Ok….I’ll just get this out of the way. I went to the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular Show the other night with my family and friends. What can I say, when it comes to Christmas I love all this stuff!

Well, soon as we walked into the Patriot Center my daughter and her friend noticed a Capital One (the event sponsor) floor display with several attractive women offering to have a picture taken with the Rockettes, for FREE! WOW…these girls were excited. Now, the Rockettes were actually nowhere in site. This was the say, “virtual Rockettes? It was just a display and background with a place for participants to stand so when they superimposed the Rockettes image it all looked good.

After shooting the pic, the attendants of the display gave us a card with a unique code and instructions for how to retrieve the photo online within 72 hours. I started thinking, this is going to be very cool. I knew where this was headed. Think about it. A few years ago all event sponsor could do with and event marketing program like this is put the picture up on a website for someone to download. Maybe order a print online (that costs money!). With the power of social media marketing applications and easy to share functionality, this was a completely different story.

Capital One did not disappoint. We put our code in and the picture looked great. Very fun. Even better, they had share, email, print and save (for Christmas card maybe) buttons all around that picture to make it viral. BTW, we can also put that pic on a newly minted Capital One card which I am still considering.

You guessed it, this picture will be all over Facebook profiles for two families within hours of this post…and that exposure for Capital One is only from one picture taken at the event. Did I mention their was a line to get the picture taken?

I am not sure if the holidays have me carried away or not, but this was a great application of social media and event marketing that worked really well for Capital One. The leverage and exposure for Capital One was huge. I would love to see the numbers.

Here are some keys to the success of this event/social media marketing program:

• Strong reason for sharing- This is special holiday event for the family that people love to memorialize. Combine that with the celebrity power of the picture with the Rockettes, and this is something people want to share and talk about.
• Immediate action- Operationally this worked great. We had the pic available within 48 hours. It would have been great if they gave us a heads up instead of making us check every time.
• Impactful presence at the event to engage people- The location, feel and people that engaged attendees at this event made it fun and inviting. I have seen programs like this go bad because they have uninterested attendants engaging with potential participants or the display looked lame.
• Online interfaces very easy to use- The UI and functionality was dead simple to use and also very easy to share the photo and have fun with it.
• FREE- Free works great to engage your target. Give them something valuable and they will like you. We use this technique a lot with information products and education. This was a great use of a free product to engage the target customer group and generate leads.

One aspect of the campaign I don’t understand is why Capital One didn’t get any contact information from participants. This really was a branding campaign, and I am sure it worked well in that regard. But I wonder if their was a missed opporutnity to get name and email addresses in this process. For example, get the name and email address of dad or mom when the pic is taken and send them a reminder email to pick up the picture when it was ready. Great reason (to get the email) and you can send them follow up auto responders that tie to that event…so them what the credit card would look like with the picture that was taken and get them to buy if for holiday shopping?

It’s ok…share your pictures and stories about event and social media marketing!