SONY ERICSSON will commit to a second season of its Xperia Hot Shots social media marketing campaign following the success of its inaugural activation which culminated ahead of this week’s US Open.
Focusing on Xperia, the Sony Ericsson smartphone brand, the web-based Xperia Hot Shots programme followed six up-and-coming players on the WTA Tour around the world – and then encouraged fans to vote for their favourite player via YouTube and Facebook.
Said Sony Ericsson VP and Head of Global Marketing and Partnerships, Stephan Croix: “In a short time, we have achieved three million views on YouTube and a total of 823,328 fans on Facebook, which creates a real opportunity, because 70 per cent of the Facebook fans are new to Sony Ericsson.
"The rest are already represented among the 5.5 million social media fans of Sony Ericsson, which is the 40th biggest brand on Facebook.”
Sony Ericsson also created a mobile phone application in Android to showcase the programme, which has had 140,000 downloads.
The Xperia Hot Shots campaign, Croix added, was aimed at the core youth demographic (15-29). “We spend a lot of time understanding how consumers behave and what they do before they purchase a phone. They get a lot of input from different sources.
"But digital media and the internet is very important to the decision process. As a company, we are over-indexing on digital and social media. Although we still do traditional communications such as advertising media, which helps awareness, digital media and social media promote deeper qualitative relationships, and are intended to drive both consideration and loyalty."
While Sony Ericsson shed its WTA Tour title sponsorship in 2010, the new lead partnership role, says Croix, still provides access to the players, while Sony Ericsson brand ambassador Maria Sharapova has been key in promoting the programmes.
“Tennis is our key strategic sponsorship,” continues Croix. “When we first signed the deal the objective was awareness of the brand. That helped a huge amount and Sony Ericsson is now very well known. The objective now is to drive engagement with Xperia Hot Shots and focus more on the promotion of products.”
The inaugural Sony Ericsson Xperia Hot Shots winner was the young German star Sabine Lisicki.