Utilizing social media at events such as fundraisers or expos is a no-brainer. Its versatility and potential to have significant impacts on impressions make it a great medium for an event of any size. After all, one of the core functions of a social network is the ability to share one's experience regarding an event. Also, social media allows campaign managers a high level view of the event’s overall reception, almost instantly.

This weekend, we’ll be able to witness just how large scale a company’s social media campaign can run, at one of America’s largest events.Over a hundred million people are expected to tune into this year's Super Bowl [between the New England Patriots and New York Giants]. Of these 100+ million folks, 60% will be online.  This, coupled with the fact that NBC is providing live, online streaming of the game, leads me to believe that this 60% will be watching their social streams and feeds along with the game.

Dubbed the “Second Screen Phenomenon,” advertisers and marketers are recognizing that there is an increasing amount of online usage at events. We humans obviously like to share our experiences, which explains why your social media feed might include many one-line, exclamatory reactions to a game on Sundays. I’m sure I’m not the first Twitter user to have trouble finding noteworthy content on Sunday nights due to the multiple, frequent, “Falcons! NOOO!” or, “Really? Fumble?” tweets.

Coca-Cola plans on tapping into this potential with their new campaign on CokePolarBowl.com.  Here’s a quick summary of what will be going on:

• The website, hosted on Facebook, will feature two polar bears, watching and reacting to the game live.
• Commercials spots throughout the game will direct the audience to the campaign site.
• The stream will also be available on Twitter, ESPN.com, and other ad placements throughout the web.
• The bears’ reactions, which will be shareable via Twitter and Facebook (i.e., retweeting a happy response from the bear that’s a Giants fan), will even be made for the commercials.

With this campaign, Coke will be cashing in on the potential for over 60 million unique impressions in one day. And that, my friend, is how you run a social media campaign.

For a complete rundown of the campaign, read Karlene Lukovitz’ report on Media Post here.

Companies love to say they “go the extra mile” for their customers, a phrase that’s beyond cliché. Worse, so many questions go unasked when this is said – how much effort is in the “extra?”   Does a single mile really matter if you have already gone 400 “miles” in a project?  Why does the statement focus on quantity over quality?

At Exsilio Solutions, we don’t focus on the amount of “miles” – we do what is best for our clients. In our experience, the client doesn’t care if you planned and only completed a certain number of “miles;” they care that their project was successful, on time, and exceeded their expectations at every step. 

For example, our project managers are not simply communication pipelines between our tactical teams and the client, managing schedules with just to check a milestone off the list. We expect and train our project managers to go deeper and comprehensively grasp what the requirements are, and completely understand literally every step it takes to get it done. Gathering requirements means not just writing down what you’re told, but listening to the business problem, and shaping the solution to ensure the most success. “Solutions” is a part of our company name for a reason – we’re actively solving challenges, not just building software or marketing campaigns based on what’s heard. In this way, our project managers trend toward hybrid project/program managers by industry definition, but we believe our customers are served better by a partner who can collaborate at any level of detail, with any audience. Project results and client feedback consistently confirm this is a sound approach.

Another example is our creative department. We humbly believe we have one of the best creative teams around. Not only are they skilled graphic artists, but more importantly they put down their digital pens to listen and think critically about business requirements before they create their first pixel. Pencils to paper and markers to whiteboards are how they tackle business challenges first, designing a solution that works to not only meet the customer’s needs, but be accomplishable by the tools available to our developers. With our enterprise application projects, we’re often solving complex user experience interaction challenges. It’s not unusual for our team to discuss a feature at length, create presentation-ready wireframes, and through this process discover a better way of doing it, and then reproduce the entire wireframe to match. The first solution would have worked, and would have technically met the requirements, but it didn’t meet or exceed the spirit of the business problem, so we felt it had to be redone to produce the best result.

This is the pursuit of excellence at Exsilio Solutions. We seek it out and instill it in our team. We apply the principle to our projects with the simple belief that if we do our absolute best for the client, shared success will be self-fulfilling, and the momentum will carry into future projects and a strong working partnership. If you’ve had the chance to work with us before, we hope you agree. If you’re considering Exsilio Solutions for your next project, we look forward to showing you our best.