A Social Media and Online PR case study from C&M's recent work with CG and VFX Academy, Escape Studios. The campaign used YouTube, Twitter and Facebook to promote the brand and enable participants to win a free course at Escape, as well as a work placement at industry leading Visual Effects studio, The Mill.

1. Escape Studios
#CGWhiz Report
Social Media Campaign
October 2009
http://twitter.com/contentmotion
http://www.contentandmotion.co.uk

2. CGWhiz in Bullets…
• Social Media Campaign devised by us and delivered in tandem with Escape Studiosʼ very excellent PR
agency, Brands2Life - who handled media relations, video production, the competition draw and day-
to-day aspects of Twitter and Facebook (...we all pitched together for blogging and other areas of
Social Networking to make the whole thing fly).
• Competition for graduates/post-graduates to win a VFX classroom course at Escape Studios (January
2010), plus a work placement at The Mill
• x2 runner-up winners get free online Maya course, plus magazine subscriptions and a tour of The
Mill
• We ask them to submit their animation or graphic illustration portfolio to YouTube, via the ‘Post a Video
Response’ method
• A judging panel selects winners, to be announced via the Escape Studios blog and other Social Media
channels. Engage with entrants and winners, have them blog about the experience and what they
intend to do with their learning prize
• Benefits:
• Generating buzz/awareness
• Traffic acquisition
• Generating backlinks/other SEO benefits
• Lots of user generated content
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3. Goals
Overall Aim
• To establish awareness, coverage and participation in the competition and to
stimulate a ‘viral’ distribution of content by publishing and seeding campaign
content
End-of-Campaign TARGETS
• Submissions: 100
• YouTube Video views: 3000
• Twitter Following: 450 (from 298)
• Facebook Page fans: 150 (from 23)
• Website Visitors: +15%
• Website Registrations: +10%
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4. Achievements
7000
Actual End-of-Campaign Stats
5250
• Submissions: 136 (+36%)
•
3500
YouTube video views: 6,777 (+126%)
• Twitter Following: 439 (-0.4%) 1750
• Facebook Page fans: 319 (+112%)
0
Submissions YouTube views Twitter followers Facebook fans
Target Result
Note: these figures are a reflection of the competition stats on 30th October -
current figures can be seen in more detail within this report
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5. Other Highlights
Website outcomes
• Overall traffic has increased by 7.45%
• Direct traffic increased by 18.69%
• Overall goal conversions increased by 63.36%
• Backlinks have increased by 13%
• We have an established page that can be used for future competitions of
this type: a page that is ranking for some searched-for terms and has
acquired Google Authority
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6. Campaign Highlights
“Have all of you #CG &
#VFX artists heard about
the #CGWhiz competition?
Sounds good and you
could win a course: http://
is.gd/4rhyR”
http://careers.guardian.co.uk/in-the-week-12-10-09
http://twitter.com/rschu
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7. Measurement Principles…
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8. Tools
We used the following tools in order to spread and monitor the campaign
message:
• Social Media bulletins
• Twitter profile
• Facebook Page
• Dashboard
• Blog target list
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9. Dashboard…
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10. Social Content Principles…
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11. SocMed Assets…
• YouTube
• Run submissions via YouTube
• Ask entrants to post ‘Video Response’ to a competition promo video that we
produce/post to YouTube
• Plug in the promo video to competition web page
• Plug in submissions feed selection to web page
• Twitter
• Tweet competition to followers and engage in related #Hashtags
• Plug Hashtag tweets into web page as a feed
• Blog
• Constant stream of posts on our blog and partner blogs
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12. Engagement Map…
 Social Media bulletins
 Competition  #CGWhiz
page
 Twitter
 ...etc  Forums
 Our video
 Social Networks (Facebook,
 UGC videos
etc.)
 Twitter  Blogs
 Posts  …etc
 Banner
 …etc
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13. Competition Page… http://www.escapestudios.com/cgwhiz/
Banner for comp
Body copy explaining comp Embed Esc promo vid
(YouTube)
Embed entries
(YouTube) Twitter feed for
@escape_studios
PLUS ‘follow us on
Twitter’ call to action…
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14. Site Profile

