According to Twitter, Periscope's helps brands to "forge a more personal relationship with consumers." Dunkin' Donuts, GE and St-Germain are three brands doing it right.
Since March of this year, when it was announced that Twitter had acquired live video-streaming app Periscope, brands all over the world have been eyeing the tool and wondering how best to use it.
According to Twitter, Periscope's value for brands lies in its ability to help them "forge a more personal relationship with consumers" by affording "real-time access to moments that matter, from big announcements to fashion shows to sponsored events." To date, brands like Target, VH1, Adobe, and Taco Bell have all employed Periscope to broadcast their live events.
The creativity doesn't stop there. Over the past few weeks, several companies have adopted a completely unique approach that's proving Periscope has branding value above and beyond the types of efforts we've seen to date. The campaigns that follow offer vital lessons about live video streaming, foremost among them that brands can create exclusive and engaging video experiences, the likes of which consumers can't find anywhere else.
1. St-Germain: Peep Show Live on Periscope
Lesson: Embody the Spirit of Your Brand
"The first live stream was very exciting. There's no safety net. Everyone on Periscope was watching what we were watching," said photographer and videographer Floria Sigismondi of liqueur brand St-Germain's first live streaming attempt. As its director, she would know; in conjunction with St-Germain, Sigismondi filmed six separate real-time moments, each two minutes in length, for use on the app. The stream at @StGermainDrinks, promoted on Twitter, went live July 9, and the brand has already racked up more than 55,000 Hearts, Periscope's measure of broadcast popularity.
The St-Germain Peep Show, which was ultimately more modest than it sounds, was (Read more...) intended to personify the brand's seductive image. The artisanal French liqueur and its bottle, which the company says was designed as "a homage to the vibrant Art Deco and Belle Époque periods in St. Germain des Prés," embody the sexy side of French culture. In the U.S., the brand has been touting its product as "La vie Parisienne dans la bouteille" (Paris life in a bottle). A Parisian-style peep show ties in with this positioning perfectly, while St-Germain's Periscope strategy as a whole immerses the viewer in the brand in a memorable way.
2. General Electric: #DRONEWEEK
Lesson: Tell Your Brand Story in a New Way
GE was one of the first brands to jump on the Periscope bandwagon and has attracted more than 6,000 followers to date. It's about to get even more: this week, the brand launched #DRONEWEEK, a Periscope-based project to raise awareness of both its technology and its facilities by offering live video filmed by a GE-reengineered drone. Over the course of five days, the drone will fly over five different GE facilities in the US, the footage from which will be streamed in real time. The brand will be interacting with viewers on Twitter, using both the @GeneralElectric and @GEDronePilot accounts.
"We're always trying to tell the full picture of the GE story, which is a complicated one, so any time we can talk about the various industries and variety of expertise and disciplines, we try to find unique and innovative way to do that," Sam Olstein, GE's director of innovation, told Fast Company. On Periscope, as elsewhere, telling a clear brand story is crucial to nurturing a relationship between consumer and brand. GE's strategy of taking consumers behind the scenes at its facilities allows it to relay interesting information about the company in a new way, while its decision to stream a series rather than a single event creates an opportunity for ongoing engagement.
3. Dunkin' Donuts: DD Summer Soundtrack
Lesson: Expand Your Reach with a Cross-Platform Strategy
Periscope is just one of eight platforms that Dunkin' Donuts is using to promote its iced coffee products among Millennials this summer - Spotify, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Vine, and Facebook are all in on the fun, as well. This diversified approach promises to expand the brand's reach and encourage cross-platform engagement. The campaign launched this week and is comprised of five concerts in five different cities, footage from which consumers will be able to access through their social site of choice.
If Periscope has an Achilles heel, it's that it hasn't yet reached critical mass. In late May, Periscope's CEO reported that the app's users were watching 10 years of content per day. For contrast, YouTube users watch about 100 years of video daily. By now Periscope, has well over 1 million users - the app hit that benchmark 10 days after launch - but compared with other social sites, it's still an up-and-comer. That Periscope and Twitter marketing go hand-in-hand helps, but it's prudent of Dunkin' Donuts to spread out its content in order to ensure that it's seen.
Despite the fact that the app is new, brands are demonstrating a real commitment to Periscope, and that bodes well for the future. Look for even more experimental projects in the months to come.
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