Analysis of the Droid Landing Campaign

Note: For a marketing class project, we were to analyze a marketing campaign that involved social media.  Two classmates and I teamed up to produce the following.

Analysis of the Droid Landing Campaign

Ayushman Dutta, Jason Fletchall, Nirmalya Ray

Background

In November 2009, Motorola and Verizon Wireless entered the US smartphone arena in a big way by launching the Droid, the first phone carrying Google’s highly-acclaimed Éclair version of its Android operating system.  Arguably more notable than the phone itself was Motorola’s and Verizon’s marketing campaign, personifying the phone as a type of super-intelligent machine hooked into the “ever-expanding Android Market.”  The campaign spoke strongly to its target demographic (males aged roughly 18-30), as it fit in well with the enormously popular sci-fi thriller category of entertainment.  The campaign was widely considered to be a success, with sales of the Droid phone quickly eclipsing those of any previous Android phone.

Late the following Spring, rumors and leaks starting pointing to a new phone in the Droid line due out sometime in the Summer.

Enter the Droid Landing Campaign

On June 21, 2010, tech blogs lit up with the news that the YouTube account VerizonWireless had uploaded a short video featuring a human eye transforming into a Droid eye.  The video finished by naming its subject, Droid X, and a date, “07.2010.”

Within minutes, viewers had analyzed the video frame-by-frame and caught a mirror-image of text in a reflection in the eye, “@DroidLanding.”  A short journey over to Twitter revealed an account named “DroidLanding,” which had recently been opened and had tweeted, “REPORT: Droid X units have escaped! Get the stats on them at http://www.droiddoes.com . Forewarned is forearmed.”  Clicking on the link sent users to a Flash website featuring the phone with specifications listed and a “Coming Soon” note.

The DroidLanding account continued to tweet with increasing frequency over the following days.  The theme of the tweets was consistently one of a security organization warning citizens of a group of escaped Droid Xs spreading throughout the US, while at the same time injecting information about phone specifications.  The tweets often identified specific machines, such as “Droid X designate #3,” and began to give information about specific locations of the Droids, such as “Droid X designate #1 has been sighted in Nevada. Witnesses call it the greatest source of power next to the Hoover Dam.”

This led to speculation that Motorola and Verizon were organizing a scavenger hunt for Droid X phones.  And indeed, after two weeks of speculative discussion across tech blogs and forums, this was confirmed when on July 7 the droiddoes.com website posted official rules for a hunt.  The rules specified that the DroidLanding handle would sporadically tweet GPS coordinates over the next two weeks.  Each set of GPS coordinates would identify a location where a Droid X “designate” had landed, and where one determined and witty hunter could collect a free phone.

Sure enough, on July 8 DroidLanding tweeted coordinates that specified a location in New York City.  Within 30 minutes, the handle tweeted that the phone had been found, and later followed-up with a link to a picture of the successful Droid hunter.  This same pattern continued with 20 other phones being given away over the following 12 days in cities across the country.

Towards the end of the campaign, on July 15, the Droid X was officially launched, quickly sold out, and continued to sell out with each stock replenishment for months.

The Campaign’s Information Pathway

The campaign involved a fairly complex set of steps for consumers to follow, though the tech community as a whole helped individuals take shortcuts.  This figure shows the actual information pathway experienced by consumers.

The first step in the pathway was the discovery of the “Droid eye” video on YouTube.  A relatively small number of consumers needed to find it, as the path to the next step (1 on the diagram) was to post the video on tech-themed blogs and discussion forums.  Once in the blogosphere, the video received quite a bit of attention.  The path to the next step (2) was to analyze the video frame-by-frame to find the reflection in the eye.  Again, this could be done by a small number of consumers, since the path to the next step (3) was to simply post the reflection on blogs and forums.

The path to the next step (4) was intended for all consumers to take – it was the discovery and followership of the @DroidLanding Twitter handle.  At this point we believe the intended pathway and the actual pathway differ: The intended next path (5) was to find droiddoes.com via DroidLanding’s tweet to see images and specifications of the phone, but many consumers skipped that step and simply tried to decipher DroidLanding’s tweets for the locations of phones, then proceeded directly to discussion of the tweets on blogs and forums (6).  Likewise, some consumers checked out droiddoes.com but didn’t bother with the scavenger hunt.  In other words:

            Intended: All consumers 5 – 5.5 – 6

            Actual: Some consumers 5 – 6 and some consumers 5 – 5.5 – 6

Discussion of the phone and its associated scavenger hunt on blogs and forums (6) led to consideration of purchase by the consumers engaged in the campaign and also by those otherwise following tech blogs and forums.  Ultimately, the aspiration of the campaign was to have consumers go to a Verizon store (either in-person or online) (7) to purchase the phone on or near launch day, July 15.

