Client: Sony BMG

To strategically target the world of social networks such as Facebook, Zomba approached SplashCast to leverage its video application platform for their artists, including pop-stars Justin Timberlake and Chris Brown. These initial SplashCast applications were huge successes, virally spreading within the Facebook community and across to MySpace. In less than one month, the Chris Brown SplashCast application had been installed on over 40,000 individual users’ pages. In the following months, the application was then imbedded in over 75,000 unique web pages. The Justin Timberlake distribution numbers mirrored these same results. Zomba suddenly had a direct line of communication to hundreds of thousands of fans and their friends.

Word of these initial successes started to spread throughout Sony BMG’s groups of labels and within 6 weeks, Columbia Records, RCA, Sony Legacy, and Epic Records were all deploying SplashCast applications in Facebook and MySpace for their artists. In two months, SplashCast had created over 25 artist applications, including Britney, Alicia Keys, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen.

Beyond pure promotion, Sony BMG has been particularly interested in leveraging SplashCast to generate new revenue streams through rich media advertising. With the traffic that Sony’s SplashCast applications are currently receiving, introducing advertising into the applications could generate tens of millions of dollars annually.

SplashCast has enabled Sony BMG to reach, engage, and communicate directly with their target consumers like no other marketing service had been done before. Looking to the future, SplashCast will enable Sony to earn significant new revenue by monetizing their content within these networks.

"When Facebook launched their developer platform, we started looking for a quick, turn-key strategy in order to establish a major presence on user profiles. SplashCast made it simple for us. The technology was already developed and easy to incorporate. The features of the SplashCast player make it extremely interactive for the fans of our artists. After seeing success on Facebook, we embedded our artist SplashCast players on the artist's MySpace profiles, which allows for chatting between fans on both social networks."

David Bell, Director of Digital Marketing at Zomba Label Group, a division of Sony BMG