15. Site Measurement Principles
• The following slides look at how the campaign has influenced backlinks
and traffic to the Escape Studios site and how the Social Media
engagement influenced revenue
• Traffic: how the campaign has affected Escape Studios’ overall
traffic levels
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16. Traffic
• The graph below shows the overall traffic to the site during the campaign
period 1st-31th October
• Site usage compared with previous month:
• Visits up by 7.45% / Direct traffic up by 18.69%
• Page views up by 36.44%
• Pages/visit up by 26.98%
• Bounce rate down by 9.27%
• Average time on site up by 18.48%
• Usage data shows that during the campaign, visitors to the site were viewing
more pages and exploring more of the site during their visits, therefore
spending more time on-site
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17. Rankings
• The CG Whiz page is
beginning to rank for search
queries
• It’s now on the first page for
the term ‘CG Competition’
• This term is searched for 260
times per month
• The campaign was not SEO
focused, but the search
authority gained should be
used to increase the profile of
future campaigns
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18. Conclusions
• Traffic to the site increased during the campaign period, with repeat
visits rising significantly
• The amount of time site visitors were spending on the site increased
dramatically during the campaign as they viewed more pages within
the site
• We now have an established web page which has developed some
Google authority. This page can be reused for promotions in the
future: it has become a platform for further activity
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19. Message Profile
& Interactions

20. Message Measurement
• The following slides look at how successful the campaign was in
generating awareness (i.e. coverage). We will look at basic units of
measurement such as blog coverage volumes, quality of coverage, and
how the content was compiled
• Volume: a straight numerical view of the number of blog posts/
articles
• Quality: an analysis of the relative merits of this coverage (e.g. did
it come from a high PageRank site with a wide audience?)
• Content: an analysis of whether our content tactics helped to
increase the quantity and quality of the coverage
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21. Interaction Measurements
• We will also look at how successful we were in generating new
interactions around the campaign. We will look at Twitter interactions (and
highlights), comment activity on blogs and communities, and social
‘sentiment’
• Twitter: an analysis of how well our Twitter activity was distributed
by others and also how engaging the Twitter work was in
generating real reactions
• Blog comments and interactions: an analysis of how well the
campaign was received in terms of public reactions on key blogs
and communities
• Sentiment: a view of how positive and/or negative this Social
Media activity was
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22. Coverage
Campaign coverage
20
15
10
5
0
9 Oct 2009 16 Oct 2009 23 Oct 2009 30 Oct 2009
Retweets Blog mentions
• Blog coverage was high in the initial week of the campaign but flattened out in the
following weeks. Twitter coverage via re-tweets was positive and continued to grow
throughout the month
• It is important to continue building on the success of the Twitter profile by re-tweeting
and @replying influential twitterers who are interacting, so that they remain followers
and spread our future tweets, building out the platform for the next campaign. If we
listen and talk to people, they’ll be more likely to do the same for us when we have
something new to say.
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23. Twitter Highlights
• Tweets, re-tweets, and uses of the #CGWhiz Hashtag from high-profile
twitterers boosted our standing in the Twitter community and raised the
profile of the @Escape_Studios account
• Examples of high-profile, established Twitter users who mentioned the
competition positively can be seen above: 933 and 385 dedicated followers
• The reach of the campaign was increased via the Twitter ‘network effect’
within the CG community
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24. Forum Coverage Highlights
PageRank: 5
Monthly Visitors: 20,040
Backlinks: 109,514
PageRank: 6
Monthly Visitors: 5,862
Backlinks: 77, 432
• Posts on the CG Society and VFX Talk forums referred a large amount of
highly relevant traffic to the site during the campaign period - 185 and 80 visits
• These sites were featured as key social hubs in our platform report
• The users of industry forums are highly engaged and interested in the subject
area and therefore gaining attention within these areas is very useful
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25. YouTube
YouTube Video Views
9000
6750
4500
2250
0
Before campaign 9 Oct 2009 16 Oct 2009 23 Oct 2009 30 Oct 2009 Current
• The YouTube video has been viewed over 8000 times (and rising) since the
campaign began, which is an excellent level of interaction
• The video was used and embedded by bloggers to make their own content
more compelling. For blogs, video is an essential hook to gain coverage and
grab attention
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26. YouTube Comments
Hey there,
This competition is brilliant, I have uploaded my
entry and have been getting some really
encouraging feedback. I think that even if I'm not
one of the lucky ones, the competition has allowed
me to view other work by artists that otherwise I
would never of had the chance to see.
Good luck to everybody, some of these entries put
me to shame...;)
Cheers
Samuel.
Hiiii • The user comments in response
hey i want to thank all of you at escape studios and The
Mill who have organized this facinating competition....it to the YouTube video were very
has really given a big hand for people like us who are in positive
countries like SRI LANKA and who loves animations.this
has also given me the oppertunity to look at different
types of projects.and its great to see that the competition
is hotting up.and i wish all the contestents good luck for • The video also gained a high
their progress in the competition.  rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars
Pubudu Dahanayaka
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27. Content Value
• Our supporting video was used within news articles and blog posts to enhance, add
depth and additional value to articles about the event
• Collateral such as this is particularly useful as it can be used across a variety of
different environments, such as forums, blog comments and Social Media platforms
http://fdadigitalmediaproduction.com/2009/10/29/are-you-a-cg-whiz-show-us-your-skills-and-we%E2%80%99ll-make-you-a-star/
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/cory/cg_whiz_competition
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28. Conclusions
• Our collateral has been embedded within blog posts in order to
enhance third party content
• The YouTube video has attracted a lot of positive attention. This is
highly valuable coverage and has massively exceeded our targets
• Re-tweets of our Twitter updates grew throughout the campaign due
to our follower-building activities and regular updates about the
competition
• Mentions of the campaign by high profile twitterers greatly extended
our message reach
• Posts on influential, industry-specific forums identified in the platform
report referred highly relevant traffic to the site and raised awareness
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29. Acquisitions

