Shawn Gold is SVP, head of marketing and content for MySpace.com, an online social network with over 80 million current registrants, with two million more joining each week . He comes to MySpace with a 13 year history in digital marketing and content strategy. Previous to MySpace, Shawn was publisher of WeblogsInc (now an AOL company), the largest publisher of professional blogs on the web with over 8 million monthly readers.
Jodi Harris: MySpace has come a long way in a short time, morphing from a place to meet like-minded friends to an entire living community where personal, promotional and business interests are conveyed. To what do you attribute this rapid growth?
Shawn Gold: I would have to say it comes down to empathy. We created a platform to facilitate the core human needs of individual expression and identifying with others, and then we listened to our members-- their opinions and actions drive the development of the site.
Sure, it is easy to say that our success is based on listening to the users-- every marketer says that. But that really is the secret sauce. Quite simply, we listen to what they want and build out a feature set that empowers them to execute their social lives more efficiently. When we see unique usage patterns in the network, especially around popular culture, we add new tools that help the community to grow.
Harris: Speaking of popular culture, the movie-related profiles that we've been seeing more and more on MySpace seem like a natural progression from the site's early role as a place for performers to promote their music. What makes a movie-based profile work as a marketing vehicle?
Gold: People connect around common interests, and popular culture is one of the key ways to define a relationship in an engaging and fun way. So movies are a natural extension of the community.
Additionally, the foundation of movie marketing is based on word-of-mouth communication, and injecting movie marketing messages in a networked culture like MySpace can add exceptional efficiencies to that process. Until recently, we've mostly marketed to the customer in the plural as far as consumer clusters, market segments and households. Through MySpace, movie marketers do what we affectionately call "mass roots marketing" by communicating with individuals and connecting on a one-to-one basis, millions of people at a time.
Harris: How closely does MySpace work with studio marketers to develop campaigns? What are the challenges and opportunities of working with film studios to offer new MySpace content?
Gold: We work very closely with the studios on movie marketing projects. We are partners in their success, and it is our job to help them innovate and credibly insert their messages into the network. The challenges are relative to the entertainment property itself. But the goal is always to translate the film's value proposition into a viable execution.
Harris:What advice do you have for studio marketers who want to leverage consumer involvement through MySpace or other avenues?
Gold: We help them to understand why our members are on the site and help movie marketers contribute to that experience. As an overall concept, studio marketers need to add value to the community with their marketing by facilitating expression and connection in the community. They need to give people a reason to talk about their film and make it easy for that conversation to take place.
For the movie clients we work with, MySpace enhances their traditional branding strategy. What's unique about MySpace is that we create "brand programming". Where the traditional movie advertising is a brand veneer, (tag lines, print ads, 30-second spots), MySpace strives to offer our members a deeper experience of the property. We create profiles or branded environments that extend the movies value proposition through consumer experience and utility.
Next: Is MySpace experiencing growing pains as it extends its community?
