Winner: Conover Tuttle Pace – ‘Zenyatta’s Quest for Perfection’: Breeders’ Cup World Championships
To create renewed interest in a major international horse-racing event, the Breeders’ Cup, Conover Tuttle Pace found the perfect narrative for the 2010 event in Zenyatta—a female horse known for fun personality and an undefeated record built on come-from-behind wins. Creating a robust social and digital media program, CTP created a personalized Twitter handle and a microsite for the horse; led a “Zenyatta Fan Video” contest on the event’s Facebook page; and relaunched the BreedersCup360.com Web site that served as the bettors' guide to the event. In fact, they even provided a live stream of The Draw and created an official iOS app for the event.
The results: The Breeders’ Cup YouTube channel received over 1.46 million views, BreedersCup360.com generated 500,000 hits during the week of the race and the Facebook Fan Page achieved a 200% increase in fans over 2009. —SP
Honorable Mentions
Inner Circle Labs – Zite Gets Personal: At SXSW, the Zite team mixed cocktails for attendees who downloaded Zite’s iPad app. The Zite team would then take pictures of the attendees holding Zite-branded tumblers to the company's Twitter handle. The campaign helped the company race its away from 200 to 13,000 Twitter followers.
Orange County Transportation Authority – Angels Express Digital Marketing: E-mail blasts, paid advertisements on the LA Angels' Web site and Facebook ads all directed visitors to a unique landing page on OCTA.net. The campaign eclipsed expectations and achieved 33% ridership on the exclusive service for LA Angels’ fans.
MWW Group – 2010 Celebrity Bowling Hall of Fame Campaign: MWW launched a voting campaign for fans to induct their favorite celebrity into the International Bowling Museum & Hall of Fame. Voters were rewarded with a coupon for a free game of bowling. The campaign generated 1.3 million votes and drove immense traffic to bowling centers during National Bowling Week in August 2010.
Siemens Industry Inc. – Plantville, a Siemens Initiative: Siemens created an interactive Facebook game that simulates a plant manager's experience in an effort to educate people on issues relevant to today's plant environment. The game had almost 16,100 players and 81,300 unique visitors 16 weeks after launch.