Client Name

Solution Type — Digital Promotion

Objective — Promote the release of Chrysler’s 2012 Jeep Call-of-Duty edition Wrangler through an immersive, social-driven consumer promotion within Facebook around Activision’s much-anticipated release of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3.

Activation — Jeep Ops, an immersive Facebook sweepstakes game, asked fans of Jeep to play the game, mimicking the in-game Call of Duty story to earn entries into the contest by completing Missions in order to win the first-off-the-line 2012 Jeep Wrangler COD version.

Results
•       453,842 Visits | 940,964 Page views
•       51,569 Total submissions | 46,592 Playing the game
•       2,435,164 total ballot entries

Campaigns/Initiatives

Engage users by creating a Call-of-Duty themed virtual scavenger hunt on Facebook that highlights both the capabilities of the new Wrangler Call-of-Duty MW3 Edition and the game locations.  Users earn “ballots” for participation, solving clues, and referring friends that result in additional chances to win.

Services Provided

•       Social Media Sweepstakes
•       Social Media Monitoring
•       Technical execution of Facebook Application

Notes
This effort was a highly technical one, executed under a tight timeline. Affinitive, as a Facebook Preferred Developer Consultant (PDC), leveraged its extensive expertise with Facebook Platform among a collaborative team of several other creative and media agencies, including Sapient Nitro.

How it Works

Once a user has "Liked" the Jeep Facebook page, they are directed to a Call-of-Duty-esque commander module where they receive instructions on the game.

Next, users were led through four different "missions", where they were given clues about a specific location they that they must solve—by any means necessary—to locate various parts of the vehicle.

Completed missions earn achievement badges and bonus ballots for the sweepstakes to win the first-off-the-line 2012 Jeep Wrangler Call of Duty: MW3 Edition. The farher along users advance through the four stages of training, the greater the number of ballots earned.

Ballots will be tallied after midnight on December 31, 2011 and the winner will be drawn at random for the new Jeep Wrangler, Call of Duty: MW3 edition.

Solution Type – Digital Promotions, Social Marketing for nutritional supplement brand MuscleTech

Objective:
Counter declining brand sentiment and support the launch of a new line of products by developing and activating the MuscleTech audience in social media, engaging with targeted communities and influencers to educate and deliver key product and brand messaging where it would be heard.

Services Provided:                                      
Contests and Sweepstakes
Blogger/Influencer  Outreach
Facebook Advertising
Social Media Monitoring
Social Media Audit
Internal Policies and Education
Profile Management
Facebook Applications
Product Sampling/Fulfillment

Activation:
Formalized the social media program for Iovate prior to the program’s launch including conducting a social media audit, developing the communication workflow, engagement guidelines, and more.  Utilized a cross-platform content strategy (Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, YouTube, Knowledge Base) to consistently deliver interesting and relevant content and brand messaging with MuscleTech’s audience.  Improved customer interaction across major social networks by engaging with people talking about MuscleTech, its products, and the sport of bodybuilding. Earned new customers and brand followers by applying audience development tactics across platforms, developing sweepstakes, exclusive offers and content supported by targeted Facebook advertising. Educated customers about new products through interactive Facebook tabs and a Support Center with answers to commonly asked questions, and empowered them to share and recommend content and products through targeted trial sampling programs.

To get you up to speed, “Get On The Bus” was a contest encouraging US-based travelers to Like Contiki on Facebook and create virtual buses heading to one of eight Contiki vacation destinations, fill the buses with four of their friends and campaign to get the most votes of any other bus. You can learn more about this contest at the Facebook Studio.

The campaign generated over 10 million impressions through press coverage and sharing, and millions more impressions through offline WOM and advertising that supported the contest. Contiki additionally benefited from nearly 10,000 new US-based Facebook fans and thousands of newsletter signups.

Get On The Bus was deemed a success, but even the best campaigns have challenges and lessons learned. Here are some of ours:

Don’t

Overcomplicate. Buses could be made private (invite-only) or public. Not all users understood how the Facebook invite friends feature worked, if their invites were sent, where they could be found and how to accept an invite. It goes to show that sometimes features can easily overcomplicate, even if those features are native to Facebook.

