Someecards is hoping its brand of offbeat, brutally honest workplace humor will translate to video.
The e-cards publisher is working with Above Average for a new animated Web series called “HR Violations.” The series applies the wry Someecards tone to the story of a human resources manager named Abby, who deals with the assorted bizarre HR issues that come up as a matter of course in offices.
Someecards plans to extend existing brand partnerships into video as well. Brook Lundy, editorial director, said that the pitch is for advertisers that could brand entire episodes, or even play with product placement within the episodes. “With animation there is a lot of room to kind of play with different things,” said Lundy. “We can extend our native product into video this way.”
Someecards, which has been around since 2007, specializes in un-Hallmark cards that frequently deal with the realities of relationships and workplace life. Brands like Microsoft, IHOP and Clorox have worked with it to create branded cards of their own. For example, for Clorox, a “Bleach it Away” card read “I’m sadly impressed by any first date who can eat without getting food on his shirt.”
The publisher has grown: It had 10 million monthly U.S. uniques as of April, according to comScore. A full 83 percent of its audience accesses the site on mobile. But where it excels is on social — cards can be easily shared on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. According to Newswhip, which ranks social engagement by brand publishers, Someecards is No. 1, hitting almost 800,000 “social engagements” per month, 98 percent of which happen on Facebook. At No. 2 was Red Bull.
Since 2008, the publisher has worked on more than 150 branded campaigns. Lundy is hoping the same will happen with its videos, which will go up on the brand’s YouTube channel for now. The videos came from some of the major themes on Someecards, like workplace angst and self-obsession. “We and our audience strongly identify with those things,” said Lundy.
Duncan Mitchell, CEO of Someecards, said that campaigns thus far have ranged from four to 40 pieces of content per adviser. Brands get about 500,000 views per piece on average — really well-performing posts can get up to 2 million views — without any paid media behind them.
“We’re definitely excited about what [this collaboration with Above Average] could lead to in the future,” said Mitchell.
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