This post continues my glance at NAB’s opportunity drawings. Coming from tonight’s Creative Showcase presentation I took home a good dose of moderation-mantra: Stop the Pre! Do the Post! Move your online campaigning from pre- to post-moderation. Amnesia’s Iain McDonald presented Smirnoff Experience’s Secret Party campaign which proves the value of guiding rather than controlling a campaign from within a social network (in this instance a facebook group).
the blog
Potential party goers went into the group with an expectation of instant interactivity, free commenting and constant replies, and were served accordingly by the brand and their peers. GPS gaming, videos and social interactions were all tightly interwoven. All the while, users were behaving responsibly, and dealing with eachother in appropriate ways. Successful ticket hunters were proudly showing off their trophies and one example of self moderation included the online crowd petitioning ebay to take down (unfair?) party ticket auctions.
showing off the tickets
To me the evidence is clear that offering a social group interesting stuff always needs a post moderation approach (of comments, posts, interactions) to be successful. It is something we have approached similarly on Toohey’s For The Love Of Beer campaign.
can has scribble
I reckon it is something that instinctively everyone (even a lawyer) knows: write something, see your own post, respond to banter, pass it on… all of this relies on instant gratification to be rewarding and keep momentum. Users see it happen and work beautifully on most of the web, on a daily basis and especially in social networks. So they don’t tolerate legal bottlenecks and content wormholes. Who would seriously and continuously bother if every contribution goes into moderation first?
Between 0 and 1 
Yep, post moderation is an excellent approach and it’s great to see clients have confidence in their communities. Also, given the chance and a sense of ownership, it’s amazing how quickly community members moderate themselves.
Of course it doesn’t always apply where 100% anonymity is available as an option.
According to Iain they took down only one lewd comment and wouldn’t even have intervened on the ebay. One user had apparently posted a party profile photo where Jim Beam was displayed and other users (who had missed out) complained to her directly. So even a brand-fit concern can be adressed through trusting the crowd.
I agree in principle, but shouldn’t clients be justifiably worried about situations like Telstra’s WotNext site, where the bad press meant that they had to close the whole project.
I hadn’t paid attention to the WotNext shutdown (nice quote here: “Telstra spokesperson, Peter Taylor, said the telco would redirect its focus to established websites, such as BigBlog (!).”) but good point, Matt.
By playing on a platform such as facebook I think a brand achieves two things:
1. users signed the T&Cs and can be held acountable/excluded based on unruly behaviour (copyright, decency,..) without much debate or (empty) legal threats
2. a journo feels less compelled to turn it into a story of “brand condoning under age (fill in attention grabbing social phenomena)!”