hurt.

With a budget the size of Los Santos, it stands to reason that Rockstar would throw a few greenbacks at online promotion. Anticipating a state-of-the-art digital campaign, I decided to take a quick tour of Rockstar’s online channels. A handful of things jumped out:

1. Copious content. From videos to downloadable desktop wallpapers and music preview streams, the GTA V website is bursting with glossy graphics and rich content. Plenty to keep the hardcore happy. The commerce component is low-key with no prominent calls to action. A discrete “Order” link sits on the edge of the main navigation. It appears Rockstar made a decision to serve fans instead of selling to them. Works for me, but they may have overdone not overdoing it.
2. Major mobile. Rockstar knows that their audience lives on smartphones and tablets, so they’ve delivered a responsive, quality mobile website experience. The navigation is clean and provides easy access to bite-sized, mobile user-friendly media. Sounds obvious, but most miss it.
3. Video is vital. Rockstar’s investment in video assets is paying off. Clocking in at a hefty ~5 minutes, GTA V’s “Official Gameplay Video” has notched nearly 30 million views. In fact, every GTA V clip is driving significant engagement. That said, Rockstar’s YouTube channel is surprisingly ho hum. For whatever reason, Rockstar opted for a generic YouTube channel instead of shaving off a sliver of their budget to create a more exciting brand experience like Ubisoft’s YouTube hub. The stock YouTube look is out of character and a missed opportunity.
4. Sort of social. On the one hand, GTA V is everywhere you’d expect. On the other hand, the programming and presence is oddly inconsistent. Take the world’s largest social network: with 4.5 million fans, the official GTA V Facebook page is in business. Or is it? We counted an introverted 8 posts over the last 11 days since release. You might be thinking that all of the action is over on the parent Rockstar page, right? Wrong. Pretty much the same rhythm. Does GTA have a split personality? At a minimum, the brand voice reads choppy. Social integration with the brand site is also marginal; the site’s bounty of content should be easily shareable.
5. Credit for clever. Apparently, GTA is now so big that it needs its own social networking site. Ahead of GTA V’s debut, Rockstar launched Lifeinvader.com, a parody network featuring characters and brands from the new title. While tough to gauge the site’s success, Rockstar gets a nod for creativity.

The post 5 Grand Theft Auto V Digital Marketing Hits and Misses appeared first on Thismoment Content Marketing Blog.

This summer Intuit Small Business launched its most ambitious interactive campaign ever, “Small Business Big Game” (powered by Thismoment).

It’s big. How big? Try Super big. As in any small business can enter, and the winner gets an all expenses paid 30-second spot in version 48 of pro football’s crown jewel (yes, Legal reviewed this post). All told the program includes more than $25 million in rewards and offers for small businesses.

Intuit and the Small Business team have developed quite a reputation for their creative–and effective–online marketing. You may recall the popular “Love Our Local Business” contest they sponsored earlier this year.

If that campaign was a feather in their cap, then “Small Business Big Game” will be the whole aviary.
Why are we so confident? We’ve had the opportunity to enable each of the Intuit Small Business team’s last two user-generated content (UGC) campaigns with our digital marketing system. The team’s first foray into the UGC campaign format inspired an enthusiastic response. Intuit proved the value of giving their customers a voice.

What was even more impressive was the team’s next effort. By applying key learnings from the first campaign, they achieved a nearly 3X boost in entries with less promotional ad spend. The biggest factor was a streamlined entry submission flow. By focusing on the user experience and reducing the number of steps to submission, the team drove a significantly higher conversion rate.

They also cultivated the email contacts they collected in the first campaign, maintaining and building on those relationships.

Look for a more detailed analysis of Intuit’s online innovation in a future case study. In the meantime, we encourage brand marketers to go to school on Intuit’s real-time execution of “Small Business Big Game.” With a big game ad at stake and the Intuit team’s track record, count on engagement that just might make the big game look small.

The post Intuit Small Business Goes Big appeared first on Thismoment Content Marketing Blog.