Learn about how Sprout has helped our clients grow.
Disney and Sprout Partner on an Out of This World Facebook Campaign
In advance of the release of Toy Story 3, in June of 2010, Disney planned to build buzz by releasing a complete digital 3D makeover of Toy Story 1 and 2 in October 2009. Disney came to Sprout for a fun and engaging application that would leverage and grow their base of Facebook fans to spread the word about the new releases. The resulting experience allowed fans to enter the world of Toy Story and share the experience with the friends.
Toyota Rocks MySpace With A Sprout Powered Music Competition That Exceeds Expectations
As one of the inaugural sponsors of MySpace Music, Toyota launched the Rock The Space competition to place their brand on a platform alongside the best unsigned bands on MySpace. To ensure the success of the campaign the submission process had to reflect MySpace’s culture of personalization. Sprout was brought in to create the unique, viral, and rich-media engagement widget that empowered bands to get creative and to produce 9 times as many entries as expected!
Universal Pictures [pdf] used Sprout Engage to drive interest in Fast & Furious 4.
NAMCO BANDAI Games America [pdf] announced the launch of their new game, Afro Samurai, using Sprout Engage.
Music Allies [pdf] uses Sprout Builder as the best way to spread artist and event information. See how they did it for Bonnaroo.
Sprout Engagement Case Study: Disney – You Have Been Chosen
The Backstory
To promote the release of Toy Story 3 in June 2010, Disney re-released Toy Story 1 and 2 with a complete digital 3D makeover in October 2009. Heading into the advertising campaign, Disney had over 250,000 fans on Facebook. They wanted to figure out how to best leverage these fans to help spread the word about the two-week run of the re-released films and to generate buzz for Toy Story 3.
The Challenge
Disney and their agency, Avatar, came to Sprout looking for a unique, engaging application that would wow established Toy Story fans and new audiences alike. Disney and Avatar had several distinct needs for the Facebook application: they wanted it to incorporate part of the film’s story line, showcase the trailer for Toy Story 3, drive ticket sales, and include a sweepstakes for tickets to the premiere of Toy Story 3. They also wanted to enable virality across the Facebook network.
Sprout’s Solution
The “You Have Been Chosen” Facebook engagement application recreates a scene from the first Toy Story movie in which an alien is grabbed with an arcade game-style mechanical arm. In the Sprout-powered application, the mechanical arm pulls up a unique alien that the users can then gift to themselves or a friend. Each time users gift an alien, they are entered into the sweepstakes. The more aliens they gift, the better their chance at scoring a trip to the Toy Story 3 premiere. They can also share the campaign with their Facebook friends, who can then experience the application from right within their own News Feeds. Each of these friends gets to enter the sweepstakes too—and help Disney drive the virality of the campaign in the process.
The Results
“You Have Been Chosen” is still live on Facebook, but in the first two months alone more than a third of the 100,000+ people who visited the application published an alien to their stream or to a friend’s stream! In fact, the experience was so much fun that nearly half of those that participated came back later to share even more aliens. With an average engagement time of over 1.5 minutes, and thousands of Toy Story 3 trailer views, the campaign was a big hit for Disney.
The Road Ahead
In just the first couple months of this campaign, Disney’s fan count jumped by more than 35,000 fans, expanding Disney’s viral-ready fan base for the next Sprout-powered Toy Story 3 application.
Sprout Engagement Case Study: Toyota / MySpace – Rock The Space
About The Toyota / MySpace Partnership
In the spring of 2009, Toyota and MySpace formed a partnership and launched the Rock The Space music competition, which invited bands to enter a digital demo-tape contest for a chance to win a MySpace Music recording contract, prizes and promotion on MySpace’s home page.
The Challenge
Saatchi & Saatchi LA, Toyota’s agency of record, approached Sprout to help create a campaign that would reinvigorate the MySpace Music community, which had become inactive. To accompany the objective the creative team proposed the concept of bringing demo-tapes into the digital domain.
Our Work
Sprout’s role in the campaign was to enable the platform for significant viral engagement, campaign reporting, a moderation back-end for the MySpace team, and the ability to push live updates across embedded widgets. For the competition, the Sprout platform allowed bands to create fully customized skins for their demo-tape entries, creating a fun and interactive experience which deepened MySpace community engagement. The resulting creation was a widget, so bands could share their demo-tape with fans and ask then to display it on the profile pages and share it with friends.
The Results
Saatchi & Saatchi anticipated 1,200 entries, but that goal was surpassed on the first couple hours of the campaign! Over the three week entry period, MySpace received more than 19,000 entries. In addition, more than 40% of the bands who arrived on the landing page submitted a demo-tape to the contest, proving that a fun user experience combined with great incentives leads to greater conversions. The Rock The Space campaign drove over:
+ 66,000 widget installs + 40 million widget views
+ 40,000 campaign votes + 2,300 comments
Ongoing Engagement
Rock The Space is not just a campaign for Toyota – it’s the start of an ongoing engagement with music fans. Toyota now has 14,000 new friends and people are spending more than 7 minutes on their community page, more than three times the average on MySpace. Toyota’s purchase of 100 million impressions, to get the campaign rolling, has led to over 40 million ongoing organic impressions with fans who now understand just how Toyota rocks.
Sprout Engagement Case Study: PEPSI – Throwback Your Look
About The Campaign
In the Spring of 2009, Pepsi launched their Refresh Everything campaign, which included the release of the Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback versions of their popular sodas. Each reintroduced the original all-natural sweeteners used in the 60’s and 70’s and served as the basis for a retro concept that Pepsi wanted to extend through a fully integrated online campaign.
The Challenge
Weber Shandwick, Pepsi’s agency, came to Sprout with a campaign website that included throwback wallpapers and a 60’s and 70’s jive-talk guide. However, they were missing a truly engaging experience that would drive viral distribution through social networks. Frank Cooper, VP of portfolio brands, Pepsi-Cola North America Beverages, expressed our goal best. He said “bring some (people) down memory lane, and for those too young to remember, it will be a chance to experience a new twist on their favorite brands.”
Our Work
Sprout tapped into the vibe of the project by creating a Facebook application that allowed users to throwback their look by importing a portrait of themselves, or taking one with their web cam, and placing it into a customizable retro template. The application was fun and engaging, placing Pepsi’s products within an entertainment experience. Once the users’ creation was complete, they could share it with friends on Facebook. And because Sprout is focused on reaching friends wherever they are, the application also supported sharing on MySpace.
The Results
The overall Refresh Everything campaign was so successful for Pepsi that they are relaunching in December! In the interim Pepsi’s campaign Facebook fan page is celebrating “all the Throwback tweets, Facebook fan pages, videos, blog posts, pics & pleas”. The Throwback Your Look application was a big part of what drove this community response:
+ Over 36% of users that launched the application published a Throwback Your Look widget..
+ Of the published widgets a full third were shared through their activity stream and news feed, and through their friends’ news feeds.
+ Average time in the application was over 1:40.
Ongoing Engagement
As with all Sprout engagement campaigns, the goal is to foster ongoing conversations. The Throwback Your Look Facebook applications not only drove significant participation and sharing, but led to the acquisition of new fans on Facebook whom Pepsi can continue to communicate with moving forward.
