Social Media Campaign Review – Laura Woodhouse

  • Social Media
Ben and Jerry’s are one of fair trades biggest fans so it was no surprise when they decided to raise awareness about World Fair Trade Day. The company’s core values are set around using fair trade products and they describe it as their ‘DNA’.
“Five years ago for World Fair Trade Day, we may have held a rally in front of 100 or so people, hoping the media would come out. Now we can reach our fans around the world with a single click and truly engage them in the conversation to understand that for all of our Fair Trade partners: every purchase counts. We saw people engage in the conversation all around the world” – comment in Promo magazine.
The overall aim of this 2011 virtual rally was to promote World Fair Trade Day which was on the 14th of May. This was achieved by a clever tactic which also helped raised awareness of the brand and Twitter profile. Ben and Jerry’s decided they did not like waste and a big waste on Twitter is the left over characters on the word limit. As you will (or may not) know Twitter had 140 character limit but what happens with the left over characters? Nothing! So why not promote a good cause like World Fair Trade Day? Any left-over characters were ‘donated’ and promoted World Fair Trade Day at the end of the persons tweet. Tweeters could ‘donate’ their characters by uploading a plugin to their web browser. For the Iphone and Ipad users an app was available to download. Messages about fair trade with the link would come up automatically after the tweet was written which amounted to the left over word limit.
Ben and Jerry did not just spread this by word of mouth like in the old days, they made a YouTube video which has received 23,857 views which helped to aid the 12 million fair trade tweets that were achieved through the up loader. Not to mention this was great for their CSR and demonstrating the company’s values!
Results:
*43,600 site visits from over 100 countries
* 518,000 Twitter characters have been contributed.
* Fair Trade messages have been tweeted out to more than 12 million
* Mentions in more than 1,000 blogs

Ben and Jerry’s – Donate Your Spare Twitter Characters to a Good Cause

Ben and Jerry’s are one of fair trade’s biggest fans so it was no surprise when they decided to raise awareness about World Fair Trade Day. The company’s core values are set around using fair trade products and they describe it as their ‘DNA’.

“Five years ago for World Fair Trade Day, we may have held a rally in front of 100 or so people, hoping the media would come out. Now we can reach our fans around the world with a single click and truly engage them in the conversation to understand that for all of our Fair Trade partners: every purchase counts. We saw people engage in the conversation all around the world” – Ben and Jerry’s comment in Promo magazine.

The overall aim of this 2011 virtual rally was to promote World Fair Trade Day which was on the 14th of May. This was achieved by a clever tactic which also helped raised awareness of the brand and its Twitter profile. Ben and Jerry’s decided they did not like waste, and a big waste on Twitter is the leftover characters on the word limit. As you may know, Twitter has a 140 character limit but what happens with the leftover characters? Nothing! So why not promote a good cause like World Fair Trade Day? Any leftover characters were ‘donated’ and promoted World Fair Trade Day at the end of the person’s tweet. Tweeters could ‘donate’ their characters by uploading a plugin to their web browser. For iPhone and iPad users an app was available to download. Messages about fair trade including a link would come up automatically after the tweet was written which amounted to the left over word limit.

Ben and Jerry's

Ben and Jerry did not just spread this by word of mouth like in the old days, they made a YouTube video which has received 23,857 views which helped to aid the 12 million fair trade tweets that were achieved through the up loader. Not to mention this was great for their CSR and demonstrating the company’s values!

Results:

*43,600 site visits from over 100 countries

* 518,000 Twitter characters have been contributed

* Fair trade messages have been tweeted out to more than 12 million

* Mentions in more than 1,000 blogs