Involved Technographics

The campaign necessitated involvement from almost all of the technographics:

• Creators: Found the messages in the eye and posted them.  Also the owners of the blogs who reported developments in the campaign.
• Critics: Main drivers of the discussions to find the answers to the clues in DroidLanding’s tweets.  Also drove the discussions of the specs of the phone itself (one forum alone reports over 250,000 posts)
• Collectors: Shared links to blog articles, droiddoes.com, and @DroidLanding with friends on Facebook and Twitter, thereby increasing awareness of the campaign.
• Joiners: Large chunk of the followers of @DroidLanding.
• Spectators: Large chunk of the readers of the tech blogs.

The Success of the Campaign

The main goal of this campaign was to generate buzz about the product, the Droid X phone, amongst the tech-loving community.  While the ultimate goal was of course increased sales of the phone, we believe that the intention was to generate buzz amongst this relatively small but influential community, which would then recommend the phone to friends and family members outside of the community.  And this was anecdotally true at least: One of us purchased the phone on launch day and subsequently had three decidedly non-tech-community-member relatives purchase the phone within two months.  In terms of hard numbers describing the buzz surrounding the product:

• The number of people who viewed the “Droid eye” video on YouTube was more than half a million. Combined with views of other commercials for Droid X on YouTube, the number was more than a million.
• The @DroidLanding Twitter handle gathered more than 30,000 followers.
• The forum droidxforums.com counted more than 250,000 posts.
• Other success metrics on this dimension would include “mentions” on Twitter, “shares” on Facebook, posts on tech blogs, and comments on tech blogs, though those measures were not readily available to us.

A sub-goal of the campaign was to create awareness of the technical specs of the phone to help move consumers to the consideration step.  On this dimension, the campaign did fairly well, as measured by traffic to droiddoes.com:  The Internet traffic rank of the website went from more than 100,000 to 5,000 in a single day and stayed in the high 20,000s for months in a tech industry where technology quickly goes obsolete.  At its height, this accounted for 0.04% of the total traffic on the Internet (see Traffic Stats here).

In terms of speaking to the targeted demographic, the campaign also did well: The audience for droiddoes.com was skewed towards males aged 18-24 with college educations (see Audience here).

The ultimate goal of the campaign, increasing sales of the device, could be measured in part by sales data.  While this information is not accessible to us, we can guess that sales were excellent as the phone was consistently sold out for months (as noted earlier).  However, it would be difficult to attribute sales numbers directly to this campaign because there was no built-in mechanism for tracking sales through it.  How would Verizon know that what caused a person to walk into their store and buy a Droid X was that they followed @DroidLanding, or that they read about it on tech blogs?  The great sales numbers could have been caused by the rash of Droid X TV advertisements playing at the same time as this campaign.

Recommendations for Campaign Designers

With the intended information pathway leading from followership of @DroidLanding and subsequent viewership of droiddoes.com not actually playing out for many consumers, we considered recommendations for increasing the promotion of the Droid X device’s technical specifications.  While @DroidLanding did tweet tech specs regularly, we found these tweets to have rung false with the main theme of the Twitter handle as an organization warning citizens of escaped machines.  For example, “Droid X shoots in 720p. Which means you can really see the look on your face when you find one” does not convey the same sense of urgency or danger as the other tweets.  Alternatively, @DroidLanding could have tweeted links to videos describing the specs of the device, along with text conveying the videos as “reconnaissance” or “briefing” information.

We also considered other ways of reaching the target demographic of the campaign (males aged 18-30).  The campaign spoke very well to those in the demographic who enjoy sci-fi thriller movies and games and are also tech fanatics, but they comprise only a part of the demographic.  Many of the ads that accompanied the campaign (like this one) attempted to bridge that gap by showing office workers interacting with the phone, but they did not resonate with the younger end of the demographic, whose members are in high school and college.  Instead, the supplemental ads could have included college-age men and featured the phone’s tight integration with Facebook, or the customizability of its live wallpapers.  This could have turned this younger side of the demographic into trend-setters for the Droid X.