Peer recognition for our social media expertise.
It's almost magical when everything just falls into place perfectly. There are so many moving parts in a communications initiative-especially one that hinges on the user-controlled world of social media. On the agency side of things, you need the right strategy, an engaging big idea, a flawless build, and beautiful execution. On the client side, you need a trusting relationship with the agency, a confidence to try something new, and the vision to recognize a beautiful thing when you see it.
It's why, when a campaign nails it in every way, we are both proud of ourselves and thankful to our client.
This past year, we have celebrated a large number of campaigns that have landed in this elusive but desirable sweet spot. But we are particularly pleased with two initiatives in particular that were awarded with the highest form of praise-gold recognition by our peers from across the country.
Thank you to our friends at Halifax Shopping Centre and Injury Free Nova Scotia for working so tirelessly with us to create gold. Thank you for trusting us to look out for your interests, and thank you for giving us the rope we needed to create a campaign that engaged the public, made a splash in the social media world, and achieved your objectives.
Injury Free Nova Scotia: The Goat
By grade 12 about 30% of Nova Scotia students drink to the point of drunkenness; about 40% of 19-24 year olds can be classified as hazardous drinkers; and the research proves that when youth drink, youth get injured. Our client, Injury Free Nova Scotia wanted-in a language youth could relate to-to create awareness around the risks associated with alcohol use, and spur a longer-term cultural movement away from youth abusing alcohol.
We needed to create content that could serve as a youthfully random rallying cry. Enter the goat. With an entertaining-but crucially informative-Youtube video as the centerpiece of our social media campaign, we set out to build a community of youth that felt affinity for the character. And by extension, for the message. Edgy campus posters directed students to the video, a campaign-specific website infrastructure added meat to the message, a goat Facebook page brought the ruminant to life for youth to interact with, and a compelling contest invited students to share their stories where alcohol got in the way of a good time.
The message and tactics struck a chord across the province and the world. Media outlets contacted our client for feature pieces on the topic; the goat made hundreds of friends on Facebook; and the world's social media sphere lit up with conversations and opinions about the campaign. And we earned 20,000 views of the spot on Youtube; 3600 nomagicgoat.ca site visits; almost 500 shares of the goat's website; almost 500 website "likes"; and the video won the gold prize for quality in Public Service messaging at the ICE Awards.
Halifax Shopping Centre: Fall Haul
Halifax Shopping Centre wanted to establish a long-term engagement with their customers (and potential customers) in social media. They'd been struggling with a paltry few hundred "likers" on Facebook, and they wanted to focus on dramatically increasing this number in order to have a channel of communication opened with more people.
Our strategy hinged on creating an influencer engagement campaign. The idea that inspired the campaign was based on the "haul video" phenomenon, in which shoppers post videos of themselves online showing off their new purchases. We created a custom-built contest app that-using an integrated approach including Facebook ads, radio, online banners, and in-mall media-invited shoppers to create and post their own haul video featuring items they purchased at Halifax Shopping Centre. The prize? $2400 to shop with, and the opportunity to show off their fashion influence as the official HSC fashion blogger.
Besides winning Halifax Shopping Centre a silver award for best mall social media campaign in the country and a gold award for best social media campaign in Atlantic Canada, the campaign earned HSC a new community of followers, an engaged community of influencers, and real results. Specifically, HSC Facebook page visits went from 85 a week to over 1,200 a week; 105 monthly active users jumped to more than 2,500; HSC likes doubled; sales for apparel increased .5% during contest period; and our winner's video blogs averaged 206 views each.