30. Acquisition Measurement
• The following slides look at how successful the campaign was in
generating new acquisitions
• Registrations: Number of registrations on the Escape Studios
website
• Twitter: Increase of the Twitter following over time
• Facebook: Increase of Facebook Page fans
• Goals: Amount of goals gained through social media referrals
during the campaign period
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31. Competition Entries
Submissions
130.0
97.5
65.0
32.5
0
9 Oct 2009 16 Oct 2009 23 Oct 2009 30 Oct 2009
• The number of submissions increased steeply in the first and last weeks of the
competition when the initial engagement began and ‘last chance to enter’
message occurred
• This final surge of entries ensured that we exceeded our target number of
submissions by the closing date
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32. Twitter Following
Twitter Followers
700
525
350
175
0
Before campaign 9 Oct 2009 16 Oct 2009 23 Oct 2009 30 Oct 2009 Current
• The @Escape_Studios Twitter following increased steadily throughout the
campaign period and is continuing to rise, with a current following of 663
• The increase in followers was beneficial as it increased the potential
audience of our message
• The accrued following can be utilised for any future campaigns, and will help
Escape Studios broader online profile and future messages
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33. Facebook Fans
Facebook Fans
500
375
250
125
0
Before campaign 9 Oct 2009 16 Oct 2009 23 Oct 2009 30 Oct 2009 Current
• Facebook fans increased dramatically from the first week of the campaign
• They increased by 112% during the campaign period - the end-of-campaign
figure of 319 was far above our goal of 150 fans
• The number of fans is continuing to rise, with a current fan base of 469,
making the Facebook Fan Page a valuable asset to any future Escape
Studios activity
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34. Acquisition Goals
• Acquisition goal completions have increased significantly since the start of
the campaign
• Overall goals have increased by 63.36% since the previous month
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35. Goal Breakdown
• Goal conversions increased significantly during October
• Contact requests increased by 35.16%
• Purchases increased by 209.09%
• Newsletter sign-ups increased by 2.06%
• E-Learning subscriptions increased by 107.62%
NB: Figures are a percentage difference on previous month
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36. Conclusions
Target End-of-Campaign Stats
• Submissions: 100
• YouTube Video views: 3000 9000
• Twitter Following: 450
• Facebook Page fans: 150 6750
4500
End-of-Campaign Stats
• Submissions: 136 (+36%)
2250
• YouTube video views: 6,777 (+126%)
• Twitter Following: 439 (-0.4%)
0
• Facebook Page fans: 319 (+112%) Submissions YouTube views Twitter followers Facebook fans
Target End-of-Campaign Current
Current Stats
• Submissions: 136 (+36%)
• YouTube Video views: 8,226 (+174%)
• Twitter Following: 663 (+47%)
• Facebook Page fans: 469 (+212%)
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37. Campaign
Conclusions

38. Conclusions Summary
• Traffic to the site increased during the campaign period, with repeat visits rising significantly. The
amount of time site visitors were spending on the site also increased dramatically during the
campaign as they explored the site in more depth
• The campaign has allowed us to establish a web page which has developed some Google authority.
This page can be reused for promotions in the future: it has become a platform for further activity
• The YouTube video has attracted a lot of positive attention. This is highly valuable coverage and has
massively exceeded our targets. The video was also used within blog coverage to enhance the copy
• Re-tweets of our Twitter updates grew throughout the campaign due to our follower-building
activities and regular updates about the competition. Mentions of the campaign by high profile
twitterers greatly extended our message reach
• Posts on influential, industry-specific forums identified in the platform report referred highly relevant
traffic to the site and raised awareness
• The Twitter followers and Facebook fans gained during the competition can be utilised as a valuable
asset in any future campaign
• Revenue driven from Google search and direct traffic grew significantly over the campaign period.
Twitter drove the highest amount of referred revenue
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