Mobile communications brands market themselves in very similar ways, typically using short, tactical campaigns focusing on product benefits. This approach does little to differentiate one brand against another as these benefits are soon copied and become universal. Sony wanted to find an entirely fresh approach to marketing mobile communications. The outcome was Xperia Studio, an invitation to digital innovators to “remake reality”: to create beautiful, disruptive experiences with Xperia smartphones at their heart.
Sony made these collaborators the focus of credible, inspiring online content that didn’t highlight handset features, but instead told stories about amazing, one-off experiences created using Xperia handsets – stories that would articulate possibilities, not megapixels. These stories weren’t shared only by the brand: the creators of these experiences were chosen because of their influence over online communities and became the primary storytellers, credible advocates who spread the content on Sony’s behalf.
To combat the peaks and troughs of traditional campaigns, the brand set out to make Xperia Studio into a continuous content factory that would power non-stop conversations about the brand in social media. To do this cost-effectively, they had to create not only regular video content, but also photography, Facebook posts, tweets – all the elements of online conversation.
23 video pieces were produced for the first six months of Xperia Studio. The total production budget was $283,000, making the average cost per film a little over $12,000. Many were made by Lbi’s own production company, Syrup Films.
The films were only part of the story of Xperia Studio. To maintain a 24/7 conversation around the Xperia brand many other kinds of content were created in between video pieces. This ranged from an app that simulated the remarkable goings-on in deep space that are invisible to the naked eye, to daily tweets from our collaborators and the Xperia Studio Twitter feed.
Results
To date, Xperia Studio films have generated over 1.7 million views, a cost per view of less than $0.17, with no bought media support. 32% of viewers watching until the end of ‘A Ride Down Slickrock Trail’, 28% taking in all of ‘Scanned’ and 23% watching the full 9 minutes of ‘The Swarm’.
According to a post-campaign survey commissioned by Sony, 85% of the people who had engaged with Xperia Studio and the different campaigns within it said they had a better opinion of Xperia smartphones as a result.
In the same survey, 79% said they would “probably” choose Xperia for their next upgrade. 17% of visitors to xperiastudio.com, the home of Xperia Studio, clicked through to the main product site, providing strong evidence of the effect of this initiative on product sales.
Xperia Studio also generated considerable positive sentiment among influential voices online.