1. VOLVO
Visitors to YouTube on April 15 saw a sizeable banner for the Volvo XC60 on the home page. The Flash-animated ad launched with a short video and demonstration of the vehicle’s automatic stopping feature—City Safety—before settling on a static product shot and standard “click for more info” copy. With a mouse-over motion, the banner expanded and revealed embedded videos, still images of vehicles, a game and links to the company’s YouTube channel. It was thorough work, but nothing unique.
But perched on the ad’s right-hand side was the now-iconic blue bird of Twitter and a scrollable list of tweets the company was issuing live from the New York International Auto Show.
I’ll repeat that for emphasis: Volvo was updating its highly visible ad on the fly with live content using free technology.
The ad was up for just 24 hours. During that time representatives from Volvo and its agency of record, EuroRSCG New York, tweeted 66 times from the show floor. Aside from a few generic calls-to-action (“Stop by & say hi at the New York Intl. Auto Show”), most tweets were live testimonials (“Kathryn from NY: ‘City Safety is very innovative!’ ”) or re-tweets (“RT @hptwilighter Oh, and I’m loving the Volvo ad on YouTube… *fangirlish giggle*”).
According to Google’s analysis, those who saw the ad were 16 times more likely to view Volvo content on the video site than those who didn’t, and seven times more likely to do a search query on “Volvo.” Those stats are based on the more than 38 million impressions the ad garnered in its short lifespan. John Steward, creative director at EuroRSCG, says that ranked 53% higher than his agency projected. He also reports an 8.7% interaction rate against an agency benchmark of 4.6%, and close to 17,000 hours of brand engagement.
2. DORITOS
Throughout March and April, Frito-Lay Canada filled its hard-won retail shelf space with a new product that had no name or branding. The white bags contained a new chip flavour being introduced with a naming contest. For $25,000 and a share of future profits, aspiring creative directors were invited to name and advertise this new product at a social media hub: DoritosGuru.ca.
Tony Matta, vice-president, marketing for Frito-Lay, and Claudia Calderon, Doritos’ brand manager, had somewhat humble goals for Guru: 500 submitted ads, 600,000 page views.
Guru’s integration with Facebook and YouTube was a no-brainer, given the youthful target market. Proximity Canada, working with lead creative agency BBDO Toronto, created a seamless experience with an integrated artistic direction and message across all three sites.
By the time the contest closed six weeks later, more than 2,000 videos had been uploaded to YouTube.ca, where the DoritosGuru channel had more than 900 subscribers, more than any of the Canadian site’s other user channels.
That number nicely accompanies the nearly 30,000 Facebook users who signed up as fans to the Become the Doritos Guru group, and the 73 other Guru Facebook pages that sprang up to support individual ad creators.
The total number of page views on the contest’s main website reached 2.1 million, blowing past the campaign’s initial goal by 350%.
“We had seen numbers that said two minutes was the average length of time Canadians spent on websites,” says Calderon, “but we set a goal of four minutes for Guru. We actually ended up having consumers spend more than six minutes on average.”
When the contest winner was announced May 1, Frito-Lay had a new product called Scream Cheese courtesy of Montreal’s Ryan Coopersmith, and some impressive sales numbers across every Doritos brand.
“This program was never about sales of the [nameless] white bag,” Calderon says. “It was about driving the equity of our total portfolio. During the duration of the program, we were up 22% [in sales] from a year ago.”
3. TONY HAWK
Many people use celebrities as proof that Twitter is nothing more than the pointless broadcast of ego (“OMG. Latté is cold. Barista is such a bitch!”). Skateboard god Tony Hawk, however, runs counter to that claim. On May 1, the 41-year-old entrepreneur tweeted: “There is skateboard hidden in lifeguard tower #1550 next to Santa Monica pier. Go now!” It was just one of approximately 60 decks Hawk had stashed in cities around the world.
It mobilized the more than 677,000 people who follow Hawk on Twitter—one of the most attentive fan bases on the microblogging service. He insists the scavenger hunt wasn’t a marketing ploy for his line of boards, Birdhouse, and that he ran the contest himself from home “for fun.” But intended or not, the effect was that of a campaign: CNN and dozens of blogs picked the story up, and soon photos of happy hunters appeared online, newly found treasures in hand.
It’s hard to compare this effort to those of Volvo or Doritos because it’s so off-the-cuff and free of marketing’s usual trappings—client approved copy, strategy planning and legal requirements. But despite Volvo’s success with Twitter, it would kill for half a million followers continually hanging on its every tweet, and Doritos must drool for Hawk’s rapport with youth. Birdhouse may not be a household name, but its followers are as engaged as they come. It took them just 11 minutes to find the Santa Monica board. That happened without an ad budget or strategy meeting.
This worked in part because the brand is the man; Hawk is at the nexus of several skate brands he created (Birdhouse, a clothing line and a charitable foundation), and the Twitter feed can leverage his celebrity to benefit any of them. Where people could Twitter-talk with “Volvo” about the new car during the auto show, Hawk’s fans Twitter with the celebrity himself. They also get early info on new products (last month he used Twitter to announce the upcoming launch of his latest videogame, Tony Hawk Ride) in addition to the regular life updates celebrity followers love. This effort may have been “for fun,” but maybe that’s why people were so engaged.
