Mumbrella Readers Choice Awards – social media campaign shortlist
The following entries have been shortlisted in the social media campaign category of the Mumbrella Readers Choice Awards.
The order that follows was deliberately randomised so there is no alphabetical advantage in the order they appear.
Subscribers to the Mumbrella daily email will receive a link to the voting website.
While readers are invited to comment on the entries, please be aware that we will be alert for both astroturfing and deliberate attempts to sabaotage a particular entry. Multiple comments from the same IP address, or otherwise suspicious postings will be moderated.
Please remember that including a video was optional, so entries that do not do so should not be judged down for that reason.
The shortlist:
- Fnuky – Censordyne Get Up
- Vice – Adidas House Party
- Cummins Nitro – Best Job In The World
- One Green Bean – iSpy Levi’s
- GPY&R – Wicked Sick Project
- Holler – Birds vs Humans
GPY&R – WICKED SICK PROJECT
Every single day, people get hit with literally thousands of advertising messages. How do we make ours stand our from the crowd? Creativity is the key.
As an advertising agency, we know we need to be creative in order to produce work that, well, works. But all too often our clients think otherwise. A big logo and a screaming VO is enough in their eyes. On a daily basis we sit them down and try to convince them to be braver, to push harder, to be creative. But it often falls on deaf ears.
The Wicked Sick Project was our way of PROVING the power of creativity, and not just talking about it.
It also was a way to allow our clients to embrace the ‘new age’ of advertising by highlighting the power of social marketing networks. In short, do good stuff and the people will respond. Again, we could sit them down in boardroom after boardroom bombarding them with powerpoint slides of pie chatrs and things with weird names like ‘channel plans’ but it just doesn’t sink in. We needed to prove it to them.
So although it’s a bit of fun, there’s infallible logic behind The Wicked Sick Project. And whether you’re selling toothpaste or undies, you can’t argue with that logic.
After showing this to all our clients (yes, including the crusty conservative ones too) we have been overwhelmed by their response.
Suddenly, they all want a Wicked Sick of their own. Fuck.
HOLLER – BIRDS VS HUMANS
1. Challenge
The launch of Tooheys Extra Dry 5 Seeds posed two challenges:
Firstly, raise awareness among fans of Tooheys Extra Dry beer and get them to give cider a go.
Secondly, quickly build a large consumer base that the new brand could keep on talking to in the future.
2. Solution
Holler devised a three-pronged approach: an engaging promotion, a mystery-based blogger outreach and a micro-site accessible only through Facebook.
The promotion, called Apple Hunt, was a scavenger hunt for giant apples hidden throughout Sydney. Street posters, billboards and facebook ads drove consumers to the 5 Seeds fan page. There and on Twitter they received clues and photo updates.
Once apples were found, the lucky fan had their photo taken and got uploaded to the 5 Seeds page as well as entered into the draw for that day’s prize.
http://www.facebook.com/5Seeds?v=app_259176560356
The blogger outreach played with the topic of the yet unpublished TVC “Birds versus Humans” in which mankind was without the knowledge that came with the Apple of Eden.
First, antique tin cashboxes were sent to 20 of the most influential Australian bloggers in creative genres. Each contained a bird’s nest, grainy photos of feral humans in a dark forest and a parchment stating “Your kind needs you”.
Chalk stencils appeared with the same message.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tbuesing/sets/72157622641368975
Bloggers were invited to go to their very own URL that showed a disturbing video teaser complete with individual blog names and their recent posts.
http://www.birdsvshumans.com.au/nomagic
A week later, a second crate with a numerical padlock arrived. Bloggers went online to get their code and open the crate thereby discovering who was behind these mysterious packages.
http://www.birdsvshumans.com.au/monk
The brand site featured several innovations: a webcam-driven apple-feeding of a “feral”, a multi-choice You Tube adventure and a Twitter-aggregator called “The Orchard”.
http://www.facebook.com/5Seeds
All parts of the campaign paid into building an audience on facebook, where fans and their friends saw every interaction.
3. Results
The initial “Apple Hunt” recruited 3,000 fans in two weeks, building an audience for blogger outreach, TVC and micro site which all achieved great acclaim among the creative community.
http://awolmonk.blogspot.com/2009/10/truth-about-birds-vs-humans.html
The current fan tally stands at almost 7,000 (and growing), many of who show active ambassadorship of the product.
Campaign goals were exceeded by 150% and the product has reached instant success in the beverage market.
