It’s a little light on content, but this short four-minute video is an excellent example of a well-produced case study. Interesting to note that they’re acutely aware of how many employees have active Twitter accounts.
(image source: Seruds)
As your humble servant and intrepid case study discoverer, I invite you to join me on my ongoing trip around the world as I move from Ireland to India, two countries very close to my heart. What do they have in common? Easy. Generous people with warm hearts living in two fascinatingly complex and rapidly evolving societies.
Enter “Give India”. This online donation platform harnesses the power of the Internet to facilitate grassroots support for non-profits in the country. Visitors to the site can choose to support a variety of initiatives like:
A one day Human Rights Awareness Workshop for 50 poor women
Sponsor the honorarium of a paralegal counselor for a year to fight against domestic violence
1 month nutrition and health care for a child living with HIV
Contribute to a fund to build a shelter for 50 neglected aged
Construct a Rain Water Harvesting Unit or Recharge Pit for a drought prone village.
Having worked with and having sat on the board of more than one non-profit, I can certainly attest to the constant scramble for funding. Hopefully, no stone goes unturned, which is likely why Give India chose to participate in the challenge set forth by the Chase Foundation. The task? Leverage your network in a bid to gain votes supporting your race towards a 1 million dollar prize.
Today’s featured case study could certainly been about the Chase Foundation’s visibility program. The $1M campaign was unfortunately not without controversy…
But back to Give India:
Objectives:
The Campaign: 1 vote = 1 child’s education for a year. A vote for India.
Results:
How did they do it? By mobilizing influencers and their network through Twitter, Facebook and email. While they didn’t walk away with $1M from the Chase Foundation, the Give India case study is generously rich with key learnings, so check it out. It’s posted on India Social, India’s largest social media community. Rajesh Lalwani, founder of social media consulting firm Blogworks, who I had the great pleasure of meeting in Delhi, is one of the driving forces behind the India Social initiative.
Anand uthaayein!
Michelle
When the company behind the Wheat Thins brand of crackers did some social media monitoring, they realized — perhaps to their dismay — that people, of course, don’t have mind-blowing brand experiences with the crackers. They just like them. They’re a part of a nice snack, said the monitoring.
So the marketing team decided to give some of the biggest fans a mind-blowing experience anyway — they’d pick people who’d tweeted positive things about the crackers, show up at their door, and give them a lifetime supply of crackers.
See in the full case study from MarketingProfs how they study prospective winners’ tweets and decide who to award the gifts to.
These two videos demonstrate the surprise gifting:
Houlihan’s Restaurants, a chain that competes with the Appleby’s of the world, has taken a unique approach to marketing themselves online. Eschewing common advice to “go where the eyeballs are,” Houligan’s created a closed online community, letting it promote exclusive invitations to tasting events and other member-only events.
Backed by a 200,000-person email address list, the chain started by identifying its most active customers (those who participated in surveys, RSVPed to offers, etc.)
The chain’s community runs on the private-label Ning service. About 15 to 20 per cent are active members. “We gauge that by hits to the HQ site (when an e-mail is sent asking for feedback, to do a survey, etc),” Houligan’s digital marketing manager said.
Here’s a good lesson that the goal of Twitter efforts should not be to simply increase the number of Twitter followers (or Facebook Fans, or…). As noted by social-media-optimization.com, the objective of the Celtics online efforts is to drive people to their web site.
Celtics.com features GameTime Live, an application that features real time scores, tweets, and blogging with supporters throughout the world. The team beta-tested GameTime Live during the 2009 postseason, and more than 50,000 unique visitors checked it out during the triple-overtime loss to the Chicago Bulls in Game 6 of the first round.
It’s remarkable how many marketers, though, fall into that trap of trying to boost numbers for the sake of numbers.This is why setting an ROI goal is so critical. Are you trying to sell e-books (like me <grin>)? Then which specific page on your web site are you plugging?
Back to the Celtics:
YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/bostonceltics)
With less than 700 subscribers, the Celtics YouTube channel is not attracting a lot of attention at the moment. Most videos get around 1,000 views. However, the team recently began distributing exclusive locker room footage on YouTube which will drive more people to this channel and increase subscribers. This is a great example of providing different content for separate digital channels in order to make them more valuable in users eyes.Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/bostonceltics)
With over 450,000 fans in its Facebook page, the Celtics are the second most popular NBA team on Facebook. Similar to the exclusive locker room video for YouTube subscribers, last week the Celtics launched 3-Point Play, an interactive stats prediction game for fans on its Facebook page.Twitter (http://twitter.com/celtics)
With almost 22,000 Twitter followers, the Celtics have built up a good following. In addition to Tweeting quotes from press conferences and team events, the Celtics are also using Twitter to offer seating upgrades at games. The picture below was from earlier today.
I really like the stuff on Social-Media-Optimization.com. It’s worth adding their feed to your reader.
Okay, I applied for the job. So did everyone I know last year when Queensland, Australia conducted a highly visible marketing campaign aimed at increasing awareness of, and visits to, the region.
It was, essentially, a contest. But it was packaged as a job — for six months, the winning “applicant” would be flown first class to the Great Barrier Reef from anywhere in the world, where your only tasks would be to feed the dog, clean the pool from time to time, and blog about how amazing it is being there. All expenses paid. Oh, and a salary of USD$8,800 per month.
While traditional advertising and public relations supported the campaign, this was one that was won in social media.
The Wanderlust Report has a great set of lessons learned from this campaign.
My favourite job application (and not just because this guy is from Canada too):
<h2>Campaign Results:</h2>
Don’t forget to check out Wanderlust’s complete resources on the topic:
Tod Maffin, President of engageQ digital, is a digital communications strategist, specializing in social media, mobile marketing, and viral marketing. 
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