Silver - TenGrandisBuriedHere.com
Issue 17 | December 2010
Agency
Wunderman Sydney
Creative Team
Creative Director: Matt Batten; Copywriter: Theodora Gerakiteys; Head of Copy: Jason Stubbs
Production Team
Designers: Terry Hibbert, James Britt; Digital Producer: Jo Durant
Other Credits
Digital Strategist: Camilla Cooke; Planner: Anu Mohan
Date
September 2009
Background
Microsoft’s share in the browser market in Australia had declined. The launch of their new Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) was a chance to arrest this trend but fans of competing products like Safari and Firefox usually greeted new Microsoft products with cynicism and criticism. On top of this, because the product was a free download, the budget was just $15,000 so the campaign had to exist solely in social media.
Idea
To find the cash, players had to download IE8 then follow Twitter@TenGrand_IE8 for daily clues. Using the product to search the net, players had to solve puzzles to find the right URL and crack the password. The first to do this won the $10,000.
News of ‘buried treasure’ was released through bloggers and quickly snowballed to feature on hundreds of blogs around the world. Twitter CEO, Evan Williams, even tweeted about it to his 934,000 followers.
Results
To solve clues, players banded together to create one of the longest-running community forums ever on the world’s largest IT blog, Whirlpool.net with over 150 pages and 5,000 individual contributions.
Not only did participants use the product for several hours every single day for nearly two months but 15,000 IE8 downloads were achieved, 300% over target without a single dollar spent on bought media.
The site attracted over 90,000 unique visitors (32,000 on one day alone). 21% were using IE6 or 7 and could upgrade, while 72%, using competitive browsers, were encouraged to switch to IE8.
Our Thoughts
Burying $10,000 on the internet and challenging people to find it was a world-first. We really liked the idea for its simplicity and its impact, the way that it spread and its incredible results.