case study: the chop or not viral marketing campaign
DESCRIPTION
Channel 4 created the “Chop or Not” game to highlight the issue of reducing the UK’s £152 billion budget deficit. The game allows members of the public to say what service areas of the budget they would 'chop' or 'not'. NixonMcInnes has been working with Channel 4 on a viral campaign around the game which will have a second phase when a live show airs on the 21st June (ahead of George Osbornes’ budget announcement). In this case study, Andy and Anna will talk us through the campaign and explain what they have learned so far and ideas for the next phase of the campaign. Presented at Social Media Marketing 2010 (London).TRANSCRIPT
Andy @the_pied_pipes
Channel 4 Anna @CarlsonatorNixonMcInnes
Chop or Not
Getting people to care about budget cuts
Newsworthy
The deficit and spending cuts appeared in over 7000 headlines in last 3 months
But talking about big numbers is hard
Quiz: a million seconds is how long?
What about a billion?
Million sec: 11 days
Billion sec: 32 years
So if we said....
That the deficit was £170bn and we could save £1000 per minute, how long do you think that would take?
It would take323 years
So now if we said...
How much money would you need to save per minute if we had to get rid of the deficit in 5 years?
£64,688 a min
What if we could...
Get 20,000 people to tell us how they’d reduce public spending in a week leading up to the election?
How were we going to do it?
Make it fun
Make it social
Make it open
Hmm. What tried and tested web interaction models could we find...
If you had to cut an item from the public purse, what would it be?
What if you had to choose between these two?
Bit harder now isn’t it?
vs.
What we did
Know thyself
It was difficult...
Online PR
First stats
c70k visits
38,851 1st stage completes 55% conversion. Yay! Target met
11,794 finished games
c850k ‘chops’
Social stats
0
1,750
3,500
5,250
7,000
Twitter Facebook
Referred plays Shares 3122 social shares = c26% of game finishers sent a share
Facebook got 50% more return plays per share
+10% social referrals - 3x more than normal on c4.com
Were socially referred players more engaged?
Avg game finishes: 55%Facebook players: 60.4%Twitter players: 69.8%
Discoveries
Shareable != Pass-on-able
Copy resonated with the playing audience
Mistakes?
Mistake one...
People who gave more didn’t get more...
Mistake two?
Encourage people to play again
Mistake three...
Burying social proof
Mistake four...
Didn’t split tracking links
What we are doing next
Chop or Not goes live, on telly.June 21, 8pm, C4
A more representative sample?
Tracking conversation
Tweets will be monitored on the night
Giving back our data
More social objects
Takeaways
Giving a game a purpose need not make it dull
Shareable != Pass-on-able
Social profile ‘followers’ need not be a KPI
Surprising copy in shareables - any shareables are social objects
Get your tracking nailed
Tanks :)
Andy @the_pied_pipes
Channel 4 Anna @CarlsonatorNixonMcInnes
And tanks for the pretty pictures :)
"mynameis" - http://www.flickr.com/photos/meta2/502180199"Flip Clock Study 007a" - http://www.flickr.com/photos/jesuspresley/2532413826/"The Little Hand Says" - http://www.flickr.com/photos/bricassidy/62599744/"Crowd" - http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidchief/405506361"Life is Love" - http://www.flickr.com/photos/subzeroconsciousness/3398892377"Holborn tube station" - http://www.flickr.com/photos/olotini/3914123022/"Cartoon UK" - http://www.flickr.com/photos/thatscottishengineer/3083827089/sizes/l/“Everyone makes mistakes” - http://www.flickr.com/photos/gregbiche/324444264/