SOCIAL MEDIA CASE STUDY Bidvest Car Rental #EveryMinuteCounts
Social Media Campaign Brief – Bidvest Car Rental At the beginning of 2015, You&Me Design was asked to aid in the creation and management of social media accounts for Bidvest Car Rental. This required accounts to be started from scratch. This was done in the space of approximately two weeks and within this time a new brand social strategy was required, as well as a new look and feel was needed to get the brand off the ground. The accounts that were focussed on were Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Facebook was, and continues to be the preferred platform for Bidvest Car Rental’s followers. In the first month, Bidvest Car Rental’s Facebook page saw an increase of 1900 likes. This continued steadily throughout the year.
By the six-month mark, the Facebook page was sitting on approximately 7000 likes. And finally, at just under a year, Bidvest Car Rental has over 10 000 likes. Twitter, although not as favourable as Facebook, gained 286 followers over the first three months and a total of 366 followers after six months. At present, the Twitter account is sitting at 447 followers. We also ran 4 social media based competitions which has been proven to be instrumental in the creation of a solid social media presence for the brand. YouTube is the third platform that has proven to be very beneficial for the Bidvest Car Rental brand. This is due to the fact that it has been utilised to publish two television advertisements, as well as a seasonal campaign. The YouTube channel has 16 subscribers but over 74 000 views which was due, in part, to the seasonal campaign that was run during November and December of last year (2015).
Campaign In November of last year (2015), Bidvest Car Rental took on Retroviral, 10tth Street Media and You&Me Design to create a viral online campaign surrounding Bidvest Car Rental as a brand and its dedication to “making every minute count”. This seasonal campaign was run during the months of November and December. The initial objective of this campaign was to promote and to drive more traction towards Bidvest Car Rental weekend rentals. The campaign was presented with an obstacle due to the fact that the client wanted to create publicity around the ‘Bidvest takkies’, which were handed out to every staff member. The ad centred around two key concepts for Bidvest Car Rental: to make every minute count and to stir up childhood nostalgia but finding happiness in the little things and going on an adventure. Bidvest Car Rental wants to be marketed as a human brand, a brand that prides itself on professionalism, while still having fun. This was the idea behind employees wearing Bidvest Car Rental ‘takkies’. Read the article published on Bizcommunity here: http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/12/137166.html Using a child as the brand ambassador only added to the notion of childhood simplicity and happiness. Children also offer an uninhibited honesty, which is a concept that fits well with a brand that aims to be portrayed as humanistic and not only focused on monetary gain. Follow this link to view the ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD8h-l_gnFQ
And with the launch of a viral campaign, a solid social media presence is also necessary. This meant frequent allusions to the campaign via Facebook, as well as on Twitter. It was also very import to make use of social media influencers to encourage more brand engagement. The key criteria that was kept in mind when the four influencers were chosen were firstly, and most obviously, South Africans with a considerable following, ‘mommy bloggers’, and individuals who made good use of social media. Subsequently, came the digital ads in the form of digital advertisements or digital banners.
And lastly, there needed to be some ‘offline’ follow-through, which materialised in small activations and Bidvest Car Rental branches. These activations kept with the theme of childhood reminiscence as Frisbees, buckets and ice cream (all Bidvest blue, of course) were handed out to customers at branches.