That was the question at the heart of Gorkana’s breakfast briefing last week, and I was delighted to be invited to present our ongoing work with Nokia Connects. It was a fantastic event; not only were my fellow speakers – Warren Johnson, Amy Butterworth and Azeem Azhar - of the highest calibre, but the audience had some super-sharp questions.
I am unashamedly proud of our Nokia Connects programme. It captures everything I believe is essential to a great social campaign:
- a people-focused approach
- the combination of social media and the real world
- the integration of multiple channels and business departments
- fantastic, tangible business results
- an incredibly close and robust relationship between agency and client
- a long-term commitment to bringing a brand closer to its customers, in big and small ways.
Below is the video of my presentation but do visit Gorkana’s site and watch the full set. There is always more to learn when it comes to listening to, engaging with and growing advocacy, and it’s an essential skill for businesses that want to survive and thrive.
Twitter users are being given a chance to win a Nokia Lumia 820 – as well as a personalised 3D printed case with their Twitter handle on the back cover – by tweeting ‘something fun, entertaining, witty’ to the @Nokia_Connects account while using the hashtag #Lumia820.
For a better idea of how it all works, check out this short video:
There will be a longer video and more detailed interviews released next week, but suffice to say the early adopters in the mobile community have been jumping at the chance to combine their love of great devices with the chance to try out some cutting-edge 3D technology.
The word of mouth project comes just a few weeks after Nokia announced its 3D printing initiative and released the CAD files for the Lumia 820 so that anyone could create and print their own case. Intrigued? Have a go yourself with MakerBot Customizer, which allows anyone to create designs – even those of us with zero CAD design skills.
We’re really proud to have helped Nokia to make this happen. And even more excited by where we could take this next.
In the midst of complex multi-platform, multi-agency, high-rolling social campaigns, it can be easy to forget how simple a successful word of mouth deployment can be. Advocacy really is all around us, just waiting to be harnessed, and sometimes all it takes is a keen ear and a quick mind to set a grassroots movement in motion.
Here’s the story of how we recently just did that in Sydney office, for fun.
An accidental insight
A truism oft-repeated in our Sydney office is that ‘nothing with bacon can ever taste bad’, along with its partner-statement, ‘if in doubt add bacon’. So when I stumbled upon a link that was titled ‘bacon shortage 2013’ I instantly shared it with my colleague Chris via Twitter (despite the fact that, obviously, we sit a few meters away from each other.)
This prompted a wider Twitter conversation about how much everyone loved bacon, and what they would do without this beloved ingredient. How much poorer our pasta bakes would be. And where would our blankets be without their pigs?
Fortunately for all, a new article surfaced that assured us that Australia would not to be affected by the bacon shortage. Panic over. But based on this new insight into the power of bacon as a conversational trigger, we began discussing ways we could celebrate. James Coyne soon suggested that we have a bacon party; Hannah DeMilta joined the #baconparty committee; and one by one the #baconparty gained a following.
The conversation that started it all
The spark ignites
After much debate, we settled on a party date then each began spreading the word through our own networks and anyone else we stumbled across who seemed to have a similar bacon fetish. Over the next two months the #baconparty hash tag was used almost daily, and it didn’t take long for all sorts of strangers to jump on board. People started sharing bacon memes, bacon recipes, crazy bacon-inspired products (perfume, toothpaste, lip balm), comments every time they were eating bacon, and pictures of them eating their favourite bacon dish. The word ‘bacon’ on twitter began to become synonymous with #baconparty, and it got to the point that each time we saw anything online related to bacon, we would send a tweet to the hashtag community.
From online to offline
The conversation was also prominent offline, as we all heard stories of people talking about #baconparty over coffee, at meetings and over a wine on the weekend. It seemed to pop up everywhere we went. It was glorious to hear how a simple conversation between four bacon fans created so much conversation and intrigue.
Our humble little community of passionate #baconparty fans became a classic example of WOM success, thanks to some key elements:
1. It created intrigue
2. Allowed people to share their passion
3. Made people think about the event each time they ate bacon
4. Gave people a lighthearted, levelling excuse to interact and enthuse with one another
5. It promoted multiple uses for one product – bacon in dessert is a revelation…
Even though we didn’t intend for the original discussion to lead to daily mentions and an event in Sydney, it happened. We weren’t trying to sell anything; we simply united a collective of people who loved bacon.
#baconparty
So, on Saturday 8th December bacon lovers of Sydney united at Bronte beach to celebrate and share their creations. Unveiling the dishes one by one, we progressed from bacon crackers and quiche to pasta dishes and then dessert. Our collective bacon degustation menu was extraordinary in its creativity and effort – think bacon, zucchini and Brie muffins; pasta, choc chip and bacon cookies; bacon flavoured chips and my very own pig shaped cupcakes.
