Fostering Positive Change through Partnership

Lessons Learned in Listening & Engagement for Integrated Brand Marketing Practices

Success in social media objectives can take place when a brand obtains authenticity and authority with an otherwise inaccessible niche audience by enabling users, members, and communities to excel in endeavors that they believe in and love.

In her keynote address to OMMA Social San Francisco 2009, Angela Courtin (SVP Marketing, Entertainment & Content, MySpace) explains how multiplatform and multichannel joint venture programs can energize users needs and create positive changes when constructively aligned with integrated brand marketing.  She illustrates two such campaigns:

• MySpace partnered with the Wall Street Journal and the World Economic Forum to select (using a contest inside of a two-week timeframe) and bring to Davos a blogger (Rebecca McQuigg of Los Angeles) respected by the users in all three communities, and to communicate with all three communities from Davos in real-time (or something very close to it).  The MySpace contest applicants were instructed to submit a video to support their ascendency to the role by answering the judging panel's questions.  The YouTube community was represented by Pablo Camacho of Bogotá, Colombia.  Not only did the joint membership of these communities contribute to the discussions in Davos, but they felt represented and heard in ways that most of us did not.

• MySpace participated in the design, development, and execution of a partnership with the Nature Conservancy and Chevrolet, through a widget campaign, to plant 225,000 trees.  This took place because the widget campaign was able to quickly reach a large number of committed users who deeply cared about the project objectives enough to sufficiently engage with the associated Chevy brand imaging and re-positioning elements.  In the process, Chevy was able to make a more than adequate number of impressions about their "greenness" to potential customers.
  

As a creator, producer, director, or supporter of social media, each of us hears many experts speak about the importance of forming partnerships such as these in the quest to accomplish important goals.  We should all appreciate the examples which Ms. Courtin has put forward, and be inspired to strike the right deals with the right partners for the campaigns that matter in the users in our social communities.