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| As the host of ON24’s Virtual User Experience conference, San Francisco Giants pitcher Brian Wilson told attendees to “Fear the beard, not the technology” in touting ON24’s cloud-based webcasting solutions. Image courtesy of ON24 |
Company: ON24
Timeframe:
Sept. - Dec. 2011
San Francisco Giants pitcher Brian Wilson (not to be confused with the Beach Boy of the same name) is known for his rather peculiar personality. In the 2010 MLB All-Star Game, he wore a pair of bright orange spikes and continued to wear them throughout the season, coloring half of them black with an indelible marker after being fined $1,000 by the National League for non-conforming shoes. Wilson claimed he was punished for “having too much awesome on [his] feet.”
In a 2010 interview with sports commentator Jim Rome, he claimed to be a “certified ninja,” which he claimed to have learned in a dream. Wilson is defined not only by a wicked fastball, but by numerous tattoos, a mohawk hairstyle and a thick beard—dyed black, perfect for his nickname: The Beard. It’s no wonder that during the Giants’ playoff run in 2010—the season when they would win the World Series—adoring Bay Area Giants fans adopted the battle cry, “Fear the Beard.”
Staffers at ON24, a San Francisco-based company that provides cloud-based webcasting and virtual communications solutions, generally don’t sport tricked-out beards, nor are they certified ninjas. However, the company—which provides its services to more than 750 organizations, including IBM, Cisco, Credit Suisse and GE—has an entrepreneurial, nonconformist spirit. It was looking to boost awareness of its Virtual User conference, set for Nov. 17, 2011, and maybe “peculiar” could work—especially when it involved pairing technology with a popular athlete.
VUE2011 OBJECTIVES
Driving registration to ON24’s flagship event, the Virtual User Experience (VUE) 2011, was the core of the campaign. The event shows registrants the new creative capabilities made possible with virtual event technology, and highlights virtual events’ continued mainstream acceptance within business. It would feature keynote speakers David Meerman Scott, best known for his book The New Rules of Marketing & PR, and Sandy Carter, a social media thought leader, author, evangelist and visionary from IBM.
Three content tracks would focus on the following: “Virtual Events & Webcasting 101,” basic information to meet the needs of beginners and to help everyone improve virtual event ROI; “Marketing Applications,” about using webcasting and virtual events as tools to drive demand generation and reach customers and prospects; and “Training & Communication Applications,” focusing on leveraging virtual events and webcasts for employee training and corporate communications.
VIRTUAL/VISUAL ACUITY
Central to the VUE2011 experience would be online visuals, a “virtual San Francisco” 3-D environment complete with animated cable cars and virtual versions of landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge. “This campaign started with the designing of the event itself,” says Tricia Heinrich, senior director, strategic communications at ON24. And who better to lead event participants through a virtual San Francisco than the Giants’ Wilson? “Brian is well known, he has a certain amount of notoriety and, finally, he has a great personal tagline: Fear the Beard,” says Heinrich.
Thus, the ON24 team contacted an agent who specializes in sports figures, who then sent a proposal to Wilson and his team. At the time, Wilson was on the 15-day disabled list and was available for a spokesperson opportunity, says Heinrich.
With the talent in place, the following PR objectives were set:
• Announce that Wilson was hosting the ON24 virtual user conference (VUE2011) and leverage that announcement to secure widespread media coverage. The ultimate goal was to drive conference registrations.
• Conduct a conference registrant survey and use the results to leverage media interest in travel woes as the holiday season travel approaches.
The ON24 team of 10—including marketing, communications and production staff—developed and executed the following strategies for the campaign. They included:
â–¶ Create a unique virtual environment to showcase virtual event creative possibilities. Michael LaRocco, then creative director of marketing and online media at ON24, led the company’s efforts to build that environment (LaRocco is now principal at Creative Dilemma). How do you best represent your virtual conference offerings? Build a world that is visually compelling—not only for VUE2011 conference attendees, but for journalists covering the event (see sidebar for LaRocco’s tips on building virtual environments).
â–¶ Develop a program theme that reinforces ON24 positioning. Travelling virtually is easier and cheaper than getting a plane, staying in a hotel and paying for meals—that was a key ON24 message. And is there a better U.S. city than San Francisco to showcase virtually? Plus, ON24 is headquartered in the City by the Bay, giving the virtual angle even more cachet.
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â–¶ Make the Wilson story entertaining, relevant and newsworthy. Three videos featuring Wilson were scripted by Heinrich and directed by LaRocco. “One was promotional, one was behind the scenes and one was for the fan base,” says Denise Persson, chief marketing officer at ON24. They would be distributed to the media and posted on YouTube. To play up its relationship with Wilson, ON24 tweaked his tagline, naming the campaign “Fear the beard, not the technology.”
Not surprisingly, the behind-the-scenes video, with Wilson storming off the set, was the most popular, says Heinrich.
â–¶ Highlight research to drive media coverage. Two studies—one about the use of professional athletes for corporate events and the other the state of business travel—were fielded, the former before the conference and the latter after. In the first study, executives polled described several qualities in sports that apply to business, either agreeing or strongly agreeing that teamwork was the number one quality (90%), followed by reacting quickly (82%), persistence (78%), celebrating victories (74%) and being the best (73%). In the travel study, 92% of executives polled think that business travel is failing to improve, and they named Houston as the absolute worst city for conventions or trade shows (among other findings). “These studies had good participation, and they really fueled interest with the press,” says Persson.
â–¶ Create a cadenced series of news releases. These were designed to cover the conference before, during and after. The topics of these releases included:
• The hiring of Brian Wilson.
• Research: Use of professional athletes in corporate events (pre-conference).
• VUE2011 registration and keynotes.
• Research: The state of business travel (post-conference).
“In partnering with an athlete—we could target publications that normally wouldn’t be interested in our story,” says Persson. “Sports publications and sites are very popular with C-level executives.”
The digital/media relations blitz resulted in big numbers. But is there anything that Persson would have added to the campaign to make it even more effective? She notes that with the virtual San Francisco theme, there was more of a West Coast feel and less of an international feel. That, she says, will be remedied in 2012.
Other than that, the ultimate goal of driving attendees to VUE2011 exceeded expectations, says Persson. Conference highlights include: 1,545 live participants; 3,756 registrants; 2,900 webcast views; 1,686 documents downloaded; and 652 virtual sponsor booth visits.
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Digital PR/media relations highlights include:
• 23,040 YouTube video views
• 12% Twitter follower increase
• 82 million total audience impressions, including placements in the San Francisco Examiner, Huffington Post, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Sports Business Daily, Exhibitors Daily, CNET and the Los Angeles Times.
“An event should be fun and informative, and that’s what Brian helped us create,” says Persson. In 2012, ON24 is concentrating on a different outreach focus each quarter—virtual job fairs in Q1, virtual learning in Q2 and so on.
And Wilson? He’s sidelined with a serious arm injury, having recently endured his second Tommy John surgery. Wilson is also sidelined virtually as well. ON24 will have a different approach for VUE2012. “We’re going to create something amazing,” says Persson. It will have to be, because after “The Beard,” it couldn’t be anything less. PRN
CONTACT:
Tricia Heinrich, [email protected]; Denise Persson, [email protected]; Michael LaRocco, @CRDMKT
Follow Scott Van Camp: @svancamp01