Inspired by their longstanding partnership with the NCAA, the brand’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) team sought a way to re-invest in college athletes and students for a meaningful impact. As LG Electronics sought to create real dialogue with next generation audiences, the company knew it had to tap into the nature of modern community. This meant delivering on several levels of connection: the kind of one-to-one engagement driven by an IRL experience, amplified via social for a one-to-many experience – providing a meaningful interaction that has legs beyond the in-person event.
LG charged us with creating a social and in-person campaign to build equity within the GenZ/X demographic as "pre-purchasers.” The right engagement would resonate with Millennials and Gen Z, and solidify the brand as a leader beyond the home – to invite new audiences and strengthen awareness of the brand.
Objectives that would characterize a successful engagement would include:
• IMPRESSIONS/ AWARENESS
• INTERACTION
LG brought four-episode podcast series, Transparent Conversations, to student-athletes and their supporters across the country – to power important dialogues about mental health and wellness within athletics and academia. The tour comprised live-to-tape panel discussions, recorded at various college campuses and campus-adjacent locations. The series explored a variety of topics close to student-athlete’s minds and experiences to showcase LG’s commitment to mental health and wellness. The program was built with strategic partnerships around three key elements:
• Credible Expertise: LG Identified and partnered with former elite athlete turned clinician and mental health advocate, Prim Siripipat, to act as host/moderator. Lending a consistent voice and credibility to the program, she brought in members of her hyper-connected network and existing mental health podcast channel to host and distribute series content.
• Resonant Partnership: The series hosted four-person round-table panels at notable University campuses, with a diverse group of relevant and noteworthy guests to contribute to the conversation – each with their own connection to athletics, mental health and student-athlete demographic. Panels included former and current student-athletes, elite/Olympic champions, high-profile athletics administrators, clinicians and mental health advocates.
• Evergreen Content: In combination with contracted social content from hosts and panelists, as well as BTS photo and video, LG created a broad spectrum of content around the series, including co-branded teaser content to drive traffic to listen and visit the custom created LG Transparent Conversations landing page, centralizing the tour details.
To drive conversation, and create a truly noteworthy branded experience, the series episodes were filmed and recorded live in front of students, university staff and community members at various College Campuses and main thoroughfares throughout the country. The day-of experience included:
• Truck-Turned-Mobile Podcast Studio: LG-red wrapped and literally transparent, we created a mobile podcast studio for conversations to take place.
• On-Site Product Interactions: While onlookers and audience members witnessed the conversations live, they could engage with LG products.
• Engaging in the Conversation: Audience members were encouraged to contribute to the conversation by submitting questions to panelists, live, on branded LG Transparent Conversations notecards.
Content sharing included:
• Podcast Content: divided into 4 two-part episodes (8 total), distributed via Prim's existing podcast ecosystem "The Next Chapter with Prim Siripipat" on Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio
• Landing Page: (lg.com/us/transparent-conversations) housed all tour details including episodes, contributors, recording dates/times, CSR messaging, episode audio
• LG Social Support: throughout the tour, LG leveraged their channels to distribute curated content
• Prim: Prim and LG created a content strategy building on episode content and topics
• Paid Media: episode cut-downs of key moments from recordings were used in a paid media campaign to generate awareness
• Partner/Panelist Social: each panelist contributor received 45-60s hero sizzles of their episodes, heroing their key moments to share across social – plus still images and BTS content
• #LGTransparentConversations: All branded content, audience submissions and partner social leveraged a branded hashtag to aggregate content.
• All content drove visits to the landing page
The podcast and tour delivered…
IMPRESSIONS / AWARENESS
• $15k+ EARNED MEDIA VALUE
• 10.1M+ TOTAL SOCIAL REACH (unique views)
• 81.4M+ TOTAL IMPRESSIONS (physical, social, audio, press)
• 932k+ TOTAL PRESS IMPRESSIONS
$190k+ SOCIAL MEDIA VALUE (From social content, earned to-date)
INTERACTIONS
• 255+ UNITS OF SOCIAL CONTENT CREATED
• 33K+ PODCAST LISTENS (direct on streaming platform, not including .com listens)
• 12K+ CAMPAIGN INTERACTIONS (product and consumer engagements during and post the event)
“Wait, are they watching a podcast… live?” — LMU Student Passerby during live discussion
"[The School] always has these events, so I'm not surprised to see a talk on mental health, but it's cool and a surprise to see a brand like LG doing it." — LMU Student Passerby during live discussion
"The staff was just as excited to have this here as y'all were to be here. Dr. Parham really leads that charge here." — Jim Iver, LMU Athletics
As a continuation of the tour, LG is planning a presence of the Transparent Conversations mobile podcast studio at the Final Four weekend of the March Madness 2023 tournament. The project will look to continue the conversation around college student-athlete mental health and incorporate the LG Transparent OLED technology.
