Comcast Partners With Twitter-Owned Niche and 19 Influencers to Pitch Its Cable Box

Niche and parent company Twitter have brought together a huge group of the most influential social media creators for a single campaign promoting a souped-up cable box. Partnering with Comcast to promote its Xfinity X1, a group of 19 of the top social media creators—including Vine stars like Josh Peck, King Bach, Brittany Furlan, Marcus Johns, Meghan McCarthy and Zach King—were each given one of the boxes to test and then make videos based on what they liked about it. The content will be shared across multiple platforms and will also include a Promoted Moments ad featuring content from the creators. The campaign was meant to help Comcast create a massive amount of content, according to Twitter senior content strategist Ben Kovacs. Kovacs said, "That actually dovetailed into, 'What if we do this thing and make a big splash in a short amount of time?'" Working with Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and Liquid Thread, Comcast vetted a list of creators recommended by Niche to come up with a group that best fit with the brand. The goal was to show "little product moments" based on what each creator found interesting—not based on what Comcast wanted to highlight, said John Young, Comcast's vp of customer marketing communications. Young said working with the creators meant giving up the usual control a client gets when working with an agency. All Comcast could do, he said, was provide each person with seed information and let them create as they saw fit. (The massive audiences some of the Internet celebrities have should help, too.) "Their strength is they're creating good content," Young said. "And it gets shared outside of their organic audience when they do good content." Twitter acquired Niche—which develops content on Vine, Instagram and other social platforms—11 months ago. Since then, Niche's pool of creators has grown from 6,000 to around 24,000. In that time, its business has grown rapidly with the average deal size increasing 250 percent and monthly campaign volume up 300 percent. Niche's staff has also doubled, increasing to more than 50 people with international teams in England, Japan and Brazil. Twitter declined to share many details about how content from Niche creators has performed on Twitter. However, the company did reveal that a survey of Twitter users who were asked about more than 350 pieces of content showed Niche campaigns had an engagement rate of 13 percent. Research also found Niche ads helped boost brand awareness by 56 percent. All Niche content posted for Comcast by creators on other platforms will also be pushed to Twitter, which will then be used in targeting for Comcast and employed in a Promoted Moment ad bought for the campaign, said Niche brand strategist Sam Nowakowski. Utilizing Niche for the campaign could be a good way for Twitter to help offset Vine's stunted growth. Data released late last year by video analytics firm Tubular Labs showed that Vine only accounted for 4 percent of branded content published by 50 major brands. Three other platforms—Instagram Facebook and YouTube—took the rest of the 2,500 social videos analyzed for brands like Coca-Cola, Target and Dunkin' Donuts. [jwplayer efiZd69J-1kT9Z8rj]

Performance Marketing

Comcast Partners With Twitter-Owned Niche and 19 Influencers to Pitch Its Cable Box

Gives up the control clients get working with agencies

Marty Swant

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