After we sampled the menu we began chatting to one another about what brought us to the #baconparty. Some had come with friends, others heard about it on Twitter and Facebook. #baconparty united people who otherwise wouldn’t have met, people who lived on opposite sides of Sydney and those who don’t even know what a hash tag is.
Tweets on the day
Overall, #baconparty was a great idea that was not only fun for all who came along, but it showed us how a simple idea can spread if you really know what your audience wants. It’s all about creating a community that people want to be part of, providing some prompts and unifying tools, then letting it grow – delightfully out of your control.
From small acorns, mighty(ish) engagement oaks will grow. This is the tale of how watching one YouTube video created a successful, creative, heart-warming contest.
The background
We were looking in the competition ideas basket for a contest on Nokia Conversations that was open to those without a Nokia Lumia actually in their hands. We also know that our community loves getting creative. We needed something that married the two.
The inspiration
Are you sitting comfortably? I’m going to tell you a story.
In the beginning, there was a little boy called Caine who was bored at his Dad’s garage in East L.A., So he started playing with empty cardboard boxes, creating simple versions of ‘games’ which he’d seen at the fairground (like ‘throw the basketball through the hoop’ – the ball in Caine’s version being a crumpled piece of paper, the basket a simple plastic ring from a pizza joint). He dubbed this Caine’s Arcade, charged people a nickel to play and if you won he gave you tickets that you could trade for prizes he’d bought with his allowance (pencils featured heavily in the prize selection).
The very 1st customer at the arcade was Nirvan – he only went to find a door handle for his old banger of a car – a film maker who felt sorry for Caine, bought a $2 fun pass and stayed to play the games but got so inspired that he made a short film.
It received over 3,000,000 views and made Caine an ‘overnight success’ (watch it, I challenge you not to smile).
Off the back of this success, Nirvan the filmmaker started the Imagination Foundation to help build a fund for Caine’s college education, and in October the foundation had its 1st Global Cardboard Challenge.
The 1000heads twist
Inspired by this story, we challenged the Nokia community to make any Nokia device (or recreate a photo that you took with your Nokia) from cardboard. #NokiaCardboardChallenge was born. Winning entries would receive either a Lumia 900 or 808 PureView phone.
The readers of Nokia Conversations (and a whole new audience of creative people who found out about the contest via word of mouth embraced the challenge with gusto.
Some of the close runners up (for the winners, see the link at the end of this post):
The challenge inspired over 1,100 conversations reaching 2.3 million people. Social shares and views of the contest blog posts were 1400% higher than a regular posts on Nokia Conversations. Nokia Conversations received nearly 500 entries to the contest – which saw nearly every Nokia ever made intricately and lovingly recreated (including this most moving recreation of a Lumia 800.)
Jump over to Nokia Conversations to check out the amazing winning entries.
What’s next? Glad you asked. Visit Nokia Conversations for the latest creative contest – the Nokia Paper Challenge. What better way to recycle all that Xmas wrapping paper!
Here at 1000heads, nothing gets us more excited than ideas that are inspired by a current mood, trend or moment; ideas that combine on and offline elements; and ideas that allow us to get our clients working together. So it was with a thrill that we introduced our clients East Village and Getty Images to collaborate on the ‘London Life’ social photography project.
Any Londoner will tell you that this summer was truly special. Awash with the thrill of the Jubilee, the Olympics and even the odd blast of sun, the city really came into its own; so we decided to launch a competition on the East Village Facebook page asking users to upload images which best represented their London 2012 summer. Heralded by a blog post on London Living (the East Village blog where we curate all the best content about our mad and marvellous capital), the competition was launched to coincide with the start of the Olympics when the whole extraordinary frenzy was just kicking off.
The competition was split into two categories, for mobile phone and camera submissions. For the winner of each category, Getty Images supplied a Nikon 1 camera kit and masterclass with a Getty Images photographer, along with the guarantee that all shortlisted entries would be exhibited at Getty Images Gallery in Westfield Stratford – a stone’s throw from where East Village will welcome its first residents next year.
The standard of the work was extremely high and the plethora of dazzling entries reminded us yet again of why London is such a vibrant and exciting place to live. You can see the full shortlist of the top 160 images in an album of entries on our Facebook page.
With difficulty, Getty Images managed to whittle the 500+ entries down to a final short-list of 25, with Ben Swales winning the camera category and Stuart Wilson winning mobile. Getty Images Gallery Director Louise Garczewska said of Ben’s image (below): ‘We chose this image as a winner because of the beautiful lighting and colours within the image. Over a busy summer in London this year the photographer has managed to capture a lovely tranquil moment.’
And of Stuart’s (below): ‘We love the position of the small boy to the left and enjoy the amount of green that offsets the busy city skyline behind. It’s as if he has captured a secret garden within London.’
