People don’t care about a brand’s birthday – until you pay them that is!
Cheeky, rebellious and a smash hit, the BWS Pay-For-Hooray Birthday promotion shows that not every promotion needs to be easy and instantaneous. Requiring effort can work extremely well and give you an ice-bucket-load of content to keep the party going long after the first clink of champagne. How? It’s all about the perceived chance of winning; the effort required must match the reward being offered.
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For their 21st birthday, BWS and their long-standing agency village, comprised of The Zoo Republic, M&C Saatchi Sydney and Carat, partnered once again, to run a unique promotion, aimed at celebrating their birthday in an authentic and unconventional way. To enter, anyone over the age of 18 could create content and upload it to the promotional site.
From writing BWS a birthday message, to baking a cake, right through to the Birthday Bonanza (jumping out of a birthday cake in front of a BWS store, signing, dancing, holding a sign and in a birthday outfit) the promotion set tasks for people to complete, video and submit to win cash – with rewards ranging anywhere from $10 to $5,000. All entries into the competition were also entered into the $21k weekly major draw prize.
The response was overwhelming, proving that people really do care about a brand’s birthday, when you pay them to celebrate. With $384k in prizing, the promotion was only live for three days before discussions around adding additional prizes were being had to increase the overall prize pool by 30 per cent.
Exceeding the client’s entrant objective by nearly 100 per cent, so many people wished BWS happy birthday, that we would be able to fill Sydney Harbour’s famous Opera Bar with party-goers, every night for over a year! Creating approximately 51 hours of user generated content, across thousands of videos, BWS now also have access to a bank of assets with which they can share in their social community.
Anna Webster, head of marketing at BWS, said: “To have a choir of 21 people sing us happy birthday in public, to the thousands of BWS birthday cakes that were baked, we were overwhelmed by the amount of birthday love we received and the genuine messages, effort and creativity that was shared. At BWS we are all about bringing the vibes and allowing our customers to celebrate with us, and what better way than to give back to those who have been with us for our young history.”
With The Zoo Republic leading the promotional strategy, M&C Saatchi Sydney leading the brand and creative strategy, creative development and production, and Carat spearheading media, it turns out that the recipe for success is to ask people to bake a cake.
BWS
Anna Webster – Head of Marketing
An Le – Head of Brand
Jackson Young – Senior Brand Manager
Charlotte El Baz – Brand Manager
Malina Yi – Brand Manager
The Zoo Republic
Claire Bezuidenhout – Account Service Director
Emily Richardson – Senior Account Director
Patrick Kenny – Senior Account Manager
Dan McFarlane – Commercial Director, X Collective
Kiel Van Daal – Technical Director, Roilti
Steph Quinn – Client Services Director, Pilgrim
Rae Goode – Account Manager, Pilgrim
M&C Saatchi
Cam Blackley – CCO
Avish Gordhan – ECD
Brendan Donnely – Creative Director
Laura Brown – Senior Art Director
Tom Bradbeer – Senior Copywriter
Simone Cherry – Design Director, Craft
Matt Harrington – Craft designer
Vanessa Boueyres – Managing Partner
Helene Ioakimidis – Group Account Director
Katie Lockwood – Senior Account Manager
Saskia Meagher – Senior Account Manager
Rachael Fraser – Head of Planning
Amy Grant – Senior Strategist
Francisco – Social Media manager
Alison Dunlop – Integrated Producer
James Jamias – Design Director
Ryan Donnelly – Integrated Designer
Ming Chang – Integrated Designer
Soraya Ouzaria – Motion Designer
Kai Faulkner – Motion Designer
William Gembitsky – Motion Designer
Richard Hughes – Senior Retoucher
Matthew Cox – Retoucher
Production Company – Mint Films
Tom Spark – Director
Nick Mutton – Producer
Carat
Christian Fox – Client Partner
Megan Suriadji – Client Executive
Ellishia Maher – Client Executive
Isabelle Bryce -Client Associate
