Seen in Contagious Magazine
Skype’s campaign for its latest mobile services makes
extensive use of social media by road-testing the service via the
‘longest human product demo in perpetual motion’. The measurement
magicians at Ryan*Macmillan ran the campaign through their KUDOS social media planning framework to see how it measured up as a piece of marketing activity.
www.rmmlondon.com/archive/kudos-a-planning-and-evaluation-framework-for-social-media-marketing/
The ‘KUDOS’ acronym is a useful way of judging the efficacy of any given social media activity, including the sorts of activities we are beginning to see in the world of politics. ‘KUDOS’ states that a social media activity should involve a brand dispersing some form of Knowledge (this could be anything from share prices to a joke, from a book review to weather reports) which its audience finds Useful and/or Desirable in so far as it helps the audience achieve certain aims. Critically, this Useful and/or Desirable Knowledge should also be Open (in its attribution and in the audience’s ability to access and make use of it) and Shareable between the brand’s audience and their own social networks. The more KUDOS a brand’s social media activities demonstrate, the bigger the impact those activities will have.
Skype has achieved huge success as a free internet calls service, expanding its user base to over 300 million in 28 languages without the use of any traditional advertising. Late last year, the brand partnered with the mobile network, 3, to offer free calls and chat with other Skype users via a mobile handset. This offering was then extended to major handset manufacturers and Sony’s PSP. This saw the launch of Skype’s first major piece of marketing; the ‘Skype Nomad’ (http://share.skype.com/sites/nomad
26 year-old Australian copywriter Rebecca, armed with the brand’s mobile technology, embarking on a 33-day non-stop circumnavigation of the globe. The Nomad must remain in constant motion the whole time, even sleeping in transit. Everywhere she goes the Nomad is using the tools Skype has given her, including no less than four phones, to report on her progress across several social media platforms.
Jason Goodman, managing director and founding partner at Albion, London, the agency behind the campaign, explains: ‘The Skype Nomad is the most interactive piece of work we’ve done this year. We have a live, mobile product demonstration in Rebecca, writing and capturing fantastic content that people are loving on her blog. And Flickr, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and Dopplr are all playing their part in engaging her community.’
So how are they doing from a KUDOS standpoint? While the campaign makes great use of social media platforms, there could be more Knowledge disseminated about Skype’s products and how to use them. It certainly demonstrates how useful the Skype application is in terms of staying connected on the move – it just doesn’t explain how, making it less Useful in terms of understanding either the features or benefits of the service. It’s too early to say how Desirable the activity has been; the journey began at Heathrow airport on 5th May and at the time of writing the Nomad had 155 members of her Facebook Group (www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=15845330909) and 4,486 views of her video on YouTube (www.youtube.com/user/nomadskype08).
By doing this live and unfiltered Skype is being very Open; By publishing this content in real-time on interactive platforms, the brand exposes itself to public commentary and the risk of technical failure but thereby presents itself as confident and transparent. And finally they are Sharing big time – making extensive use of social media platforms with 353 images on Flickr (www.flickr.com/photos/skypenomad/), regular feeds to locations such as Twitter (http://twitter.com/skype_nomad) and regular use of a blog that is receiving a growing number of comments to each post. (http://share.skype.com/sites/nomad/)
Skype has combined mobile and social media with an accessible, human angle to strengthen its leadership of the internet phone industry and the effort, so far, looks worthwhile. It’s early days so we’ve given them an interim KUDOS score of 33 (out of 50) pending the unfolding of the campaign.
See the full KUDOS evaluation on the Ryan*MacMillan blog: www.rmmlondon.com/archive/get-skype-nomadder-where/
And check out the forthcoming issue of Contagious for Ryan*MacMillan’s take on how KUDOS is infiltrating the political front lines.
