Social media microsite
Having just come back from a delightful holiday in NYC, I was very happy to see Flight of the Conchords is hugely popular in NY. Brett and Jermaine made the special collectors cover of TimeOut New York, and the second series was being advertisesd on the subway.
Part of building audience engagement with the series, the Conchords have launched a microsite and social media strategy with a competition which involves having to memorise the lyrics to a new song and then upload a user generated lipsynced version to their own YouTube channel. The prize? The best versions will be edited together and aired on the show
The Conchords have made it really easy to spread the word about the competition, with relevant pages at MySpace, and Facebook, the YouTube channel itself, link to post to social bookmarking sites Digg, and Delicious, and a way to Twitter about the site. You can even email it to a friend.
Given that the show already has a cult following, this strategy is designed to get word out into a much wider audience. It has all the hallmarks of being a successful social media campaign, having a limited time to enter the “competition” means there is an urgency to the social networking too, as it will be all over by January 25th.
It works is on a number of levels:
- alignment to the brand via creativity and content. Mel, the Conchords crazed fan does the introduction to the competition and is featured in the creative on the microsite
- simplicity of the competition – download lyrics and music, upload video to YouTube
- engage at the level you want (from performing in the video to just telling people you’re a fan)
- rating system for the content produced, from most viewed to highest rated
- the coordinated use of major social networks to help spread the word.
