Sony Puts Flickr in the Frame

By Davis, Anita

A creative photography competition organised through photo- sharing website Flickr.com was key to promoting the Sony Cyber-shot T2, a camera that allows users to upload their pictures straight to the internet. By Anita Davis Client Sony Electronics Asia Pacitic

Project ‘Catch the image, keep the image, free the image’

Brief Launch the Cyber-shot T2 digital camera as a must-have device for early adopters and social networkers

People Sony Marketing Asia Pacific: June Pek, senior executive; Jerry Yip, senior executive. Qais Consulting: Joe Zandstra, executive creative director; Samantha Lee, art director; Darwin Ng, designer; Kevin Tan, interactive developer; Karin Tolwers, project director; Ian Loon, business manager; Puan Chi Heng, business executive

Duration November 2007-February 2008

Background Like the Apple of yesteryear, Sony Cyber-shot targets the global hipster crowd, a useful tactic in an industry where the value of’cool’ can never be underestimated. The launch of its Cybershot T2 Camera was no different. The camera comes in five colours (black, white, pink, lime green and turquoise not dissimilar, in fact, from the iPod spectrum) for those who must have gadgets that match their personalities. The camera also contains software that allows users to upload their photos direct to online photo-sharing sites such as Flickr.com and Photobucket.com via their PC. The feature is intended to be a lure to those who want to share their pictures but are constantly on the run.

Aim A long-time leader in the digital camera industry, Sony needs to maintain its ‘hip’ positioning. So when Sony was planning its Cyber-shot activity, it needed a campaign that not just explained the product benefits, but maintained the brand’s cachet. The aim was to generate word-of-mouth among Asia-Pacific’s 21- to 35-year-olds with an online contest that demonstrated the device’s key features.

Execution After conducting surveys of the target demographic, campaign executives found most of Sony’s audience are casual photographers, bloggers and active users of photo-sharing sites. The findings pointed to an online contest involving these elements. Qais Consultings creative team decided to focus on the camera’s photo- sharing capabilities.

A key market for this campaign was early adopters and the social media ‘set’ those drawn to high-end, sophisticated gadgets that not only enhance convenience, but look cool as well. These were identified as key influencers who could not just drive sales, but also boost the brand’s image.

The camera’s photo-sharing application would be an automatic draw to this target audience because most already use photosharing websites. The team therefore decided to push this message through a partnership with Flickr, owned by Yahoo!.

The result was an online contest where amateur photographers could upload their digital images on the campaign’s Sonysponsored Flickr site. A microsite was set up at http://cybershott2.sony- asia.com, providing competition details and featuring winning work, as well as showcasing the camera. However, the main contest took place on Flickr.

Winners were chosen according to their creativity, and received a Sony Walkman video MP3 player. The competition asked for photos connected with various themes, including ‘colour’ and ‘fashion.’

Two finalists were selected to go headto-head for a grand prize of US$1,000 in Sony vouchers, and their work featured on the campaign microsite. The winner will be decided by a poll of visitors to the site.

Results More than 100,000 users visited the Cyber-shot T2 website, 70% of which were unique, first-time visitors. Of the total visitors, 45% engaged in the camera’s demonstration, more than 7% downloaded the product’s brochure, and 9% signed up for contest updates.

The campaign’s Flickr group has more than 500 members, with more than 3,000 photos uploaded.

Sony… targeted early adopters and social media users

Copyright Haymarket Business Publications Ltd. Feb 21, 2008

(c) 2008 Media; Asia’s Newspaper for Media, Marketing and Advertising. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.