We often tell you stories about TV networks using social TV to create conversations around their programming, amplify real-time buzz and create storylines for fans. For many social TV startups, their long-term hope is to tap into brand TV advertising (that is if they’re not acquired). Mike Darne, Capital One’s Senior Director of Social Media & Mobile Marketing gave us an inside look at how the financial institution is leveraging social TV.
Capital One’s major initiatives include one of the biggest sports events of the year, the NCAA’s March Madness. This year, their activations included a Facebook app that allowed you to predict the sweet sixteen. They also partnered with Viggle, which seems to be a brand favorite as of recent. Darne, who’s worked at Sallie Mae and Marriot International previously, discusses scaling social TV and how the Olympics are set to be the next major social TV event.
Lost Remote: How does Capital One approach social TV?
Mike Darne: We are very much in a test and learn phase when it comes to social TV. As marketers, we are trying to understand the ROI of social TV investments – specifically, will the added investment and resources deliver an incremental return on our advertising dollars? But as we seek to show ROI, we also need to consider the ways in which we are measuring success. Should we isolate our thinking to more traditional measures associated with broadcast advertising (e.g. audience, reach, efficiency, etc.) or do we need to broaden our perspective to include measures of engagement? And if we do broaden our perspective, we then need to think about how we value the results.
We are also thinking a lot about whether we will be able to efficiently scale our investments in social TV. Achieving results may, at the end of the day, be a very labor intensive effort as we actively become part of the conversation. So, we are looking to identify major “tent pole” efforts that would benefit from a social TV integration.
LR: What did Capital One do on the social side of March Madness this year?
Darne: As a major sponsor of the NCAA, the men’s basketball tournament becomes a major focal point for the company. This year we developed a Facebook application that encouraged basketball fans to predict the winners of individual games beginning with the Sweet Sixteen. The objective here was to drive engagement and activity on Capital One’s Facebook page with a lightweight competition.
We also ran a “Viggle Live” engagement that provided an interactive experience for Viggle users that “checked” into games beginning with the Sweet Sixteen. The interactive experience within the Viggle application delivered trivia questions, game related questions (e.g. will the guy at the line go 2 for 2) and questions about the Capital One brand. The results we saw through this engagement were impressive. We saw an increased number of check-ins with each round and found that users were hanging in through most of the game – answering +60% of the questions. In addition to the activity-based results, we also saw some meaningful movement in key brand metrics.
LR: You recently, spoke about social TV at the AdAge Social TV conference, what did you present and what other social TV companies/presenters were you most impressed with?
Darne: I was on a panel led by Mark Ghuneim from Trendrr that included marketers from Viggle, Bing and Bravo. During the discussion I touched on the need to find scale in social TV and the importance of activating what I called the “social TV ecosystem.” As I see it, the social TV ecosystem is grounded by the TV – obvious, huh? The additional elements of the ecosystem include dedicated second screen applications (e.g. Viggle and those associated with shows / networks), the back channel (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and search. Marketers need to find ways to efficiently work within this ecosystem in a way that is additive to those consuming content. The notion of creating additive experiences is perhaps the single most important thing for marketers to consider as they enter this space. If we enhance the experience in a way that is also relevant to what they are already doing, the consumer will embrace the message and the brand. If, on the other hand, brands become disruptors, the message and brand will likely be rejected.
The notion of creating additive experiences was reinforced by Kay Madati of Facebook when he challenged those in the audience to return to the basics and “understand what motivates people to do what they do.” If we are able to tap into these basic insights, we will be able to produce experiences that engage audiences and deliver greater returns on our media investments.
LR: Do you work closely with the traditional TV marketers at Capital One?
Darne: Yes, my team is part a of the larger team at Capital One that is responsible for creative and media.
LR: What are some campaigns we should pay attention to on the social TV side in the coming months?
Darne: I’m not so sure that it is campaigns that we should be looking to. Rather, I think the focus will be around big events that deliver large audiences and allow advertisers to take advantage of the scale – season premiers, awards shows, sports, etc. Clearly one of the biggest events this summer will be the Olympics. I’m really looking forward to seeing how the social TV space develops on this massive, international stage.