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’TREPONOMICS
ESQUIRE GUY | MARKETING | ASK A PRO | ETHICS
Creative campaigning
What goes into the launch and execution of a
multimedia content marketing program? When B2B video
company Wistia hatched a weeklong campaign featuring
GoPro cameras, the takeaways were illuminating.
By Ann Handley
C
onsider the GoPro,
the tiny but rugged
mountable video
camera. It’s one of the most
recognized camera brands
in the world—known for
capturing epic, adrenalineinducing
adventure and
extreme-sports videos from
unusual, first-person angles.
Which is why I was
surprised when Wistia, a
B2B video-hosting company
in Cambridge, Mass.,
announced the launch of
something it called “GoPro
Week,” a marketing effort
meant to inspire businesses
to use the tiny GoPro in
similarly powerful ways.
Wistia’s plan was to coach
organizations on how they
could easily tap the GoPro
to tell compelling—if less
extreme—stories that would
boost their business.
So what happened?
Let’s deconstruct this GoPro
Week marketing concept,
which Wistia hosted in
November 2014, with an
eye toward what you can
learn from it.
The inspiration:
an oddball mash-up.
Every marketing initiative
starts with a bit of inspiration.
The catalyst for Wistia’s
campaign was the launch
of GoPro’s sporty Hero 4
camera last fall. But what
really ignited the plan was the
idea to mash two known but
seemingly opposing entities—the
daredevil GoPro and
the typically restrained B2B
video—in a way that could expand
the possibilities of both.
“We thought it would be
a fun twist on the typical
adventure-sports angle to
share how businesses can
use GoPros to show off
company culture, products
and anything else,” says
Wistia director of marketing
Ezra Fishman.
Of course, any inspired
idea needs to be linked to a
bigger marketing mission.
For Wistia, showcasing the
GoPro in unconventional
ways helped to underscore
the bigger theme palpable
in all of the company’s marketing:
a focus on educating
A Wistia blog post
examined GoPro mounts
through video and
still photography.
and inspiring businesses to
produce engaging, higherquality
videos as critical
components of their content
marketing strategies.
The goals: reach the
audience’s audience.
What change do you hope to
effect with your campaign or
program, and how will you
measure that success? Wistia
had two primary goals for
GoPro Week.
First, it wanted to build
awareness and audience (a
goal consistent with almost
all of its content marketing),
with a particular emphasis
on reaching its existing audience’s
audience—or, friends
of friends.
“The best way to reach
a broader audience is to
focus our energy on engaging
the audience we already
have, and let them spread our
content to others,” Fishman
says. “In this way, it’s a
snowballing effect, where
we are incrementally building
our core audience with
every new piece of content
we make, which in turn fuels
more audience growth for the
next piece of content.”
Second, Wistia wanted
to drive engagement across
multiple company-owned and
social media channels, as well
as encourage repeat visits to
its blog.
“We built a campaign
that would encourage people
not only to visit the content
on our blog but also to participate
in discussions in
our Community forum and
on Twitter,” Fishman says.
“We hoped that publishing
content on a daily basis
would encourage visitors
to return each day to see
what’s new … and ideally
keep doing that after GoPro
Week has ended.”
That second goal, in
particular, was key in the
decision to turn the campaign
from a post or two into
a weeklong GoPro-palooza.
“That gave us the creative
freedom to think about
different angles for the different
days and gave us the
opportunity to try out some
new approaches,” Fishman
points out.
The plan: focus efforts.
It can be challenging for
modern marketers to select
the right format (blog? infographic?
e-book? webinar?)
and channel (blog? email?
Twitter? Facebook?) for a
new content program. You
might eventually expand your
program to include more
channels and formats—and
you probably should—but at
launch, it’s best to focus your
efforts so you don’t dilute
your energy and impact.
With its topics and
timeframe in place, Wistia
decided to create a series
of five blog posts focused on
five approaches to using the
GoPro in a B2B context.
Wistia also utilized email,
its active discussion forum
and Twitter to amplify the
GoPro Week program.
“We decided that each
[blog] post would feature a
PHOTO © TREVOR HOLMES
30 ENTREPRENEUR MARCH 2015