Toshiba and social intelligence made in Redomino

The meeting between Toshiba and Redomino has been immediately characterised by a rich exchange of ideas and the desire of experimenting. The main need was focused on SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

The need

The company has been for years one of the world leaders in the field of the high tech electronics and electrical devices, its catchment area is wide, so a main point is that the users that are looking for Toshiba products find all the information they are searching on the Toshiba websites.

The second step concerns the remaining part of the web users: to spread the discovery of Toshiba products, promotions, campaigns and innovation to a larger user group.

Projects and experiments

Redomino has worked with Toshiba on the indexing of some of the websites of the big company and on the communication through other web channels, especially social networks as Facebook and Twitter and services/community as Youtube.

But let's now switch to the more interesting and ambitious part, where the innovation that has always characterised Toshiba has met innovation in the field of marketing: on the occasion of the launch of a new product, Toshiba Journ Touch, our communication and marketing team has conceived a special viral marketing campaign: new, unconventional, that fully takes advantage of the main concepts of the social marketing intelligence.

The ingredients are particularly simple: a page created on Facebook, a misterious riddle, a character represented by a smile (Mr What), a clue every day to approach little by little the solution. The game, activated at zero cost thanks to the tools available on Facebook, was not linked to Toshiba at first, its origin was a mistery, that's why its users, intrigued, became fans of the page and started to interact with the game.

Facebook page of the game: What is it?

At this point the viral effect has started: a positive environment, a smile who changes his mood, has fun, gets angry, falls in love, feels the same emotions as the users by sharing them, a riddle that creates mistery, suspense and curiosity have been the motives of the campaign.

The end of the game corresponded to the launch of the JournE Touch, the final solution of the riddle, paying close attention to the users' expectations and with the consequent association of the game with Toshiba brand: a connection with a positive, happy and involving perception, very friendly.

Data and results

• A game led in 3 languages: Italian, French and English
• About 10,000 fans in 10 days
• More than 4,000 interactions with the page in the last week of the game
• News on various web portals
• Several messages from fans saying thank you to Mr What for giving them the chance to meet new friends
• At the end of the riddle, request for more riddles to go on playing on the part of many fans

The future

At present (end of December 2009) the second game on Facebook page is coming to its end. The first game has raffled off 4 Toshiba JournE Touch, already in the hands of the winners (the prices up on grabs have been announced only at the end of the game, the viral effect was thus completely independent of the possibility of winning), the second one a videocamera Camileo P30.

Another branch of Toshiba, Toshiba Spain, joined the project, by introducing also Spanish language in What is it?, which is now managed in 4 languages.

After Christmas Holidays a third game will start, characterised by different elements, in order to hold the interest through various stimuli, but mantaining the positiveness of the page and consequently of the relation between Mr What and Toshiba.