Case Studies: How 5

Brands are Making

Their Sites Social

Case Studies: How 5 Brands Are Making Their Sites Social Page 1

Intuit’s Turbo Tax: Turning Customers into Marketers The Challenge

TurboTax is a key property for

Intuit - it’s a billion dollar business

in the 15-week period following

Jan. 1st every year. Customers

are very passionate, but they

need to be re-won annually.

Intuit's TurboTax product has had

over 20 million customers, over

50% of them are using Facebook

and they have, on average, 150

friends. They obviously like to

share, and most certainly have

an opinion about their tax

reparation experience. But how

to turn those opinions and

networks into action?

Turning Customers into Salespeople

What to do next was obvious, says Seth Greenberg, director of national media buying and digital marketing.

―They can become our biggest salesforce.‖

To do so, this year the Mountain View, CA-based company began using Gigya's social sharing platform to

share customer reviews on sites like Facebook.

This winter, Intuit launched the ―Friend Like You‖ area of the TurboTax site, where users can narrow down the

various selects of dozens of profile types to find others in their particular tax situation — new homeowner, new

parent, etc. — or find people they know on social networks, also powered by the Gigya Platform. As folks leave

reviews on the site after finishing their own taxes, they're encouraged to share that through Facebook or Twitter,

which is then promoted through the newsfeeds.

Driving Results

Over 50,000 people shared reviews. The review sharing has worked more as a prospecting tool for TurboTax, as

over 75% of people who viewed the reviews and clicked through were new customers.

―We're learning that people are four times more likely to click on a shared review than a banner ad,‖ he says,

noting reviews are filtered by recency, rather than as good or bad. ―You can sort by lowest rated, which I like

because it shows we're transparent.‖

The next step will be looking at other ways to share — say, perhaps taking a group of reviews from people who

recently sold a house and promoting that bucket of reviews via a real estate site, says Greenberg. ―It would be

great to let the customers sell our product and get the heck out of the way.‖

Case Studies: How 5 Brands Are Making Their Sites Social Page 2

Fox News Insider: Using Identity to Power Real,

Connected Community

The Challenge: Creating Credible Community

Fox News, knows that sharing opinions and comments is an important element of any vibrant news community.

They also understand that enabling readers to discuss and share content using established online identities

gives credibility to those opinions, credibility that is necessary for optimal sharing and participation.

FoxNewsInsider.com wanted their readership to be able to participate with their identity of choice – whether

that identity was established on a social network, webmail, or OpenID provider.

Optimizing Connectivity

The Fox News Insider team recognized that Gigya’s technology would enable them to optimally implement

and manage the large and growing number of identity options they needed to provide their user base.

Through the Gigya Social Optimization Platform, Fox News Insider enables users to register with their choice of

Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Yahoo, Google, or AOL identity. Registered users can then contribute comments

and share content with friends from the Fox News Insider community and beyond.

Maximizing Participation

Fox News Insider is driving social participation by not only offering their readership choice, but also by helping

them to understand the value or registering. Site statistics tell the story: after adding Gigya’s social optimization

platform for social registration and sharing, page views increased in the month of July by 20% and global reach

increased by 40%.

Case Studies: How 5 Brands Are Making Their Sites Social Page 3

TNT Overtime Extra on NBA.COM: Making Online

Viewing Social

The Challenge: Engaging NBA Fans on TNT.tv Online Sports fans are social. Whether they are watching a game at a stadium or a bar, fans chat about players and

stats, high-five each other and cheer together when the momentum swings. To bring these ―real-world‖

activities online, Turner Sports implemented Gigya’s Live Chat Plugin to make it easy for fans to engage with

friends from the top three social networks while watching the NBA Eastern Conference Finals on TNT.tv.

Driving Engagement, Viral Promotion through Social Activity

Using Gigya’s Live Chat Plugin, Turner became the first TV network to take an agnostic approach, letting users

sign into any or all of the top three social networks: Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. "We were going to allow

the Facebook guy to chat with the MySpace guy to chat with the Twitter guy," said Matthew Hong, VP-general

manager of digital at Turner Sports. Fan messages about the game drove engagement on the TNT.tv site, and

were also published to the newsfeeds of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter users, effectively promoting the event

real-time to their networks of friends and driving traffic back to TNT.com.

Demonstrable Fan Engagement

The results clearly demonstrate the value of making

social features accessible to a broad spectrum of users.

According to Turner, ‖We were pleased with the better

user experience and higher engagement. The early

return is it gives people an opportunity to participate in

our content.”

Participation stats: Unique Users by Network

MySpace: 40%

Facebook: 48%

Twitter: 12%

Messages by Network

MySpace: 53%

Facebook: 35%

Twitter: 12%

Case Studies: How 5 Brands Are Making Their Sites Social Page 4

American Eagle Style Shop: Using Viral Tools to Drive

New Customers

The Challenge: Creating a Social Retail Experience

AE Style Shop, built by Lemonade, enables American Eagle shoppers to create their own AE storefront to show

off their favorite AE styles, and to participate in AEREWARD$, a loyalty program that gives points to customers

each time a friend purchases something through their shop. What the shop needed were viral tools that would

fuel word-of-mouth growth and distribution for the AE Style Shops and provide the opportunity for American

Eagle Outfitters fans to share their passion for fashion with friends.

Turning Shoppers into Evangelists

The Gigya Share Plugin turns shoppers into marketers by giving them tools to share their favorite items of

clothing and opinions with friends. Each item in the shop has a large ―Share‖ button below the photo that

makes it easy to shoppers to share with friends on multiple social networks in a single click.

Driving Social Referrals and Participation

AE Style Shop users have shared their favorite items with friends on multiple social networks, including

Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn and MySpace, driving socially-referred shoppers back to AE Style

Shop from those social networks.

Case Studies: How 5 Brands Are Making Their Sites Social Page 5

SnagFilms: Adding Social Context in Just One Day

The Challenge

SnagFilms.com compiles the world’s most compelling documentaries from both professional and first-time

filmmakers and makes them available to a widespread audience.

The SnagFilms.com viewers are a fanatical community who are always looking for ways to find new films and

interact with others that share the same interests. Snag Films was looking for way to create a social community

feel on their site to entice users to watch and share more of their extensive library, without a major investment in

development.

Highlighting An Active Community

SnagFilms launched the Gigya Activitiy Feed Plugin on their homepage, enabling visitors who sign in to the site

with a Facebook, Google, Twitter, MySpace, Yahoo, LinkedIn, AOL or Windows Live identity to see what films

their friends on any of those social networks are watching on snagfilms.com, and to let any visitor to the site see

what the community is watching right now. As the Activity Feed continuously updates in real-time, people stay

engaged with the site longer and the social context encourages them to interact with the content.

High Impact for Low Investment

The activity feed was the perfect solution for adding social context from and for snagfilms.com users across

multiple social networks, with virtually no development effort. As Jeff Douglas, Sr. Product Manager for

SnagFilms.com says:

―Gigya's activity feed is a great way to add a sense of community and activity to our site, highlighting on our

home page the documentaries the other fans are watching right now. Just as important, we had the activity

feed live in only a day.‖