It is said (by me) that once you have seen one Cirque du Soleil show you'll want to see them all. After seeing different titles in Vegas over the many (hazy) trips I am amazed by the artists and the stories (natch) but also the word of mouth received by the shows and how restrained communications always seemed to be.  When I saw a poster for Varekai I knew I wanted to see it but it also got me thinking how much easier/more difficult would it be to launch something like this in London than say Vegas.  So I decided to harass the press office until someone spoke to me.  Jessica Berlin, Social Media Manager for CDS, picked up the keyboard and started pounding away.  

So.  The big one.  What do you guys think of social media and what do you use?

We couldn’t deny the amazing growth of various social media channels and we knew that our fans were already there talking about our brand.  The question was, did we want to also join these communities or should we let our customers continue to talk on our behalf?  We quickly decided that we wanted to be a part of the conversation as well so fans/potential customers can hear about new things at Cirque du Soleil directly from us.

While Cirque du Soleil is a global entertainment brand and fans are interested in particular shows they have seen or might want to see.  Because of this, each show has it’s own Facebook page where people can find information and exclusive content about that particular show.

Interesting. Regarding global, does it vary from country to country?  If so, how? 

At this time our social media doesn’t necessarily vary from country to country but we are a multi-lingual company so we sometimes post in both French and English.  We have a large number of fans and followers online who are primarily Spanish speaking so we are trying to do more online in Spanish.

Is there a focus?

Bloggers are our primary focus.  I became a big advocate for giving bloggers the same access we would give any mainstream media outlet.  Just because a particular blog may not have the same number of views or readers as a magazine or newspaper, that doesn’t make them any less valuable.  In fact, the smaller audience may actually be a more targeted/relevant audience for Cirque and potential ticket sales.

From your experience of social media is it a blessing or a curse? 

A bit of both.  A company can be quite vulnerable in the social media space but we’ve learned that we need to react and respond to things people are saying about us, both positive and negative.  Overall, social media has been a blessing for us because I’m really lucky to work for such a highly respected brand.  The majority of conversations about Cirque du Soleil online are usually people who feel compelled to discuss their experience with our brand because they’ve been emotionally impacted by one of our shows. Twenty-five years ago, Cirque du Soleil was started by a group of street performers who relied on word of mouth marketing for their performances; social media takes us back to our roots by empowering users to talk about our brand.  It took a bit of trial and error to figure out the best way to leverage our followers and have them become evangelists for the brand. People finally have the opportunity to speak to someone at Cirque directly via social media.  

Utilizing social media isn’t changing the way Cirque du Soleil does business per se but we recognize the fact that our fans are an extension of the brand.  

You deal content-rich (and often confidential information) that has serious repercussions for your bottom line if it leaks.  I can imagine video must be a nightmare - how do you stem such information leaking?  Do you use it to your advantage?  Is it unavoidable? 

We always want to make sure our intellectual property is being respected but unfortunately, this is pretty unavoidable.  We could spend all day policing this kind of thing. Social media has opened the lines of communication between my department and legal.  While we will enforce legal corporate guidelines, we recognize social media has started to blur these lines a little bit.

Have you ever been burned before?  If so discuss what you learned. 

We haven’t necessarily been “burned” but entering social media has been a bit of trial and error.  One of the mistakes we’ve made in the social media space was not making our fans a priority initially.  About two years ago we began doing a “Friends and Family” promotion for our employees.  We quickly started seeing the special rate appearing on Facebook pages and word spread quickly.  While at first, our execs were upset that the promotion had leaked, but it took that for us to really recognize that people’s networks are now much bigger and they are eager to share information with those networks.  This proved that we should be extending our special promotions to our fans and followers or our on-line networks.  We know these are people who are interested in Cirque and they should be the ones rewarded for taking the interest in following us.  Our social media channels are now the first ones we turn to when we want to push a certain offer and we always see amazing results.

You deal with a brand that is worldwide and in multiple languages – explain how you monitor the web.  What do you find most challenging? 

We use Radian 6 to help us monitor conversations, the influence, tonality and reach. There are thousands of conversations happening about Cirque du Soleil everyday so sometimes we have a hard time responding to everything we would like.  Through our monitoring we’ve been able to identify our influencers and these are some of the people we regularly work with but we’re always discovering new bloggers who are able to help spread news about our brand.  Internally, our executives like seeing particular blog postings as well as the week to week growth of our channels.  Another thing we look at is how conversations are growing month to month in blogs, comments, forums, etc. Are there more or fewer on-line conversations happening? We want to know which shows are being mentioned the most/least and for what reasons.

How do you ‘fight the firehose’ of information? 

What are you most proud of with your social media strategy?

We’re proud of our presence and content on the major social networking sites as well the great relationships we’ve formed with bloggers and followers on Twitter.  I think people regard us as a social media friendly company. Our publicists are in charge of producing social media content for their shows and they have a great time doing it.  Internally, we developed a Social Media Policy for all employees.  We recognize that our employees are our best ambassadors and they should be empowered to talk about their jobs and the company.

Where to next?

The next step is challenging ourselves to increase our fan bases and educate others about our shows.  While our truly passionate fans are probably following us, we need to reach people who may not have seen a Cirque du Soleil show before.  But, like most companies, the biggest challenge we are still trying to figure out the perfect formula is how we can generate and track revenue while still remaining transparent.