Until late March, OMGPOP was a little known game developer limping along and was running desperately low on money. This was until it created Draw Something. The game became an overnight sensation, catapulting the company into the mainstream and leading to its $180 million purchase by Zynga. The game’s addictive fun got people hooked but it was social media that generated mass awareness and spread the product virally.
OMGPOP hadn’t advertised or undertaken traditional PR but it became hugely successful within a matter of weeks. People shared their sketches, talked about the game and challenged their friends to play through their online social networks. The game quickly gained popularity as celebrities Tweeting about the game – such as Stephen Fry and Jimmy Fallon – created a huge amount of additional buzz. The rise of OMGPOP perfectly demonstrates the evolution of brand communication. The ability of social media to spread publicity and corporate messages means it’s now arguably more powerful now than traditional media.
Social media has changed the way that products are marketed and brands are built. Previously companies had to funnel their message through the media. This either involved brands earning placement in news or feature articles or paying for the privilege to place an advert. While these more traditional methods are still important and are an effective way for brands to reach their audiences as part of an integrated comms approach, social media offers a bigger opportunity to reach more people and create more buzz. The Guardian.co.uk, as an example, has daily unique visits of just over four million (March 2012) while Facebook had 483 million daily active users on average in December 2011 and 1.36 million visited Pintrest per day in March. Social media also enables brands to create campaigns that are highly targeted and reach the right audience. This shows the scale of social media and the opportunity brands have to reach a large audience but also the right one.
Despite there being a potential huge audience in the hundreds of millions, brands won’t get noticed if they don’t capture people’s attention. So what underpins any social media strategy is content that forces people to read, watch or listen and then share it round their network. This is why Draw Something exploded in popularity. The sketches that people drew and the game itself were the content that captured people’s attention and made them share around their social media sites. So while social is the platform, it’s great content that engages people and creates the buzz.
