Share The Love
Issue 17 | December 2010
Agency
Archibald Ingall Stretton
Creative Team
Digital Creative Director: Geoff Gower; Creative: Brochan Watts, Kylie Lewis; Senior Designer: Pete Carleton
Production Team
Senior Producer: Elena Mayoral; Head Of Technology: Mihir Rughani
Other Credits
Group Account Director: Damian Bos; Senior Account Manager: Frank Freeman
Date
April 2010
Background
The aim was to spread the word about Capital FM’s annual Summertime Ball at England’s national arena, Wembley Stadium, on 6 June 2010.
The agency opted to use regular listeners, proven brand evangelists with formidable social networking skills, to create buzz about the Ball. In the process, they also hoped to attract new listeners to the station. The reward for participants would be the chance to win ‘rare as hen’s teeth’ tickets to the event.
Idea
With a limited budget, conventional media was out of the question. So the idea had to work across social media instead, getting listeners to spread the word about the Summertime Ball.
They were given a simple challenge.
Get 50 friends to view their unique page and a special image would be revealed. As the number of viewers increased, the image was enhanced until it was pixel perfect and could reveal a unique competition code.
Entrants needed to use all their social networking skills to recruit friends, and get them to go to their unique Capital FM page.
Results
The campaign was a huge success with over 1,800,000 page views and more than 150,000 unique visitors. In addition, there were over 215,000 visitors from 150 countries to the microsite. And the campaign was delivered on time and on budget.
Aside of these hard measures, the softer measures were equally remarkable. The level of engagement and enthusiasm for the campaign was astonishing, resulting in Capital FM's Facebook fan page achieving a 33.64% increase in followers.
The 15-24 audience for Capital FM grew to its highest in 18 months in RAJAR Q2 2010. This was a direct objective from Capital FM and they believe this campaign was responsible for driving the listener numbers.
Our Thoughts
One research study identified four types of creative personality - the artist, the inventor, the developer and the scientist. Advertising usually talks about creativity in terms of art but in the digital world the role of the scientist and the developer is crucial as well, if not that of the inventor. This idea could not have emerged solely from a mind of artistic bent; it reveals a curiosity in human behaviour; a knowledge of the technology available; and the skill to build it so it actually worked.
In short, there seem to be people at AIS with a broader range of talents and wider interests than you’d expect in a traditional agency. As a result they seem to be unusually innovative. Quite apart from this clever idea for Capital FM, there was their ‘Staffblaster’ idea for themselves two Christmases ago. Have a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjqHDUvC6SA&feature=fvst.