When I saw that the blogging site LiveJournal was rolling out Sponsored Communities, I thought “there goes the neighborhood.” Unlike other blogging sites, Livejournal is intensely community-oriented. The feature that really sets it apart as a social networking/blogging hybrid is the multi-user special-interest Communities, which range from topics as general as “New Yorkers” to those as specific as “Polyamorous Pagan Vegans.”
I was pleasantly surprised to see that the current sponsored community, for the movie “Blood and Chocolate,” is doing several things right. First and foremost, it’s not LonelyGirl15: they come right out and ask you to think of the site as a Livejournal-based roleplaying game where users can interact with someone writing in the voice of the main character.
Secondly, they make the best use of the medium with daily journal entries, and got a good writer: she really sounds like a young girl struggling with a secret. But even better than her entries are her responses to the comments left in her journal, and the way she references them in subsequent entries – exactly the way a real Livejournaller would.
The site’s writers also have fun with it, bringing in other characters from the movie and having the main character question their validity. (At one point she writes: “Someone has to be messing with me… that guy wouldn’t even know how to turn on a computer!”) Aside from that, they don’t seem to have generated any fake comments, which is tempting when you’re trying to solicit user interaction. I clicked on the journals of some of the responders because I’m suspicious like that, and they seem to be real people.
Finally, they chose the right site to promote their movie. “Blood and Chocolate” promises to be a Goth-y flick about a teen girl werewolf… and Livejournal is full of teen Goths. With 422 members who have joined the community, another 574 watching, and about 30 regularly leaving comments, “Blood and Chocolate” has found a captive audience. The question, of course, is whether those numbers will translate into increased box office sales – but in terms of creating an engaging experience within a distrustful market, I think the creators of this community have done a great job.
Go to http://community.livejournal.com/mydarkestsecret/ to see if you agree or disagree.
Anna Hecker
Strategists & Planners