urFooz Launch Project
Assignment Description
Assignment
Develop a collegiate strategy for FUHU’s “urFooz” social networking product.
Background
FUHU is an Internet company headquartered in both California and China. FUHU's
mission is to give users control over their stuff (photos, content, identity, email
addresses) by making it universally accessible, shareable and manageable
anywhere, anytime. FUHU has created and branded a number of integrated webbased properties including a webtop (urSpin), a personalized avatar (urFooz),
socially driven search (KungFooz) and premium content widgets (Spinlets) to
accomplish their goal.
urFooz allows users to create a personalized avatar that is embedded in a virtual
baseball-type card that can be used to represent the user on key social networking
sites like MySpace and Facebook. The “Fooz card,” contains such things as your
profile, links to your favorite networks, feeds, videos and web sites all in one place.
Unlike most avatars, urFooz acts like a personal, portable microsite. FUHU recently
launched urFooz™ cards on the Guns N’ Roses MySpace page, in conjunction with
the release of their latest album “Chinese Democracy.” That site received over 10
million hits in one week.
Current Revenue Model
urFooz is available for free. You can build your Fooz avatar and choose from a
number of free clothes and accessories. You can also build your profile (links,
photos, videos, etc.) for free. FUHU makes money by providing branded
merchandise and accessories that you can use to add even more personality to your
Fooz. For micropayments of $0.50 and up, you can add merchandise from Oakley,
Phat Fashion, and other premium labels. The average user currently spends $7 per
year on merchandise.
Objective and Specific Goals (Your Job)
Create a comprehensive launch program for urFooz geared to the national college
student market starting with a launch at SU. Specifically:
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Research the market
Recommend enhancements to the customer experience
Build the product’s awareness and generate trial
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Focus on engagement and maximizing the social web (lead with a digital
strategy, but be open to guerilla and traditional media)
Develop a realistic budget (project revenue and recommend realistic
campaign spending levels)
Identify new revenue streams
Identify new partnerships and relationships
Develop all creative campaign components
Think Big
Ultimately, your Fooz card has the potential to replace your MySpace and Facebook
page and become a self contained social networking site that acts as home base and
has the ability to travel to other networking areas (just like you do!)
Details
The project will be briefed to a number of student teams representing a variety of
communications disciplines in February. The teams will compete to develop a
winning strategy that can be rolled out to colleges nationwide.
According to FUHU’s CEO Jim Mitchell: “We couldn’t be more excited to work with
Syracuse University and the Newhouse School. Who better to develop a collegiate
web strategy than some of the nation’s brightest college kids. We have high hopes
for this project.”
The Newhouse students will present to FUHU’s Founder and President, Robb
Fujioka, and CEO Jim Mitchell, in April.
Development Money (Available to Your team)
Each class competing has $250 to help you with your research and development of
your presentation.
Links
Here are links to the urFooz site:
http://www.urfooz.com/
The urFooz “Top 1000” site where people post their latest avatars:
http://www.urfooz.com/view-fooz?show_count=1000
Guns N’ Roses MySpace page:
http://www.myspace.com/gunsnroses
Guns N’ Roses urFooz™ cards:
http://gnrdemo.blogspot.com/