This Tuesday night, Getty Images Gallery in Stratford opened its doors to our winners, their guests and some of our favourite London bloggers, including London is Cool and The Londoneer for a great evening of photography, cocktails and canapés from Wahaca.
The exhibition is a reminder of the exhilarating diversity that makes London great and how a little bit of social sharing can go a long way. Picked up and reviewed by the Evening Standard here and by Design Week here, it’s sure to put a little sunshine into your December, so be sure to head down and see it yourselves.
Can an outdoor ad campaign really integrate with social media in a measurably successful way? What if those ads live in the London Underground? The Look For Longer campaign, created with CBS Outdoor, was the answer to this challenge. The introduction of Underground Wifi by Virgin Media gave us a chance to prove both that people can engage enthusiastically with Tube ads, and that their offline engagement can drive digital advocacy in turn.
The idea? It’s in the name. By getting people to Look For Longer at tube posters, we could encourage deeper engagement and mobile click-through. The approach? A cryptic poster puzzle that Londoners wouldn’t be able to resist. Featuring images that referred to the names of stations on the Tube map, the vivid tableau challenged city-dwellers and visitors to prove how well they know the Tube system in which they spend so much time every day.
The campaign started as a teaser. 100 London enthusiasts who are highly active in social media were sent an intriguing bundle including the poster and a magnifying glass, wrapped in a ribbon that was printed with their Twitter handle. Unsure as to what the package meant or who had sent it, these early adopters started conversation buzzing amongst relevant online communities. Several of them spent their Friday working out and discussing all the answers, before the main campaign had even gone live.
Social media works best as part of an integrated strategy, so in parallel, CBS Outdoor used a ‘lightweight’ London media package to promote the campaign. Posters prompted Londoners to go to the website and join the conversation through the #lookforlonger hashtag. That conversation was then amplified through the @lookforlonger Twitter profile, and by awarding a Twibbon to those people clever enough to identify all 75 stations.
The results? Quarter of a million site visits, with users spending an average 34 minutes on the site and over 22,000 people managing to get all 75 answers. Thanks to global social amplification teamed with PR, the campaign was not, as you might expect, limited to the London: people in 176 countries ended up taking part.
One particular satisfying outcome of Look For Longer was the fact that although there was a prize incentive, the majority of the people playing were doing so for the sheer pleasure and sense of achievement of completing a difficult task. That’s gamification in action, and advocacy driven by passion, not a prize. And it was great to see conversation spread beyond the bounds of our own platforms, hashtags and target communities. The difficulty of the challenge meant that many players turned to their own networks to source and share answers, creating organic conversations not just on Twitter and Facebook but on forums and in the comments sections of blogs – and round while standing on the platform, at water coolers and round the dinner table, too.
Offline and online playing beautifully? Who would have thought.
This week saw the end of a very busy few weeks of awards for 1000heads. After a fantastic week at the end of October in which we were lucky enough to pick up six gongs, we had further success at the WOMMYs and Dadis earlier this month. This week it was the turn of the Social Buzz Awards at (the Pride of) London’s hallowed Emirates Stadium.
It was a fantastic night, with top class entertainment coming from the excellent Doc Brown and from our own team’s dancefloor exploits - and, most importantly, we were delighted to receive recognition for some of the hard work we have put in over the past year or so.
We picked up two awards, the first in the Best Use of Insight/Measurement category for our work with Nokia on Agora. The project was the culmination of a huge amount of hard work from people across the agency, and we’re delighted for it to be recognised here. Of course it also required a fantastic working relationship with our client – and we certainly had this with Craig Hepburn, Nokia’s Global Director of Digital & Social Media, who had this to say about it:
“Agora is a physical manifestation of Nokia’s commitment to positioning insight and innovation through social media, right at the heart of the brand. Another world class social collaboration between 1000heads and Nokia Social”
Our trophy, safely back in the 1000heads office in front of Agora
The second award was for Best Retail/E-Commerce Social Media Strategy/Campaign, for Say it with Skype. We were delighted with the results of the campaign, and it’s great that the industry has given it the recognition we feel it deserves. Again, the project was a collaborative effort with the client – and Leanne Johnson, Senior Global Marketing Manager at Skype, said this:
“This was our most successful social marketing program to date – not only have we blitzed our engagement targets, we’ve also seen a measurable uplift in subscriptions and sales. We couldn’t have asked for more.”
All in all, a great end to the awards season in 2012. Thanks to the clients and partners who made these wins possible, and here’s to more success in 2013!
Last week was quite a week for our team. We’re glad to say we had reason to celebrate following wins at the Digital Impact Awards and Social Media Communications Awards. It’s thoroughly nice to have our work and agency recognised, especially given the strength and breadth of digital talent on show.
At the Digital Impact Awards on Tuesday we were nominated five times and took home a trophy in every one of the five categories we were shortlisted for; three silvers and two bronzes across integrated digital, social media, community development and telecoms.
