Learn about how Sprout has helped our clients grow.
Sprout Helps Intel Drive Sales on Facebook
Back in October, Intel challenged Sprout to create a new Facebook fan page and application, with the goal of building a significant Intel community on Facebook. The result was a fan page with an embedded Engage App that empowered the community to lower the price on three laptops in advance of Cyber Monday. In less than two weeks, Intel reached hundreds of thousands of people and acquired over 24,000 new fans.
The Sprout-DoubleClick Integration is a Big Win for ThinkGeek.
In late 2009, Matt Wessel—a Flash Developer and Ad Product Technology Specialist for Geeknet—became a beta tester of the Sprout Engage Ad Platform’s integration with DoubleClick Studio. He ran his first Sprout-built ad (an RSS feed unit) using DoubleClick in December 2009. He was so impressed with Sprout’s ability to bring his ad products to market faster that he’s run several more units since and plans to continue using Sprout as his ad-building solution.
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.
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 Engage Ad Case Study: PEPSI – ThinkGeek / DoubleClick
Sprout and DoubleClick Simplify Ad Building and Ad Serving, Saving Time and Money
Creating rich, engaging Flash ads quickly and cost-effectively is at the top of the priority list for most ad operations teams. But client revision rounds can slow time to market when each change requires more coding, and bringing interactive features into ad units—RSS feeds, polls, or the ability to share ad content on Facebook or Tweet about it on Twitter— can be complicated. In late 2009, Sprout began efforts to integrate their Engage Ad Platform, a web-based visual authoring studio that eliminates the need for Flash coding, with DoubleClick Studio. The goal was to enable advertisers, publishers, and agencies to quickly create Flash ads that could be served and tracked through DoubleClick Studio and DART.
Geeknet Ag rees to Beta Test Sprout’s Engage Ad Platform
An existing DoubleClick customer, Geeknet, understood the challenge of rapid rich ad creation and agreed to beta test Sprout’s solution. Matt Wessel, as Flash Developer and Ad Product Technology Specialist for Geeknet, creates ads for the site, which sells products geared toward technology and gadget lovers.
Sprout’s Platform Eases Pain Point of Flash Ad Creation
“The Sprout social advertising platform was really easy to work with. As a designer I loved the amount of creative control I had over the ad. I wasn’t forced into a template or hindered in any way,” said Matt.
Matt’s first ad included an RSS feed that brought dynamic news content right into the ad. “I was really pleased with how easy it was to bring an RSS feed into the ad,” said Matt. “All I did was drag and drop the component onto the canvas and link it to the correct URL. Working with RSS in Flash is hard but with Sprout it was really simple. In fact, it only took me about 15 minutes to build the ad,” Matt added.
Once the ad was created, Matt was able to share a fully functional demo— rather than a static mockup—with the customer for approval. “One benefit of working with Sprout is that I have a functional mock-up to show customers. If the customer wants something tweaked I can do it right in the Sprout in real time.” Upon receiving approval, Matt used Sprout to auto-generate a DoubleClick Studio-compliant zip file containing a SWF and backup image. He uploaded this zip file to DoubleClick Studio and QA’d it as normal.
Sprout Ad Served Seamless ly via DoubleClick with Above Average Performance
The ad ran in mid-December and boasted an above-average click-through rate of 1%. Geeknet is currently creating a second ad unit using Sprout’s Engage Ad Platform; this time they’ll pull blog posts right into the unit to bring rich, meaningful content to their audience. They plan to keep working with Sprout and DoubleClick as these two companies continue to revolutionize display advertising. Sprout Engage Platform Benefits:
- Quickly create rich, dynamic Flash ads with a web-based drag-and-drop visual authoring studio. No Flash experience necessary.
- Create fully functional mockups to speed client reviews and ad deployment.
- Drag and drop interactive features like Twitter and RSS feeds, polls and video components into your ad units in minutes.
- Easily upload and track ads through DoubleClick Studio.
Sprout Engage Apps Case Study: INTEL – Fan Plan
Intel Reaches Out To Their Community On Facebook
Back in October, Intel challenged Sprout to create a new Facebook fan page and application, with the goal of building a significant Intel community on Facebook. Sprout knew Intel had to deliver immediate value, which worked well with Intel’s concept of linking laptop pricing to fan acquisition. The result: the wildly popular “Fan Plan” campaign, which empowered Intel’s Facebook community to incrementally lower the price on three laptops with every new fan added. It reached hundreds of thousands of people and landed Intel over 24,000 new fans—in just two weeks.
The Challenge
Without a pre-existing community on Facebook to get a campaign rolling, Intel needed an integrated approach that included Facebook ads, a fan page, and an application that drove fan acquisition. Sprout’s role was to turn their concept—empowering fans to lower laptop prices—into an application that fully leveraged the viral power of the Facebook platform. Sprout ensured that visitors converted to fans and shared the Fan Plan with their friends through a combination of incentives and viral hooks.
Integrating an Engage App and Fan Page to Drive Virality
The Engage App that Sprout developed for the new Intel fan page was a powerful nexus of social media technologies, desire, and reward. Every time someone became a fan, the app lowered the price on three popular Intel laptop models. Fans were motivated to tell their friends about the Fan Plan in order to further drop prices. The Engage App enabled them to do so easily by letting them place an interactive experience into their friends’ Facebook Activity Streams. Those friends could then join the Fan Plan and share the experience with other friends right from their Stream. A countdown clock provided a sense of urgency and encouraged users to participate before the Cyber Monday deadline, when they could purchase the laptops at the lowest prices. 
Delivering Value to the Stream
Sprout belongs to the select group of Facebook Preferred Developers partly because of their expertise in implementing campaigns that maximize relevance and in-stream presence in the face of increasing competition and ever more stringent Facebook relevancy algorithms. Sprout does this by dropping highly interactive content that outperforms simple images or video content right into the stream. Sprout made sure the Fan Plan content drove users to the Intel fan page for the latest laptop pricing because overall fan page traffic increases publish-to-stream relevancy. And because interaction rates in the Activity Stream are much higher than interaction rates in the display ads on the periphery of the page, this approach also helped reduce Intel’s reliance on the supporting ad buy.
The Numbers Say It All: 24,000 Fans in Two Weeks
Intel built a solid Facebook community in record time, and ensured the community’s engagement by delivering immediate value. Over 8% of fans shared the Fan Plan with an average of two to five friends, and 16% of Fan Plan application users purchased a laptop, making this campaign a huge success. Mashable agreed, citing the campaign as “a fan-friendly, brand-conscious initiative that not only actively and passively works to generate buzz around the Facebook Page, but also rewards customers for recruiting their friends.”* For their next campaign, Intel can leverage this existing fan base and rely even less on Facebook ads.
