BumeBox Drives Engagement at MAGIC Trade Show via Twitter & Mobile Photo Apps

MAGIC’s BumeBox Site

Having my pulse on the forefront of digital and technology, I’m constantly asked what technologies have my attention for the fashion brands and retailers to use to enhance the social experience on the web with customers. A few months ago, Jon Fahrner (formerly of Zappos and Moxsie) launched BumeBox, a social media platform that mixes twitter, video and photo content into community experiences. At MAGIC this past week, we decided to use Bumebox to power the social conversations surrounding all MAGIC trade shows on both ends of the Las Vegas strip. Yes, Mandalay Bay and the entire Las Vegas Convention Center.

Twitter Explodes Over MAGIC Trade Show

On Wednesday, August 24th, 2011:

• The #MAGICLV hashtag broke into the most talked about topics (#8) globally on Twitter on two separate occasions (verified by third part sources).
• There were over 5600 tweets with the hashtag #MAGICLV in 60 hours, and over 7000 tweets market place wide in 72 hours.
• Over 14.5 Million Twitter accounts were exposed to #MAGICLV.
• Equivalent t0 $290,457 spend for paid placement on Twitter.

I’ve never been afraid to test a new technology, and I must say, BumeBox is going to move social conversations on the web and convert them to sales – making conversations, COMMERCE.

FACTS ON BUMEBOX

• BumeBox (www.bumebox.com) is a social publishing platform that creates customized, social experiences for realtime events and promotions.
• By offering branding, customization and engagement tools, BumeBox is helping businesses bridge the gap between the social web and their core business goals.
• BumeBox is announcing three major partner initiatives:
  • MAGIC: As the official social media partner for MAGIC, BumeBox will let anyone experience the world’s most influential fashion event in real-time through a fully-branded Twitter contest. The event goes from Aug. 22 through Aug. 24 and the contest will engage the MAGIC community via a real-time photostream and allow everyone to get into the action from home.
  • HeyDay Footwear: Last month, BumeBox hosted a celebrity tweet event to attract followers and generate sales. Through Heyday’s list of 3,000 Twitter followers, the BumeBox “Celeb Party” brought in more than 400 mentions and yielded more than 2.5 million impressions in just one hour.
  • Universal Sports: In September, BumeBox is powering the Universal Sports’ real-time social module for the Rugby World Cup, allowing viewers to tune in on exclusive content and interact with the teams and with other fans. The 2007 event had an estimated television viewing audience of 4 billion. This year’s event has the potential to be the most tweeted sporting event to date.
• With BumeBox, businesses will have access to:
  • Social Integration – Create a viral environment as your followers join the conversation; attract new participants and potential customers.
  • Branding — Complete brand customization with just a couple clicks; create an environment that consumers will view as an extension of your website.
  • Commerce — Enable purchases within the platform; make it easy for customers to buy on-site with one click.
  • BEST FEATURE: Analytics – Optimize your social media strategy through valuable intelligence based on BumeBox’s proprietary analytics. Full Twitter integration, customized branding, commerce tools and proprietary analytics, BumeBox provides any business with realtime experiences that bring followers down the conversion funnel

  

WHY BRANDS SHOULD CARE

• Social followers for Fortune 500 companies have doubled in the past year,* but no existing platforms let companies roll out content, generate sales and engage with followers simultaneously.
• Real-time media participation increased 20 percent in 2010.* As more consumer hours are spent on the social web, companies need to react in realtime and deliver the content that their viewers want.
• There are now more than 1.4 billion Tweets per week. Sifting through that content is time consuming and often yields little value. Unlike other social platforms that are cluttered and inundated with content, BumeBox offers an on-site, branded and organized experience that is organic and can easily go viral.

“Companies are seeing extremely rapid community growth across the board and they are looking for a way to limit friction between the social networks and a branded social experience — particularly with Twitter.

BumeBox frames real-time social interaction around branded content in an understandable way that harnesses social velocity and the power of peer influence. Now companies can efficiently transform followers into consumers and align social strategy with core company goals. With proprietary analytics, we also provide the capability to optimize their social strategy ongoing.” – Jon Fahrner, CEO, BumeBox

Disclosure: MAGIC/Advanstar Communications is client of my consultancy WHY THIS WAY. Bumebox was social media partner for the August 2011 show in Las Vegas. All results disclosed have client approval and have been verified by independent, third part sources.