FNUKY – CENSORDYNE / GET UP
This is the story of how a single Twitter post was used to start a widespread movement against Internet censorship in Australia. It’s a campaign that started thousands of conversations, engaged key influencers, was picked up by traditional media and in the end reached millions of people.
Background
In mid-2009 Australia was looking like it would become the first western democracy in the world to impose mandatory censorship of the internet. The Government was testing technology that was designed to block a secret list of websites and the results were due to be released.
Our client, the political activism group GetUp!, didn’t like the idea of Internet censorship in Australia and believed this was an issue Australians should be concerned about.
But the issue, which combined technology and politics, was seen to be boring and had failed to gain traction in the public or in the media. The average Australian simply wasn’t listening.
We needed to bring passion and debate to the issue of internet filtering in the wider community.
The Campaign
With the Government so quiet on its plans to ‘fight moral decay’, we thought we would sell it for them.
The idea? Turn Internet filtering into a household product.
We created Censordyne and rolled it out in a coordinated mock product launch online.
The campaign was launched at 11am on Thursday 9th July 2009 with a single Twitter post by Fake Stephen Conroy, a popular impersonator of the Australian Communications Minister.
In lieu of sending out a press release, this strategy allowed his 3,500 followers to discover the campaign organically.
And discover it they did. Within hours our spoof product website, ‘censoring’ search engine and comic online video was being written about by thousands of blogs around the world and was on the front pages of Australia’s major news websites.
Results
The campaign was a runaway success. Within 24 hours the brands ‘GetUp!’ and ‘Censordyne’ were the second and third top trending brands on Twitter worldwide… and one of those brands wasn’t even real!
The campaign also achieved:
– 756 Twitter conversations talking about the campaign
– 190,000 hits on the website
– more than 100,000 names on a petition
– $46,000 in donations
– 38,400 search results in Google for ‘Censordyne’
– reached an estimated 1.2 million Australians
All of these results were delivered without sending a press release, buying any media or even having a product to sell.
And with the results of the Government’s trial still pending, it won’t be long before we can judge if we’ve successfully stopped internet filtering in Australia for good.
Censordyne received a bronze award in the 2009 ADMA Awards and is the first Australian campaign to become a finalist in the International Viral Video Awards in Berlin.
We did our bit. Now do yours. Vote for us, while the Internet is still free.
ONE GREEN BEAN / HOST – ISPYLEVIS
Background
For decades, Levi’s has been the definitive symbol of youth, rebellion and creativity. However, more recently, the definitive denim brand has faced a strong challenge from the plethora of young pretenders that have developed in the early 21st century.
Traditionally a big TV and cinema advertising led brand, Levi’s® is learning to adapt to new methods to attract attention and fight for relevance in this newly cluttered market place.
The task in 2009 was to re-connect with a youth audience with smaller scale campaigns that worked on a local level – sampling, events, content creation, PR and so on. Host and sister PR agency One Green Bean joined forces to develop such initiatives, the first of which was iSpyLevi’s.
Objective
Get the Levi’s® brand into people’s conversations and – crucially – onto people’s bums in a contemporary way that feels as youthful in its delivery as it does its premise.
Solution
A real world, mobile and online treasure hunt designed to get young people talking about and wearing Levi’s® again. Hundreds of pairs of Levi’s® were ‘released’ on to the streets of Australia and New Zealand, worn by our hand picked representatives.
Twitter was the platform used to release ‘tip offs’ as to the whereabouts of the jeans. As we picked up followers they could piece together the clues, identify the location and instantly win a pair of Levi’s by asking the wearer “Are those Levi’s?” – if correctly challenged our Levi’s® clad Tweeters had to drop their pants and hand over the jeans on the spot.
Success
The campaign literally had people running in high heels and catching cabs across town in an attempt to score a pair of jeans, and to date over 200 pairs have been given away.
At the same time we have picked up thousands of direct followers or ‘ambassadors’ on Twitter who have in turn helped us reach over 300,000 people at the last count.
Importantly the campaign has been responsible for a rise in chatter around the brand with online mentions of Levi’s® tripling and hundreds of articles appearing in both online and traditional channels including several TV features, across both sides of the Tasman.
What started as a $30,000 initiative has now snowballed into a much larger pillar of Levi’s social media strategy that is in the process of being rolled out internationally due to its phenomenal success.
CUMMINS NITRO – BEST JOB IN THE WORLD
Tourism Queensland’s “The Best Job in the World” has helped set new global standards for social media campaigns. No single tourism campaign, and potentially no single campaign has ever had such a significant reach or impassioned response – this has been highly driven by social media.
