Getting consumers to voluntarily share branded content is one of the Holy Grails of creative marketing, but here's a fascinating example of a company that's onto something.
Holler (formerly Emogi) has spent years making animated stickers—basically small GIFs, but in an app environment—for use on a variety of platforms, including Venmo. Occasionally the company has partnered with brands, including Ikea and Snickers, to create branded animations.
Today, my colleague Ian Zelaya, who covers the ways brands engage with consumers in the modern world, looks deeper at Holler's partnership with HBO Max, and the results are fascinating both from a social and ROI standpoint.
For one, it shows the value of creating content for the right place and right time. Stickers are, like GIFs, largely search-generated. So if a user types in "takeout," Holler's HBO Max content serves up a sticker of a bag from The Sopranos' fictional Satriale’s Pork Store.
Over one week, 108,000 people shared Holler's HBO Max images on Venmo or via messaging, with the "takeout" example above becoming Venmo's fourth most popular sticker. Not bad for a show that went off the air 13 years ago! (But, of course, is now streaming.)
The sticker campaign had an average share rate of 1.74%, with the takeout sticker being shared by an impressive 5.25% of people who stumbled across it.
So what can marketers take away from this? That stickers are a burgeoning medium? Holler certainly thinks so.
But the greater lesson is one the industry has struggled for decades to learn about shareable content. Yes, it must be clever and creative. But above all, it must have value.
Sometimes that means teaching customers a vital skill. But sometimes it just means giving them something new and mildly amusing to share when paying back a roommate for that porchetta sandwich.
David Griner
Creative and Innovation Editor, Adweek
David.Griner@Adweek.com
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