Here’s a sneak peek at our May 20 issue
Justin Bourne, an editor at TheScore.com, raises his right hand and salutes his webcam. “Hello internet,” he says, greeting the audience tuned in to The Score’s Google Hangout on Jan. 11, 2013.
The big ticket is Milan Lucic, the Vancouver-born left winger for the Boston Bruins, who is joining the Hangout, a video chatting tool, from his home in Boston. It has been just five days since the NHL lockout ended and fans are dying to talk about the upcoming season. Over 23 minutes, Lucic and three Score writers discuss everything from what the NHL can do for fans to make up for the lockout to Canadian Thanksgiving and Lucic’s wife, who is pregnant with the couple’s first child.
Watching the video on YouTube two months later feels almost voyeuristic, like peering in on a web chat between four college buddies. There’s no perfect camera lighting or slow-motion replays. The tool is simple: it plays feeds from each of the participants’ webcams with the current speaker in a larger featured spot, almost like an online broadcast of a group Skype session.
Media brands and publishers like The Score are increasingly turning to Google Hangouts as an editorial tool and way to reach a level of engagement that’s difficult to achieve with traditional media. Launched in 2011, Hangouts hit a turning point in May 2012 when Google debuted Hangouts “On The Air,” a new function that broadcasts the chats live through YouTube, Google+ or an embed on another site, making it easier to use the tool for product launches, chats with celebrities, CEOs and notable figures or to solve customer service problems. Since then, they’ve been used by a slew of big name media brands, including Wired, Glamour, National Geographic, The New York Times and The Globe and Mail. To further involve readers, publishers often request fan questions on social media or invite select readers to join the Hangout.
“What we’re seeing in terms of trends is publishers using Google+ to drive engagement on content,” says Gretchen Howard, global head of sales and strategy for Google+. “You can take a topic or an article that has been written and then interested parties can have a conversation and discussion about it. It’s a way to augment the content they already have and go deeper with their customer base.”
Though the tool is currently free, brands and publishers often purchase paid media on YouTube and Google’s search display network to promote their Hangouts, giving Google further reason to encourage branded Hangouts. Their popularity is also a major social coup for Google, which struggled through three attempts at launching a social network (Google Buzz, Google Friend Connect and Orkut) before Google+.
Unilever, L'Oreal and Glamour's Google Chat
One of the challenges for publishers is turning Hangouts into a revenue driver. Likewise, brands are trying to figure out how tap into their publishing partners’ editorial talents to create more engaging, effective Hangouts. On April 8, 2013, Glamour magazine launched a series of nine Hangouts in partnership with a group of advertisers including Unilever’s Suave, L’Oreal and SlimFast. Glamour is treating each Hangout as a piece of branded content, with products incorporated into tutorials and discussions. In one, a blogger makes hair accessories for models styled by Suave stylists.
Some publishers may be eager to cash in on the merger of editorial and branded content but others, like Sean Stanleigh, editor of The Globe and Mail’s Report on Small Business, say new technologies like Hangouts should still adhere to journalism’s age old church/state divide. He’d consider sponsorship for the small business-themed Hangouts he hosts twice a month, but wouldn’t integrate a brand into the content. “At the beginning or the end you might see their logo on screen, brought to you by, but I wouldn’t want them to have influence over what it is I’m talking about,” he says.
Other media players, like The Score, are more open to a new, hybrid model of branded editorial Hangouts. Sean Keay, senior social media specialist at The Score, says he’s happy to integrate sports advertisers into The Score’s Hangouts. “We’re in an industry that’s run off advertising so any time you can integrate an advertiser into something and something you can be proud of with a name on it, a Gatorade or Under Armour, I think it’s a winning formula,” he says.
For more insight on how brands are using social media to drive ad revenues and audience engagement, subscribe to Marketing.
Our latest issue, featuring an in-depth conversation with ad legend Sir John Hegarty, will be available for free on newsstands at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