To increase international awareness of Queensland’s ‘Islands of the Great Barrier Reef’, we created a reason for people all over the world to engage with the destination and aspire to experience it. We tapped into a universal desire and created a job that sounded too good to be true – anyone from anywhere could apply. The Caretaker role is a genuine employment opportunity, living on the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef and reporting back to the world. Job seekers were asked to submit a one minute video application at islandreefjob.com
“The Best Job in the World” is an original idea, which has exceeded all measures and set new benchmarks in advertising effectiveness in the modern world where social media and mass media are one. It illustrates that a strategically insightful and brilliant idea can be executed across traditional mass and new media to great effect.
Our target audience was one that was able to help fuel the campaign by its loyal use of social media. Although connection to social media cannot be fully measured, the following are indications that ‘The Best Job in the World’ was highly connected to social media and consumer-generated content:
• A Google blog search for “best job in the world” generates 231,355 blogs
• Facebook referred 371,126 visits to the islandreefjob.com URL, the highest referrer after Yahoo and Google. Additionally the site has recorded 165,014 exit links to http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php, a bookmarking site
• Social networks have been established by consumers further illustrating the penetration of the idea (for example, the NING networking site. On this site alone, there are 359 members, 284 videos (over 13 hours of content)
• In terms of consumer-generated content, in the video applications alone, there was 578 hours of content on YouTube and similar sites
• A “best job in the world” search on FLIKR for pictures gives you a quick 4,486 pictures to choose from
• We have tracked many other samples of video, text and pictorial content. As so much consumer content lies on diverse sites, blogs, and in news coverage, it is not possible to accurately quantify it all
other key quantifiable results that demonstrate the effectiveness of the campaign include:
- Overall global PR valued at approximately AUD$400 million.
- 34,684 video applications at the close of applications, from 197 countries.
- The campaign has reached an audience of over 3 billion through media coverage.
VICE – ADIDAS HOUSE PARTY
The adidas Originals House Party campaign not only tapped into social media, but created a social network unto itself. At the heart of the campaign was a social idea – that young people love to dress up in costumes and party with friends. We were able to use digital channels to bring this to life in a unique, fun and rather hilarious way.
Some background…
We wanted to help adidas Originals celebrate its 60th anniversary with as much fun, style, and originality as possible, whilst developing a local spin on the global creative theme of “house party”.
We figured that the most fun house parties always involve creative costumes and ridiculous dancing, so we set about developing a digital game that let people do both and join in the celebrations in their own original style.
Using a unique video technique, players could pick from thousands of clothing combinations and attach their own face to create a mash-up dancing video avatar – we called them “aditars”. People could assemble their costumes from pop cultural references, the latest in adidas Originals gear or countless bizarre mash-ups.
The biggest house party won a trip for two to Los Angeles to hang out with celebrity party photographer Mark “The CobraSnake” Hunter. Players used in-game tools to promote their parties on social media networks, able to upload their dancing video aditar to their Facebook profiles and so on.
Once someone registered their aditar, the game became a social network in itself, with people able to cruise around and check out other people’s parties, and invite people they knew. Weekly email alerts were sent to players informing them of new attendees and invites, together with adidas promotions.
To drive traffic to the game, we hooked up with a range of media partners to start their own parties and invite their communities via their sites, Facebook fan pages, MySpace pages, Twitter accounts and so on.
Thousands of young Australians and Kiwis joined together in a massive online dress-up party to celebrate 60 years of soles and stripes. In just over 8 weeks, the site received 50,000 unique visitors who spent a whopping 13.31 minutes each on the site. Over 8,400 people registered their aditars.
Testament to the game’s infiltration of social networks, over 35% of the site’s traffic was from social networks (Facebook 27%, Bebo 6% and Twitter 2%). An estimated further 580,000 people saw their friends’ aditars or house party messages via Facebook, Bebo and Twitter.
The biggest house party numbered 932 people, and the average house party size was 62.
The winner will be partying in Los Angeles in February. You can bet he’ll be posting photos to his Facebook page.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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despite being blatantly used by the birds vs humans campaign, i enjoyed it.
holler has my vote for capturing the mind & engaging the audience. i even bought the cider after using up the freebies.
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Great stuff! thanks for sharing those campaigns with all the in and outs.
my favorite is Holler as it uses very well the social medias, and the influencial bloggers, even if the Ebay Wicked Sick BMX is a cracker too ! still ROFL..
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