With froth about Twitter recently, many “behind scenes” stories i’m tempted to riff from an owl-themed-social-media-corp, especially about open/closed APIs, translation/localization, advent of “promoted tweets”, scrapyard acquisitions etc, but I’m gonna hold off, for now anyhow.
Dave Olson (me :)) holds section of Vancouver Sun newspaper with article by Gillian Shaw which he wrangled / interviewed about an erstwhile online movie promotion which community – Photo by Quinn Bender
The article ran as a full page on the Entertainment section and you can explore two versions online in both the Technology and Entertainment sections. The print edition includes a screenshot of the Behind the Scenes vidcast show with Shaun and Eric, while the online version features a video with Director of Fan Communities Dave Olson giving a tour of MovieSet.com (including Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus).
The article kicks off by asking: Care to wander onto the set of a movie shoot, chat with the actors, see the inside story on the stunts?
Well, do you?
{snip}
The article quotes the erstwhile leader of the “social media renegades,” Dave Olson, who relates the focus on fan participation as the key to traffic growth and enthusiasm for the site, using our recent Death Warrior campaign as an example (links/snippets added):
“It empowers fans to go out and evangelize and start the conversation,” said Olson, who became director of fan communities for Movieset in January, after successful stints at a number of Vancouver digital companies including Raincity Studios where he curated an award-winning blog and helped launch Phones for Fearless, a campaign to support eastside artists and residents.
“The movie business has been slow to come to this style of marketing,” said Olson. “It is bubbling up from the grass roots.”
Movieset.com is a boon for indie films and it’s attracting attention from larger studios.
For small very specialized films, such as Death Warrior, a mixed martial arts film that included livestream video among its offerings for fans, Movieset allowed it to find a core audience that shared a passion for the action film.
“We found out where fans of that genre hang out, we communicated with them in their language and we invited them to take part,” said Olson. “We even gave away the bloody sweatshirt that Georges St-Pierre was killed in to a fan at the end of it.”
Finally, Ms. Shaw’s article outlines some of the other tactics we’ve used to bring movie fans behind the scenes and a call to action for movie makers of all kinds ~ from indies to majors ~ to hop aboard the MovieSet cluetrain:
While it still goes against the grain to loosen their grip on content, traditional studios are stepping aboard.
“Studios one by one are starting to realize there is some value here,” said Olson. “They see it is a conversation that is going on and it will go on without them.
“They are saying ‘we should start to participate whether we want to or not.’”
Indeed, there are now excellent examples which demonstrate the power of MovieSet’s two-headed monster. Cast and Crew members are employing our tools to streamline their daily workflow, they deliver content directly to their movies page including still photos, videos, news, or blog posts.
Once uploaded, the rich content gives the social media conversationalists an opportunity to reach out to an engaged community of fans interested in the film. Fans then become active contributors by following, supporting and commenting throughout each phase of production. And so on, and so on …
Read the full article: Online and on the set [archived link] by Gillian Shaw (@gillianshaw on Twitter) in the Vancouver Sun, June 9, 2009 –
Tom Sawyer famously talked his gang into paying him for the privilege of whitewashinga fence while he sat by and supervised. In this talk by Dave Olson at SxSW Interactive on March 10th 2012, he shares how companies might inspire their community to crowd source projects by engaging passionate users with a mutually beneficial relationship.
This video – made from appropriately crowd-sourced photos, social posts, and other snippets + music – includes Mark Twain-period costuming, pipes, smoking jackets, board games, old-timey suitcase, mysterious envelopes, audience participation and plenty of laughs while focusing on practical tactics to rally communities with clear expectations, boundaries, rewards, and objectives and importantly – without manipulating.
3 very different project examples provide tangible advice for various campaign timelines, outcomes and audiences, and include:
* True North Media House: a long-planned (and fantastically successful), renegade self-accreditation citizen documentation project at Vancouver 2010 Olympics / Paralympics
* Phones for Fearless: a rapidly planned and deployed initiative to gather dis-used mobile phone/cameras for use by marginalized communities to tell their stories
* Hootsuite Translation: activating global cultures to speedily and accurately translate and localize a social media dashboard using a web tool… with unexpected outcomes
Includes cameos of dozens of bright faces in Austin at the noteworthy event, plus more recent voice over to bring the projects up to date and share more resources to explore further including screenshots from various media appearances, reviews, tweets, and whatnot of the talk and aftermath for extra colour. Continue reading Crowd Sourcing Community Projects like Tom Sawyer at SxSWi 2012: video→
Loading up my calendar with goodness including: Hockey, Level 1 at Ice Sports (starting Wed.) Sing it Forward at the Vogue (Jan 10) DOA at the Rickshaw (Jan 18) Portage and Main at the Biltmore (Jan 25) Do Less yoga session (Jan 20) Firework Factory retreat in June plus a load of Chiropractor and Massage appointments.
I just got home from an inspiring three week trip to the Olympics and capped it off with a private meeting in NYC with some great online marketers at Inc Magazine HQ that Stu McLaren from Wishlist hosted.
The social media inspiration kept on coming as the first thing I saw in my inbox was an email from HootSuite saying I received $100 free credit from them for Twitter advertising.
Score!
I’ll be honest. I’m a big fan of HootSuite and the work Ryan Holmes does there and I’ve been using them since shortly after they launched. To see that Twitter and HootSuite look like they are teaming up to increase the usage of Twitter Advertising is very interesting.
HootSuite is one of the main sites I use on a daily basis and I almost never go directly to Twitter.com just because HootSuite is easier to manage multiple social networks and connect with all of my social accounts in one place.
Tom Sawyer famously talked his gang into paying him for the privilege of white-washing a fence white while he sat by and supervised.
In this talk, Dave Olson shared how companies can use their community to crowd source projects, by inspiring passionate users to participate in mutually beneficial projects.
In this storytelling-style talk, challenges, strategies, and successful examples were shared by Dave Olson at SXSW, March 10th 2012.
My favorite panel of the fest thus far…It was the presentation style that was brilliant. Dressed in character. Tying every aspect back to that Mark Twain reference. Great physical visuals that you could pass around. It was a showcase example of a solo talk.
In Dave’s trademark fashion, he walked us through each story, using audience motivation and end benefit as pillars to ground us in the “why” audiences participated, and continue to participate in these efforts. He was able to talk about what we usually call “process” as a storyteller, imparting wisdom based on actual experience.
I keep coming back to the talk thatDave Olson from Hootsuitegave…we’ve followed a number of the rules that Dave Olson touted in his session: Thank people, make it fun for them, give them an incentive (not monetary), make it easy for them to participate.
From the archive for historical record (and to recall the efforts of me and my marketing/community/international teams at Hootsuite) – of course, i no longer work at/with the company and this is not official in any way, was once part of the public internet. #AlwaysBeArchiving in this case, What the Trend was a company acquired by Hootsuite and my team was charged with the task of making it relevant and interesting, ergo: