Fanta: LOST IN TIMELINE

Credits & Description:

Category: Best Use of Social Media

Advertiser: COCA-COLA

Product/Service: FANTA

Agency: OGILVY NEW YORK

Agency: OGILVY PUBLIC RELATIONS

Creative Director: Abe Baginsky (Ogilvy New York)

Copywriter: Nick Panayotopoulos (Ogilvy New York)

Art Director: Roberto Salas (Ogilvy New York)

Art Director: Laura Goodman (Ogilvy New York)

Media placement: Digital - facebook - February 29, 2012



Summary of the Campaign

At a time when they’re being told to grow up, teens admire those who subvert the expected into something playful.



Fanta has a playful ethos: 'More Fanta. Less Serious.' encapsulated in an integrated campaign running in 190 markets. On Facebook, however, Fanta had 2,500,000 fans with an average of 286 interactions per post. Our engagement was okay, but not great. We needed teens to engage with something they authentically wanted to share



When Fanta was invited to launch Facebook Timeline, we saw an opportunity to do more than just showcase our heritage. We saw the chance to play a game.



Challenges:

• No recipe for how Timeline would affect sharing.

• No media support.

• A new Facebook format that was being defined daily.



On February 29th  2012, we launched 'Lost in Time', a game that flung 4 Fanta characters out of the cover photo and into the past.



We challenged fans to find and ‘like’ them back to the future. They had to solve clues to deduce which year the characters were lost in, find the photo in Timeline and ‘like’ it. Once the number of ‘likes’ matched the year they were hidden in – WHAM – they were restored to the cover photo.



This was pure Timeline functionality; no media or incentives and led to praise from Facebook and won us #1 Best Use of Facebook Timeline from  Mashable.



Engagement rose by 114% and we received over 45 Million organic + viral impressions –purely because the world played.



The Situation

Fanta had established a presence on Facebook and attracted fans through periodic creative experiences and media spend. We needed everyday fans who were engaged enough to spread their love for Fanta without the gimmicks of a contest or promotion.



We needed to generate earned media from fans and prove they would interact with playful content and share it in a sustained way.



Fanta also needed to demonstrate to their global network of brand managers, each managing local Facebook pages, that they could use the new Facebook Timeline to earn attention, engagement and advocacy from fans.  



The Goal



Goals and Objectives:



Increase active fan base by associating Fanta more strongly with Play.



Grow the level of engagement that led to Facebook sharing – the new earned media – by 25%



Innovate via the new Facebook Timeline feature set and surprise our followers.



We had more than a year’s worth of Facebook data to analyse and understand. We knew that pictures and videos drew engagement rates of up to ten times more than text updates, so we knew we would have to use this statistic to get teens to play a game.



The Strategy

To earn teens’ attention and their continued engagement, we re-introduced them to our core characters through a game. We drew them in with a bold new cover image and seamlessly drove them down through the brand’s timeline. We wanted them to discover our characters, our content and the new format for Facebook and tell their friends about it.



We made the design of the page into one big game. The characters were missing from the cover image. Users had to follow visual clues to find the characters somewhere in the timeline.



Our fans’ activities were pushed out through their personal pages, acquiring more fans. By using story arcs that extended across many wall posts, we earned ongoing involvement and user-sharing.



Execution

As we launched on February 29th, we proposed the leap year’s extra day ripped a hole in the Fanta time/space continuum. This event flung our characters out of the cover photo and sent them hurtling back to past years in the Timeline.



Our fans had to bring them back to the present by solving clues to deduce which year they were lost in, find their photo in Timeline and ‘like’ it. Once the number of 'likes’ matched the year they were hidden in, they were restored to the cover photo.



Fans came together to crack the clues, track down the characters and recruit their friends to join the effort. One by one, our characters were ‘liked’ enough times to be rescued.



We used only Facebook’s existing functionality to gamify Timeline; no incentives nor promotions. This was one of the reasons Facebook picked us to pilot their new format.



Documented Results

We wanted to earn higher levels of engagement and the personal advocacy of fans pushing out content and activity via their own Facebook accounts.  Our goal was a 25% increase.



• We drove post level engagement up by 114% within 2 months featuring our Timeline design and content (over previous period), far exceeding our goals.

• We generated over 45m organic and viral page impressions in 2 months featuring our Timeline design and content

(Viral = someone interacts with your Page and that interaction is published via their feed for their followers to see it. Organic = posting something and your fans/subscribers see it.)

• We grew our fanbase by more than 11% or an additional 287,000 fans in just 2 months,



We cracked the code on designing content that would earn the advocacy of 2.8m fans, who shared that content with over 280,000,000 of their friends.