When battery maker Energizer wanted to add a community element to the marketing for its Energi to Go line of portable power devices (think mobile chargers for your iPod or cell phone), they could have built a stand-alone site or added a forum to the main Energizer site. Instead, they opted to go where the customers are.
Working with a new community activation division of interactive agency MEC Interaction, Energi to Go went looking for the places on the Internet where people are already talking about music and power.
They finally landed on www.Pandora.com, an Internet radio site that takes users’ favorite songs and “programs” other similar tunes and artists. The site lets users set up accounts, build as many as 100 “channels” around particular songs or bands and return to that programming any time they want to discover more new music. Users can pay a monthly fee for the service, but by far the majority of Pandora’s 3.3 million users rely on the free ad-supported version.
Energizer didn’t want to just rent real estate from Pandora with ads, says Jordan Hirsch, group director for MECi. Instead, they offered to build and sponsor a community discussion forum within Pandora called “Take the Power Back.” The forum offers a number of discussion threads, including an area to share Pandora playlists, a section for concert reviews and a relationship-advice channel called “I Will Survive.”
Most pertinent to Energi to Go, the Pandora forum also offers a “Portable Power” thread aimed primarily at professional DJs, who often carry their music repertoire in an iPod these days. Energizer has committed to sponsor the board for two months, with an option to continue after Jan. 7.
“We went to Pandora with a channel they didn’t already have, backed up with media they didn’t need to create,” Hirsch says. “They benefit from a new interaction for their users, and Energizer gets to learn from the conversations around power and music.”
