Cape Town Tourism: SEND YOUR FACEBOOK PROFILE TO CAPE TOWN

Credits & Description:

Type of entry: Branded Entertainment

Category: Best use or integration of digital or social media

Advertiser: CAPE TOWN TOURISM

Product/Service: CAPE TOWN

Agency: OGILVY & MATHER CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA



Chris Gotz (Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town)

Jacques Massardo (Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town)

Nicholas Wittenberg (Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town)

Tommy Le Roux (Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town)

Gareth Mcpherson (Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town)

Adrian Varkel (Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town)

Matthew Pullen (Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town)

Emma Butlin (Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town)

Dean Paradise (Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town)

Kate Desmarais (Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town)

Fred Cilliers (Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town)

Andrew Pullen (Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town)

Shelley Broad (Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town)

Lisa Clarke (Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town)

Kurt Paulse (Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town)

Mike Wood (R.e.c (Record.edit.create))

Kaif Ahmed (R.e.c (Record.edit.create))

Dave Jackson (R.e.c (Record.edit.create))

Kamilla Nurock (R.e.c (Record.edit.create))

Describe the campaign/entry

Most tourism brands are gifted with big media and productions budgets. We didn't have that luxury. But we did have a beautiful city we wanted to share with tourists around the world. We needed to find a way of sharing all this amazing content without having to spend too much on content creation and media.

So we used the place where people already share their holidays: Facebook. Our Idea was simple, Send your Facebook profile to Cape Town and you could win the trip for real. Through a Facebook application, Facebook users could send their profiles on a virtual tailor made holiday and for 5 days, status updates, photos and video posts automatically landed in their timelines

Without any media spend, Facebook users from around the world became our channels and stations for spreading Cape Town.

Results

Our Client, Cape Town Tourism, briefed us to come up with an online campaign that would increase tourism during the festive season- without the big budgets most tourism campaigns enjoy.

We knew that we could persuade people to visit Cape Town by showing them all of the great stuff they could do in Cape Town. We also knew that people love sharing their holidays on Facebook, so we thought: let's send people's Facebook profiles…to Cape Town.

By signing up to the application, Facebook profiles from around the world received a virtual tailor-made holiday. And if they were lucky, they could've won their Facebook profile's trip for themselves.

Each day Facebook users received personalised content in real-time on their timelines and if they wanted to, they could also delve deeper into the places their profile visited.

The biggest challenge was creating all the content. We shot over 150 POV videos, wrote over 400 status updates and took over 10 000 holiday snaps that gave potential tourists a taste of what it would be like to holiday in Cape Town

The application also randomly chose people to send direct mails to in the form of gifts from the places their profile visited.

At the end of the campaign, a few lucky winners won an all expenses paid holiday in Cape Town, so they could experience their exact Facebook profile's holiday for themselves.

By distributing our content in an innovative way, we made people think that users were actually in Cape Town and in doing so spread Cape Town Tourism across the world without the big media spend.

Most of our media budget was spent on directing people to our Facebook custom tab housed on the Cape Town Tourism Facebook page.

Once potential tourists started their virtual Cape Town holiday, personalised content automatically landed onto their timelines.

Due to the virality of the idea and the social nature of Facebook, the content was spread organically. This helped us gain an immeasurable amount of earned media.

The competition prize, an all-expenses paid holiday to and in Cape Town, helped the campaign spread like wildfire.

In addition, we amplified the idea by sending out direct mails.

Cape Town received a 4% increase in tourism.

Table Mountain received a record number of visitors.

Next year's bookings are already up by 118%.

During the campaign Cape Town Tourism's Facebook page received over 20 000 likes.

Over 350 000 potential tourists engaged with our campaign.

Roughly half a million impressions were generated on Facebook alone.

44 000 friends were invited to send their Facebook profiles to Cape Town.

In free PR and earned media, we received a 100% return on investment.