This case study will look at how a tweetathon was used by USA for UNHCR to help spread the message about their Blue Key Campaign. The Blue Key Campaign was centered around informing the American population of the refugee crisis. This was done by having people go on to the website and buy a blue key pin or pendant to wear.
Before I start blabbing on about tweetathon let me explain what it is. A tweetathon is similar to a teleathon but for Twitter. The objectives for a tweetathon vary from raising awareness to raising money. The tweetathon by USA for UNHCR was scheduled to happen on the 13th of June 2011 to start at 9am and finish at 9pm.
The campaign was run by having Blue Key Champion, a variety of influence makers, tweeting about the cause and using the tweets from @UNRefugeeAgency to show their support. These Blue Key Champions would use their own accounts to help spread the message. Does this sound familiar to you? If not I’m not impressed cause you didn’t read the UNICEF India case study. And that would make me sad. Okay enough with that rant back to the similarities. The use of other people to promote your campaign which is not totally reliant on the agencies account. The agency’s account might provide information for people to re-tweet or discuss on but all the work is done by the Blue Key Champions.
At the end of the tweetathon #bluekey was mentioned in a 1 524 tweets this was an increase from an average of 50 tweets a day. Traffic to the Blue Key website increased to 169%.
The statistics of this campaign are impressive but does this strategy rely soley on the use of celebrity ambassadors or famous influence makers? We keep this in mind as we continue to explore different Twitter marketing strategies.
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Tatenda, thanks so much for highlighting the #bluekey tweetathon. Since @UNRefugeeAgency is my client, and I helped pull the tweetathon together along with the Champions, I figured you’d be ok with me answering your question. A couple of things were really interesting about the tweetathon:
1. It was a Champion-generated idea. Not that we hadn’t thought of doing something like that, but to get a really high level of tweets going for 12 hours in a day, you have to have committed participants. And it was only when the Champions had been involved with the campaign for a while, had started to build a real sense of solidarity with the campaign, that it could work. So when they came up with the idea themselves, we were really thrilled, because it showed they connected with the cause.
2. We actually did not rely solely on celebrity ambassadors or “top” influencers. If you look at the Blue Key Champions, you’ll see that they comprise a wide range of people, with varying levels of followers, etc. But what they have in common is that they are socially active, and cause-passionate. The only “celebrity” supporter of sorts who participated actively in the tweetathon was Roya Hosseini who manages the Khaled Hosseini Foundation Twitter account (@tkhf), and she participated in a Q&A for an hour. I think that was a significant reason for increased interest in the campaign, but not so much because of her connection to Khaled, but because she was able to talk about refugee issues and educate people on how far a very small amount of money can go.
I’m curious to see what your other readers think. And thank you again for spotlighting the Blue Key campaign!
Thank you so much for your response. This is really helpful in helping us learn about successful twitter campaigns by providing an insiders perspective of how the campaign was formulated and run. have you run any other campaigns that have had similar success on Twitter?
Tatenda, not as recently as the #bluekey tweetathon, but I’ve participated in some, that build on the same principles, e.g. #hungerpledge a couple of years ago, and To Mama, With Love, which is organized by @staceymonk. Stacey really does a terrific job of building her “army,” as it were, before the campaign starts. I think that’s critical, because you can’t expect people to jump on board the day of the campaign. Whether you call them “Champions,” or “love bombers,” or whatever, the idea is always the same; spend time early on in building your core group of supporters, empower and energize them, see how you can get them really invested in the campaign, and then depend on them to spread the word. Community-driven events are so powerful!
Fantastic use of Twitter to spread the message, hopefully campaigns similiar to this can be executed by just tapping on resources like close Twitter friends. If you consider the amount of chatter that happens on a daily basis among non-celebrity entities, to get them to join a campaign like this should really be a lot easier, if everyone could get 5 new people to re-tweet their tweets, this type of campaign could go super-viral. I like it and certainly want to give it a try soon.
Good point Alex, tapping into our personal networks can certainly have a far reach as we have seen with this campaign. Shonali, I love your idea of building and empowering core community members for cause-focused marketing efforts. It is always inspiring to see community-driven events succeed as people rally around a cause or common goal.