How can businesses create & leverage communities around their products/services with the help of Social Media? I'm bringing you today an exciting live case study from the luxury watch industry. An example of an engaged worldwide community connected through - yes, a simple hashtag.
Check out this special video interview with Balázs Ferenczi, Content Marketing Manager of Chrono24, an online platform for watch sellers & buyers, and also the editor of the online Fratello Magazine. He shares with us not only the success story behind #SpeedyTuesday, but also how online communities can be taken back offline to connect fans in real life. From all over the world! I'm very excited about this topic as I feel this is at the heart of Social Media Marketing today. #offlineisthenewblack ?! This is something I would recommend smart businesses to definitely leverage in a creative way as we move into a more and more digitalised world! Using social media to connect people. Create communities. Not only online, but back to basics, offline. A big theme throughout Social Media Marketing World #SSMW19 this year, and the inspirational closing keynote of Mark Schaefer. Tune in to the video or read the full interview below. Bea / B!Social: Do you like watches? Then watch this space, because we are going to share with you a live business case study how businesses can connect communities by leveraging social media and connecting fans from all over the world. We have Balázs Ferenczi today with us. Hi Balázs. Hi everyone. So let's hear this because community was a big topic throughout the whole three days of Social Media Marketing World this year. What do you have to share with us on this topic? Balázs Ferenczi: The story is in a nutshell, in 2012, our editor-in-chief was on holiday in France. It was a Tuesday. He had his favorite watch with him or on him, Speedmaster, and he posted a picture and he said: It's Speedmaster. It's Tuesday. So it's Speedy Tuesday, and he created the hashtag #SpeedyTuesday which eventually became something that we use in the magazine every Tuesday. We write an article, or post a video about Speedmasters, Omega Speedmasters. This eventually became such a phenomenon that Omega caught wind of it and a few years ago when the new CEO Raynald Aeschlimann took the position of CEO - he was with the brand before - he kind of wanted to do something with us, with the hashtag, because they realized the community that we've built over the years and it was really not something that we planned on doing. It felt natural and it just happened like that. Bea / B!Social: It resonated with the audience, I imagine. Balázs Ferenczi: Absolutely, and so he realized the large potential this audience has and we came up with, they came up with the idea of creating the limited edition Speedmaster designed by us and Omega, or by Omega with our help, that was released in 2017. And this watch - right here - is the second watch which was designed last year. It came out last year. This is the Ultraman which is based on a Japanese Sci-Fi TV series. Watch guys know what I'm talking about. So in technically two years, we released two watches in 2012 pieces. The first one was sold out in less than five hours. This one was sold out in less than two hours. Bea / B!Social: Just through social media, right? Balázs Ferenczi: Yes, and the fun thing is we released the watches on social media. So we promoted on social media and if you wanted to have one, you had to go over to Omega’s website and you had to get one, or book one, or reserve one for yourself on their platform. So never went to the boutiques, never went to the dealers, everything was done through social media and online. Bea / B!Social: And then what happened afterwards? How did you use the online to get offline communities back together - those who are interested in this specific watch, brand? Balázs Ferenczi: So we had get-togethers, we organized get-togethers in the past, but it was more of a friendly get-together of our readers and people we knew from different cities, wherever we were on business. But after this phenomenon, the Speedy Tuesday phenomenon, Omega started to help us with that and we started to organize much more Live Events and more professional, I would say. We just had our last Speedy Tuesday event in January I think in Switzerland, in Biel, where the Omega factory is. And the funny thing that connects us to San Diego is one of the guys, Andy, flew all the way from San Diego to Switzerland just to attend this event. He spent like two days there and then he flew back to San Diego. So, Hi Andy! This was really a crazy story. Bea / B!Social: This is the power of social media and connecting people. So thank you so much Balázs for sharing that. This is great. We were talking about communities, social media for three days in San Diego, how we can create that engagement with the people, the fans, the audiences. I think this is a brilliant case study. Thank you. Check out their watches! If you actually want to try on a watch, just go to the Chrono App and you will see the Virtual Showroom on the screen. Balázs Ferenczi: You can select the wrist mode or the table mode. If you select wrist mode, then you have to print the bracelet or a piece of paper. You have to cut it out and put it on your wrist. And that's how you can try on a watch. If you select table mode, you can search for the watch or pick the watches you like. We have some of the most popular models. So let's try the Speedmaster. When you click on it, then you can see Speedmaster in 3D. We can turn it around, you can zoom in, you can zoom out and all the rest of it. If you want to put this in 3D and want to use the AR version you can click on AR, then you tap on the watch, and put it in your palm for example.I can go back, see object mode, back into the AR and then the watch is in my palm. You can also go closer. Match it to your skin color. You can take a picture if you want. It's cool when you have the watch on the wrist, you can show it to people, you know. Bea / B!Social: This is awesome. Thanks Balázs. About Bea Pole-Bokor
Would love to hear your thoughts! Do you know of any other business that leveraged hashtags in such a way? Have you seen best practices of businesses in particular create a community around their social media pages?
Here are some pictures right after our interview with Balázs and just before Mark's presentation. Social media connecting people. This time, through watches!
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Hi, I'm Bea!
|
RSS Feed
