We hope you had a great weekend and are ready for last week’s top news in sports, entertainment, and social media. Today’s edition includes a major social media marketing push behind box office number one movie Cowboys & Aliens, the 2012 Olympics Twitter contest, Twitter’s new delivery of promoted Tweets, and finally Foursquare and Groupon’s official partnership announcement.
Cowboys, Aliens and Social Media
The film Cowboys & Aliens was number one at the box office over the weekend, and we’d certainly like to believe it had something to do with the massive social media marketing behind the film. Based off of a 2006 comic strip, Cowboys & Aliens stars Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, and Olivia Wilde and is currently rocking a 43% on Rotten Tomatoes but that is neither here nor there. Captain America had a huge social media push as well (which in our opinion came up short of Cowboys & Aliens) and also opened at number one. Coincidence? That’s your call.
The film’s Facebook landing page is similar to many NFL team’s ‘Fan Zones‘ in that it is basically a hub for all of their social and digital channels featuring links to other social channels like Twitter, photos and videos. As of the opening weekend the page had 220,000 fans, not too shabby.
There is an official Cowboys & Aliens Twitter account, but they have not really been using it. Instead, they’ve rightfully so been leveraging director Jon Favreau’s account with over a million followers. As soon as they realized how powerful Favreau’s handle could be they pointed people there instead of to the official account and had Favreau release photos, interviews, news etc. The result? The film has been a trending topic on Twitter nationally times leading up to its release and during its opening weekend.
After Facebook and Twitter comes the more creative stuff. They created badges on GetGlue for you to unlock and also created two neat games, one on Facebook which features puzzles and trivia while the other is a shooter style game from their website which of course has Facebook Connect. Both of these features are nice, but are not as new and exciting as a couple of their other features are. The two really unique features here are a Hipstamatic Lens Kit and a brilliant tie in app with Coca Cola for the iPhone and Android. First up is Hipstamatic.
If you don’t already know, Hipstamatic is a digital photography app for the iPhone and part of a retro trend in photography. It uses the iPhone’s camera to allow the user to shoot square photographs, to which it applies a number of software filters in order to make the images look as though they were taken with an antique camera. The user can choose among a number of effects which are presented in the application such as lenses or flash. With the release of the film, Hipstamatic released a Cowboys & Aliens themed HipstaPak, which includes two new lenses and a camera case, for free. Jon Favreau and cinematographer Matthew Libatique worked closely with Hipstamatic to ensure it was a quality product and well focused.
The app created in conjunction with Coca-Cola is the last part of this social media push though, but certainly not least as it is great. It’s basically an augmented reality game where users can capture Coke ‘Triggers’ on certain cups and popcorn bags at AMC theaters. You point your phone as your gun or ‘wrist cuff’ at invading speeders and save Coke bottles. You can print out one of these triggers instead of finding them on bottles or bags if you so choose to start playing right now. This is an interesting use of augmented reality and QR-like functionality that encourages competition and fun while also cross-promoting the film and Coca-Cola, two major brands.
This was definitely a very impressive, mobile heavy, social media push by the marketers of the film. What do we think of the film? Well we haven’t seen it yet. But we will, we promise. What we can say is that an awesome social media presence helped push the film to number one in the box office and this is a trend that is not going anywhere. More and more frequently will we see movies go very heavy on social media to promote themselves. Why shouldn’t they? Agree with us? Disagree? Let us know.
2012 Olympics Launches Social Media Contest
Organizers for the 2012 Olympic games in London predict next summer’s global competition is set to become the most social event in history. Earlier this week, the IOC released an interactive contest designed to discover which country has the largest online fan base. Time to try to win a gold medal for social media! The aim of the contest is obviously designed to promote the 2012 Olympiad around the world and engage the massive fan base that the Olympics has at its disposal.
The contest ranks the top 20 countries based on the number of tweets, YouTube videos and Flickr photos submitted. Fans already have submitted more than 20,000 tweets with Great Britain in the lead, followed by Brazil, the US, Canada and the Netherlands” – Brian Anthony Hernandez of Mashable.
To be included in the contest, posts have to include #1YearToGo along with your three letter country code. In case you were wondering, we’re currently about a year away from London. This contest goes hand in hand with the fact that for the first time the IOC is encouraging athletes to tweet and blog about their Olympic experiences. It’s assumed that for some of the most exciting events the Olympics would like to crush the tweets per second record set recently during the final of the Women’s World Cup.
Since it’s inception, Twitter has searched for ways to monetize the social networking platform. Last year, Twitter introduced the concept of Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts, and Promoted Trends which to date have only shown up through search or on the Twitter sidebar. Last week, Twitter founders announced they will roll out Promoted Tweets which will appear directly in your timeline. Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, said company has always sought to put value before profit and not introduce the traditional Web advertising model.
Worried your timeline will be spammed and flooded with Promoted Tweets? Don’t worry. You will only see promoted tweets from the accounts you already follow. Regardless of when the ad was tweeted, you’ll see the promoted tweets near the top of your timeline when you log in.
According to Twitter’s global revenue chief, the reasoning to display the ads near the top of timelines is from feedback they heard from users saying they missed exclusive content and deals. Think you’ll get sick of these Tweets taking up room at the top of your timeline? Not to fear. Once viewed, they will scroll down your timeline like a normal tweet and you can always get rid of them by clicking “dismiss.”
Keep a look out for the newest version of Promoted Tweets in the coming weeks from brands like Dell, Gatorade, Groupon, HBO, JetBlue, Red Bull, Starbucks and TNT.
Groupon Deals to Appear in Foursquare
Groupon and Foursquare have struck a deal, in a huge partnership, where both Groupon deals and Groupon Now deals will appear in Foursquare. Unlike Foursquare’s partnerships with other daily deal sites, Groupon’s is different because they are the only ones that will offer deals that can be purchased instantly with the Groupon Now service.
Groupon Now is currently available in 25 cities and the deals will appear in Foursquare next to specials and offers from other daily deals partners. Groupon will get instant distribution through Foursquare. The app has been downloaded 10 million times and receives much more traffic than Groupon Now’s app. This is a smart move for both parties. Foursquare’s have more of a reason to visit the app and Groupon has an advantage over other competitors with the Foursquare platform.
Why is this announcement coming out later than Foursquare’s announcement of its other daily deals partnerships? First, Foursquare requires all partners to use its API and this took a while to come for the parties to come to terms. Second, technical aspects on Foursquare’s end had to be dealt with to add a “redemption window” for deals that are only available for a certain period of time.
