Panasonic is associated with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which encourages the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world. In order to document these world heritage sites, UNESCO launched a photo sharing site called ‘Our Place’. Twenty ‘Our Place’ professional photographers are currently using Panasonic Lumix cameras to photograph over 800 official world heritage sites. It was being associated with this project that inspired Panasonic to launch their own photo sharing community.
To coincide with the launch of its eleven new models of Lumix cameras in 2007, Panasonic decided to use the social networking craze as a platform to attract new customers to its product range. Its new photo sharing community ‘My Place’ was designed to subtly increase brand awareness of Lumix cameras and encourage the association between Panasonic and photography.
Commenting on the My Place community, Geoff Steven, pro photographer and director of Our Place, says, "My Place is about the skills of capturing in a photograph, the essence of a site, by which the general viewer can recognise it as a place of special significance to the photographer. The challenge is to try and convey a feeling of what the place means, as well as what it looks like."
Explaining what Panasonic hoped to achieve with the launch of My Place, Aman Matharu, e-commerce specialist at Panasonic says “Our main objectives were to increase brand awareness of Lumix cameras by creating emotion and brand affinity; our ultimate goal being for people to associate Panasonic with photography.”
In order to launch the site successfully, Panasonic realised it needed the services of an outsourced moderating company to ensure that My Place could operate smoothly. A large volume of users were anticipated and the team did not have the time or resources to control user generated content and ensure that it met all of their specifications.
It was crucial that the moderation company Panasonic appointed could be trusted with the large task at hand. My Place required a professional agency that would be thorough and able to provide a high level of resource and moderation on a daily basis; it would also have to respond to each new piece of content within 24 hours. Chat Moderators was appointed in August 2007 due to its extensive background and expertise with other high profile organisations.
Matharu describes the complexities of the task they assigned to Chat Moderators “We wanted My Place to be an interactive community and to attract as many people as possible. My Place is essentially a competition where users and professional photographers rate photos on a weekly, monthly and annual basis. The photographs must be of UK landscapes, not peoples’ homes, and they must not be enhanced by photo editing programs in any way. Chat Moderators was recruited to judge the acceptability of each entry, excluding any material that violates the conditions of the competition. That said, unusual and innovative ways of depicting special places is encouraged, and Chat Moderators is also the judge of this.”
Matharu continues, “As well as ensuring that the competition runs smoothly, we were also concerned about being associated with potentially brand damaging or abusive material. Chat Moderators moderates the website daily and takes down any abusive images or textual descriptions as soon as they appear.”
My Place has now been operating for over a year and due to its popularity and success, budget has just been approved to continue this into next year. Panasonic has been able to measure the success of My Place by the amount of customers taking advantage of the money-off vouchers awarded as prizes. There has been a sufficient rise in sales across the range of Lumix cameras and as a result, Panasonic is continuing to heavily advertise My Place as part of its marketing strategy. Each Panasonic Lumix camera now contains a flyer advertising My Place in the hope to attract keen photographers to the community.
Reflecting on Chat Moderators’ role in the success of My Place, Matharu explains, “Without Chat Moderators we simply wouldn’t be able to run the community, as it needs to be so heavily resourced in terms of time and effort to cope with the amount of user content it receives on a monthly basis. Trust is an important factor in our relationship with Chat Moderators - we require the team to be an extended part of the Panasonic team, to judge all entries to our specifications. As a result we have a very strong relationship, and one that we hope will continue as we head into 2009.”
Chat Moderators is a service that takes the management and risk out of allowing user-generated content (UGC) to be published online. Chat Moderators monitors all forms of UGC that are published on a website's community such as discussion areas, forums, chat rooms, picture albums, comment areas, blogs, social network profiles and more. Allowing UGC online can bring many benefits to a business’ brand and reputation provided it is managed responsibly. Other services provided by Chat Moderators include consultancy, community management and insight reporting.
Chat Moderators is technology neutral and uses real people to undertake moderation work seven days a week from one hour a day upwards, depending on requirements. Clients include Amnesty, BBC, Bauer, Blue Cross, EMI, Friends Reunited, Glaxo, HM Government, Iris, MTV, National Magazines, Orange, Panasonic, Reed Elsevier, Sony, Transport for London, Vodafone and Waitrose. For more information visit: www.chatmoderators.com and www.targetedmoderation.com