Draw It Out. The contest ran for 6 weeks, and while the application shot up to tens of thousands of active users in that time, in hindsight the same contest might have been executed with the same results with a shorter duration. The best contest is one that keeps participants on their toes and engaged in the event, so it’s important not to draw it out and lose interest from fans.

Make Rules You Can’t Enforce. It was decided prior to the launch of the contest that vote-swapping and vote-buying would not be permitted. This was more difficult to monitor or define than originally planned. Once it was discovered that participants who were caught vote-swapping/buying were being disqualified, contestants began setting each other up to look like they were breaking the rules. The intention behind the rule was good, but the varying definitions and scale of incentives and swapping was too much of a gray area to enforce accurately.

Do

Personalize The Experience. Bus creators could name their own bus and give it a story.  Bus pages pulled in passengers’ common likes and interests from Open Graph to display the music, movies, etc. the passengers on the bus liked most as well as their average age, gender breakdown, and whether they were “Party” or “Culture” travelers.

Pages also included Facebook comments and activity streams updating the latest happenings on the bus. Participants had a ball with the personalization built into the contest experience and it showed with impressive time spent metrics.

Promote Sharing. Millions of impressions were generated through pass along on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. The contest made sharing and spreading the word a core component of the campaign, and it paid off in reach and awareness numbers. The critical piece is to make sharing a natural extension of the contest, and not just a mechanism to spam friends.

Create A Sense Of Urgency. The contest leader board showed, in real-time, which buses had the most votes. Participants were glued to the leader board checking in on how their bus was doing as voting wound down, which was in turn a huge motivator to get more votes. Additionally, email notifications were sent as the contest neared its conclusion, which drove many people back to the contest to turn their campaigning into high gear.

We had a blast working on this project with Contiki, and are happy to see them getting the recognition they deserve for hosting an innovative contest like this one.  We hope these learnings can help your team execute some great Facebook contests down the road.  There are many more Dos and Don’ts, so please share yours in the comments!

Here’s a summary of our discussion:

Random House | The Building Blocks of a Successful WOM Platform

Through its “Random Buzzers” online community platform, Random House is facilitating conversations between the publisher, authors, and Millennial readers. In this session, you’ll not only learn the mechanics behind this program (2010 Gold WOMMY Award Winner), but also find answers to questions like; How do I best utilize a ‘Give to Get’ philosophy to drive WOM? How can I sell that concept internally? How can brands act cross-functionally to maximize consumer experience and program ROI? How do I employ segmentation strategies to optimize engagement? What are optimal content development and frequency strategies? How important are engagement incentives? How can I report on and measure online and offline WOM?

Visit the School of WOM site for more information as well as registration details. Hope you can make it!

You can view our case study below. We’ll post up a video overview shortly.

There were a ton of great entries from some really talented brands and agencies, so it’s truly an honor to be in such great company. Congratulations to everyone on our team as well as the team at Random House.

Affinitive is happy to announce that we have submitted an entry for our work with E.&J. Gallo Winery and their Redwood Creek brand in the “Talking” category.

We’re not exactly sure how the judging criteria works, but they are allowing the general public to rate and review each entry. Please check out our submission, and post a review/rating! And if you would like to learn more about how Affinitive is helping E.&J. Gallo “blaze the trail”, drop us a line!

According to WOMMA, the Wommies are “designed to recognize amazing word of mouth campaigns and the smart people who create them.”

That being said, it’s truly an honor to receive this award, which was judged by a panel of our industry peers and chosen out of over 50 submissions by some of the best and brightest marketers around.

We will be presenting a case study of the program at WOMMA’s Word of Mouth Marketing Summit, which is taking place Nov. 14-15 in Las Vegas. To learn more about WOMMA’s Summit and Research Symposium, visit www.wommasummit.com.

Related Links:

MyA41 Passholder Community Case Study (via WOMMA case study library)
WOMMA Announces Wommie Award Winners (press release)