* Our awards table at the Digital Impacts. David and Lisa from Skype with Si and Meg
* Safely home
We then had four campaigns shortlisted at the Social Media Communications Awards on Thursday, including The Dark Knight Rises Gotham street view and Foursquare enabled vending machine for Nokia, as well as The Real Network for Royal Mail. And we picked up the award for Best use of Facebook for our work with Skype.
* Kristal Ireland from Enjoy Digital with Joe and Aurelean
But although we’re close to the end of the year (with the nights drawing in), we’re up for more honours before Christmas. Be on the lookout for us at the Dadi Awards 2012 in London on November 8th, MiAwards 2012 in Manchester on November 15th, BIMA Awards 2012 in London on November 22nd and Social Buzz Awards 2012 in London on November 28th. A busy schedule and, with 19 nominations in total, we’ve got high hopes!
Exciting times for the 1000heads mob; we’ll keep you posted…
On the 20th September 2011, 1000heads built one of the world’s first Foursquare enabled vending machines.
“The goal was to inspire people with a new and innovative way to blend social media and the real world.” Mike Rowe, CEO of 1000heads.
Today, the machine has managed to accumulated over 3,500+ check-ins, been installed at 8 key events around the globe and even landed in a Dubai retail store to help promote Nokia products and accessories where it matters most.
So how does the machine work?
When people approached the machine, they can open up Foursquare on any smartphone device and see the aptly named Nokia Gift Machine as a location on Foursquare. Then, by checking-in to the machine it would automatically dispense a free gift in a Nokia branded canister… no buttons, no coins… it really was that simple. See our hands-on demonstration below:
What we soon realized is that the machine gave us a fun way to distribute the Nokia brand message and put more of its products in people’s hands…all for the price of a check-in.
So, the machine began its world tour, traveling to various locations around the globe including Cannes Lions, Mobile World Congress, Nokia World and the Film Independent Spirit Awards in Los Angeles where the machine had its first celebrity check-in.
The final installation of the gift machine was seen in a Nokia retail store in the Mall of The Emirates in Dubai. What set this particular machine a part from the rest, was the fact that it could be activated via NFC technology, which meant we could showcase one of the key features of the Nokia N9 using a hands on experience that rewarded them with a free set of Nokia headphones on any device purchase.
“The Nokia Gift Machine is testament to our efforts to creatively link the online elements of social media along with offline tactics. The machine has already proven hugely popular with trade audiences, and we are confident consumers will feel the same way,” Tamer Elliethy, Digital Marketing Manager, Lower Gulf, Nokia
“Location-based technology and vending machines seem like a natural match, but Nokia is among the first, perhaps the first, to make the connection.” Todd Wasserman, Mashable
All in all, we had a lot of fun creating this one of a kind machine, and will continue to research and develop new innovative ways of bringing brands and people closer together.
In our listening audit for the company, we found that the majority of Lexus conversation in social media focused on the experience of being behind the wheel of their luxury, hybrid and concept cars. However, we also discovered something surprising: people hardly talked about their test drives at all. At just the moment when they should be buzzing with excitement at trying out a new ride, they weren’t.
The solution? The Lexus Social Test Drive: giving the conventional test drive an innovative social boost.
Unlike your average test drive, the social test drive is highly bespoke. By understanding the individual needs, personality and preferences of each driver, we developed a range of customised options such as night time drives, extended test drive periods of up to 24 hours, car delivery and pick-up at an address convenient to the driver, and a personalised social test drive MPG score card upon completion of the trial.
Next, we needed to find the right audience. Social media monitoring and profiling allowed us to identify and engage with vocal, social people who were actively talking about the fact that they were considering purchasing a car. They were offered free bespoke social test drives, all arranged over Twitter. All they had to do was turn up at their closest Lexus centre and enjoy the experience.
To give the campaign an extra boost, we identified a smaller number of highly networked people who loved cars, driving and their families. We invited them to go on bespoke ‘hero test drives’, crafting a personalised experience based on each family’s passions and lifestyle; examples were as a day out for the whole family at a safari park, or free use of a Lexus for an entire weekend.
The reaction was overwhelmingly positive. Each completed social test drive generated not only positive word of mouth across social media but active recommendations from the drivers to their own communities to try the car, sparking further interest and new bookings. Just one example of the word of mouth came from one of the UK’s top parenting bloggers, Tara Cain, whose blog post cited the Hero Test Drive as an outstanding example to other brands hoping to inspire love and loyalty.
#SocialTestDrive generated over 374,000 social connections, with more than 700 posts talking about the initiative – 98% of those being positive. All this helped boost conversation about the Lexus test drive experience by over 300%.
The test drive just got social.
Like what you see? Check out our Work page for some more case studies…
