The Vancouver-based Salt Spring Coffee Company has launched #NeedALift, a social media campaign that reaches out to consumers who appear to be having a bad day.
The company owns branded cafes in B.C. and sells its organic product through independent cafés and grocery stores. Believing the best way to reach its target demographic (20-to-40-something coffee connoisseurs) is online, the company shifted its entire 2011 marketing budget to social media and hired Vancouver-based social media agency Village&Co.
The ensuing #NeedALift concept is an integrated online and offline campaign launched in July. Justin Young, Village&Co’s creative director, said the first phase involved listening to people on Twitter. When a Vancouverite tweeted that they were having a bad day, agency staff working on the campaign would get their address and send a bag of coffee and a tumbler to their house.
These acts of kindness were often reciprocated with positive tweets and retweets about the brand.
“We believe that ‘rewarding’ is a lot more powerful than contesting,” said Young. “It’s a more earnest approach, and when we reach these people, the kind of loyalty and enthusiasm we get is a lot different than someone just winning a prize. They are people that will stay around as friends and followers online as opposed to someone whose motivation is purely to win something.”
The campaign’s second phase took the program offline and into the cafes, where customers who signed in on Foursquare were immediately identified and rewarded with coffee and an iPod shuffle loaded with music by Vancouver artists.
In the final phase, Young’s team created different scenarios where they would reward someone having a challenge with coffee and a “lift.” A man working in a community garden in the rain received a salad spinner, an Aqua bus driver got binoculars for whale watching and a group having a kayaking lesson got sunscreen with their coffee.
“We looked for scenarios where people might need a lift and the fun was tailoring the gift to the person in a certain situation,” said Turner. “The hope is that people would acknowledge us on their social media platforms, but we were also creating content.”
Young said they’ll be pushing out more content through bloggers.
