This is a great example of how to do a social media led advertising campaign. Vodaphone’s  “Who Killed Summer.”

The concept is that you can follow a bunch of contestants across Europe through a  9 week stint of parties and raves. The last one contestant standing after  this 2 month party binge, and the one that  can hunt down the biggest celebrities wins. What Vodaphone didn’t tell the contestants though was: as time goes on, they actually have to work for Vodafone to organize the parties they are going to attend. The whole campaign becomes a reality show featured on the youtube channel.

the campaign is described as,

“Who Killed Summer? is a groundbreaking multi-platform drama set against the backdrop of an online reality show.”

Strategically, this seems like fairly well thought-through and planned campaign in terms of  its awareness and reach. The target audience relevance, and the multi-platform spread ( Youtube being present on so many mobile devices, net connected boxes, as well as your PC). Overall the content, drama, and everything else come together. Here is the downside. At this time the Youtube channel has only gotten 400+ views so far. This might be due to a lack of user participation elements. With out audience interaction, it’s hard for this to compete with actual reality shows. They might have had a higher view level, if they had shot 3 to 6 pilot episodes that ran like infomercials in Europe. Hook your audience with what looks and acts like passive TV content with linkages to more in depth content on the Youtube channel Etc.

So far, the site traffic rank is around 30,000 in the UK, and 90,000 in Germany. According to the viral video network, the average time on site is under 2 minutes. 40% of traffic comes from and goes to facebook and twitter.