Ever heard of the television soap Spangas? Probably not, if you're not a sixteen year old girl. Spangas is a soap at the Public Broadcasting channel about love, sadness, partying and other teenager issues. The more viewers, the better! Therefore, the Public Broadcasting channel decided to set up an online viral campaign to reach the target group. No easy assignment. Teenagers are willing to participate in viral campaigns. However, you need to come with something creative.
The objective was to engage youngsters with the new soap serie Spangas. To generate word-of-mouth at the school square, the Public Broadcasting channel created an online platform where the kids could design keychains and labels for their backpack. A personal text and photo was displayed on the tags. The participant with the most original photo could win a role in Spangas! Dutch teenagers seemed willing to participate. The site attracted 65,000 unique visitors, especially 16-year old girls. At the end of the campaign the database consisted 20,000 e-mail addresses for which continuing campaigns have been planned.
Hence, the me too-effect at the school square functioned well. Icemedia, the agency that created the campaign, also developed a very effective 'buddybooster'. This tool makes it very easy to share the campaign with friends. Via the Spangas site the target group could login on their Hotmail, MSN and Gmail accounts. By one click they could send an invitation to (a selection of) their contacts. The target group was quite willing to give the campaign a viral boost. The campaign was forwarded on average to thirty contacts through the buddybooster.
Best Practice Tips
- Make sure you facilitate the viral effect extremely by smart solutions, like the buddybooster
- Offer a personalisable give-away to trigger especially teenagers
Source: Finest 50 e-commerce, by Jungle Minds, 2009 |
