Ckrush Social

I’m about 2 weeks behind on PR emails in my inbox, but I’m slowly working my way through them! One I received way back in April was from Eliot at 5W Pr, about their client Ckrush.

The Company

Ckrush is a media group that manage sites, including LiveMansion.com (actors and entertaiment), AudioStreet.net (music) and MixStreet.net(DJs) . They also produce content such as films.

They’ve launched a new group, called Ckrush Social, which is offering brands the opportunity to ‘leverage’ the Ckrush communities.

The Offering

The idea behind the new offering is to set up new social networks for their clients “by utilizing a core group of one million registered users across three of their own social media properties,”. They guarantee the client a core group of 25k registered users to kick-start a network. The example they give is for Hard Rock Cafe San Diego:

Ckrush’s emerging band social media property, Audiostreet.net launched an online battle of the bands where the Grand Prize was opening for the Black Eyed Peas at the grand opening party for the hotel. Over the course of 4 months, close to 5,000 bands signed up for the competition and reached over 15 million targeted consumers who participated in the program.

That of course is on the existing property not on a new one for a brand and is a contest, which always has different dynamics.

What do I think?

Looking first at their existing properties, they may have over a million registered users, but activity on the site, in terms of a community, seems to be low. Taking a look at the forums, they are very low activity for that number of members. In fact, the most active thread appears to be one complaining about the contests. As a resource for new music, it looks pretty good (although both music sites have the same content as far as I can see, just arranged differently), but as a community/social network where people are interacting, then it seems quiet.

The success of the new offering will depend on how it is used. With details of 1million people, they should be able to provide brands with a subset of people that are interested in what they are offering (as long as it is music or entertainment). However, the lack of details in the profile pages I perused makes this more difficult. They’re also not asking permission to cross-promote other brands in the sign-ups, which is definitely bad practice. As a member, I’d be slightly annoyed to get invites for new networks not having given permission.

As a client, I should be less concerned with having 25k users the first day and more concerned with how I’m going to interact with them, the things I , or the agency, will be putting in place to add value to the group, making it active and viable. Ckrush are correct – getting people to join a group is hard, but it’s made so much easier if there is a great reason for people wanting to join, wanting to stay and wanting to interact.

The Pitch

The pitch was targeted correctly, well, if it wasn’t I’d have talked only about the pitch and not about the company. But is was not targeted at how I write, there being no links or content that I can add to the blog post. There’s an offer to follow up and get access to the company if I need more information.

What is always interesting to me is the way that professional publications usually just recycle the press release, such as this report from CNN; for some reason, I expect more from that brand.