Once again, our friends down at Think! Social Media have created a word-of-mouth buzz around a city through a savvy, social-media-driven hunt for a “mystery person”.
The campaign was a contest for tickets to this week’s Grey Cup in Vancouver, and they modeled it after their wildly successful campaign in Green Bay and Pittsburg for the 2011 Super Bowl in Dallas. Tickets for the event were up for grabs – all you had to do was “Like” the Vancouver Tourism page, follow the Twitter tag line “#YVRChase”, and tune into the #YVRChase Twitter channel for clues released several times per day as to the whereabouts of the Mystery Man. The catch to the whole contest was that in order to reveal the mystery man, you had to ask him the question “Are you a Vancouver fan?”. A parallel contest was running in Winnipeg for the Blue Bomber’s representation in the Grey Cup final.
Yes – someone did find him, but, what was the real takeaway? People in a city known for it’s rainy doldrums and introverted personality were all walking around downtown talking to strangers! Imagine that.
As reported by @VancityBuzz on the Twitter feed (who was a key promoter of the message and one of the places in the social media realm where people could find clues): “Saw a few people walking around Harbour Centre asking random strangers if they have Grey Cup tickets. #YVRChase is on!!”
This was tweeted mere hours after the contest began, and already we had strangers approaching perfect strangers, sharing a laugh, and spreading the word. In fact, the word of mouth aspect of this kind of social media initiative very likely has a broader reach and a faster diffusion than via the social media channel itself! As an illustration, one of the winners of the NFL Super Bowl tickets for the contest held back in January was a homeless lady – no tablet, no PC, no smart phone. She was educated and kept up to speed on the clues through word-of-mouth…a truly remarkable feat.
If anyone wants to question the impact of a well-managed social media campaign, they should probably direct their questions to the creative folks down at Think! Social Media – they may have a few ideas.
