For “American Idol,” having more than five million followers on Facebook is encouraging, but there is something besides devotion the show wants from Facebook users: cash.
Facebook users are being encouraged to spend $1 to send each other video messages recorded by the 10 finalists on the show. The videos, through a partnership with an application called Cameo Stars, will feature the contestants sending birthday wishes or a poke, a common Facebook greeting.
Cameo Stars films subjects in front of a green screen and does not embed videos in a player, meaning contestants appear to be speaking directly from profile pages of Facebook users.
“For this particular product, there is a feeling that it’s customized for you because it’s being delivered to you on your own page and because a character is walking toward you and talking toward the camera,” said Olivier Delfosse, vice president for interactive at FremantleMedia Enterprises, which co-produces American Idol in the United States with 19 Productions.
Delfosse said that when evaluating licensing deals for FremantleMedia, which also produces or co-produces shows including “The X Factor,” Family Feud” and “The Price is Right,” he applied two criteria.
“The first is generally to increase the equity of the brand and build up the brand and the other is to develop compelling products that we can sell and sell,” said Delfosse. The new Facebook video project “checks both of those boxes,” he said.
When it was introduced on Facebook in August 2010, Cameo Stars seemed like a fairly straightforward marriage between the cultural obsession with celebrities and the exploding market for virtual goods.
The proposition, after all, was to pay as much as $3 to send Facebook friends recorded video greetings from celebrities, like birthday wishes from Kim Kardashian or congratulations for a well-played game from quarterback Drew Brees, who along with other celebrities including Carmen Electra and Dale Earnhardt Jr., receive commissions for purchased messages.
But now Cameo Stars is also increasingly pursuing marketing deals. For the coming film “Kung Fu Panda 2,” for example, Facebook users have been able to send free messages from the animated character featured in the movie. And in a coming campaign for the clothing brand Under Armour, the mixed martial arts champion Georges St-Pierre, a pitchman for the brand, will also be featured in free-to-send videos.
Daren Hornig, chief executive of Cameo Stars, described the deal with “American Idol” as “a partnership approach” where neither entity pays the other but both derive revenue. For now, they will share revenue from the videos from the contestants, though both entities declined to reveal precisely how it will be split.
What both hope will happen soon is that a third party will be brought into the deal, perhaps an existing advertiser for the show, willing to finance the videos so Facebook users can send them at no cost. That way the videos have the potential to be shared more while the advertiser, though not referred to directly by the contestants, will be prominently featured on the Cameo Stars page when users send the videos.
“The ideal situation would be to get a sponsor involved,” Hornig said. “It would take away the friction of the purchase and increase the possibility” of the video becoming viral.
Delfosse, of FremantleMedia, said they were racing against the clock.
“A brand-funded model is definitely one we’re seriously considering and some of that is just timing and getting a sponsor on board in the right time frame,” Delfosse said.
In the meantime, consumers have shown little resistance to spending money on virtual goods, whether for cattle to play FarmVille on Facebook or for Smurfberries for the iPhone app called Smurf’s Village. Worldwide spending on virtual goods grew from $2.1 billion in 2007 to $7.3 billion in 2010 and by 2014 will more than double again, according to In-Stat, a market research firm.
Dharmesh Shah, co founder of HubSpot, an online marketing and Web analytics firm, said that what should impress marketers about Cameo Stars was that it positioned content from brands, which generally was relegated to ads on the right side of pages on Facebook, front and center on users’ walls, where they interact with friends.
“A lot of Facebook users are becoming kind of immune to what’s in the right margin and are mentally blocking out ads because they are not central to the Facebook experience,” Shah said in a phone interview. “But this works particularly well in terms of getting engagement.”
Shah was less impressed that, after more than seven months on Facebook, the number of monthly active users of Cameo Stars numbers 5,776, according to the Facebook page for the application as of Wednesday.
“That’s not that many users for what is designed to be a mainstream consumer Facebook app,” Shah added in an e-mail. “From what I’ve seen, novel concepts like this either hit escape velocity quickly — and get spectacularly viral — or they don’t. It doesn’t seem like this one has.”
But with its legions of Facebook followers, of course, the “American Idol” promotion could raise the profile of Cameo Stars, too.
There is a sweepstakes tied to the promotion, in fact, for a pair of tickets to the season finale of the show, and Facebook users will increase their entries for the contest every time they purchase one of the Cameo Stars videos.
Hornig, of Cameo Stars, said that he had never expected it to explode overnight, but rather to build steadily.
“Once people see what we have and start to really understand the power and the reach of bringing this content and these celebrities to life on Facebook, the light bulbs really start going off,” Hornig said.
@ The New York Times
