Website: Bebo.com
Strategy verdict: 5 out of 5
Remember Lonelygirl15? The young girl looking at you with her big eyes explaining her life, with details on boys and her oppressive home life, generated more than 50 million views, achieved international news coverage and even maintained momentum after it came out that it was a commercial campaign and not just a voyeur's wet dream. But what was it promoting? No, I don't know either.
So now from the same production house comes KateModern. This time on Bebo instead of MySpace, but with a different twist. Firstly, it's an open and honest commercially funded venture. Secondly, the "product placement" is a little more blatant (for example "it's Orange Wednesday tonight ...").
Before I saw it, I thought that this approach goes against the whole spirit of social networking (multi-way interactions between groups of friends), but after one episode I was addicted. The product mentions are subtle enough not to be too annoying, but it is the content that is the winner. It is engaging, addictive and, this time, honest. Think of Bebo as the distribution channel, rather than a media type (a cinema rather than a magazine) and suddenly it makes sense.
On 5 August, KateModern had 23,000 views and by 8 August it had 196,130 views - not quite Coronation Street levels, but significant nevertheless. My expectation is that this will continue to grow in a typically viral manner if the content maintains its engaging nature. It could be big - check it out.
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