The Clickthinking Blog | Scent Optimisation

Clickthinking has begun the new year year with a bang, having secured two finalists in the upcoming Virgin Active Sport Industry Awards 2011. Scheduled to take place for the first time on 17 February, the event will honour brands and agencies who worked hard to promote South Africa’s sport industry last year.

Clickthinking’s Global Storming campaign, created for Western Province Rugby, is nominated in the category of Best Use of Digital Communications in Sport; while The Vodacom Player 23 Coach Call application, developed in collaboration with Draft FCB and Trinergy, is shortlisted under the Technological Innovation in Sport category.

A competitive year

Peter Stewart, CEO of Clickthinking is thrilled with the two nominations: “It was a very competitive year, considering the high quality of entries and the fact that the attention of the world was largely focussed on World Cup-related campaigns. We are very proud that our two entries stood out, despite being produced for other sporting codes.”

This is a fantastic follow-up to a successful awards-run in 2010. Clickthinking picked up two honourees at the international Webby Awards, six statuettes at the international W3 Awards, and three Pixels at the Bookmarks, South Africa’s annual digital media and marketing awards.

Online marketing campaigns are getting more and more creative as South African agencies start to harness ever advancing technologies. We recently added two brand new features to Vodacom’s Player 23 online campaign to give the site a boost for the South African leg of the Vodacom Tri Nations.

Our challenge was to create something that would bring Springbok closer to the game with engaging features that encourage user participation.

Coach Call

Coach Call is a fun interactive feature whereby fans receive a phone call with a recorded message directly from Springbok Coach Peter de Villiers to their mobile phones. We built this application which combines online video produced by Draft FCB with audio message service technology.

Disruptive promotional messages currently bombard consumers frequently in the form of mobile text messages or email. This is also know as spam, and most people are immune to it. An audio message service or recorded voice phone call accesses the user in a fresh and unexpected way.

Vodacom Fan Cam

Created by Virtual Africa, this interactive high definition panoramic photograph of a packed stadium displays close up face level detail. Users are able to zoom right into the crowd and identify the individual faces of people who were there on the day of the match. Supporters can tags themselves and other members of the crowd and integrate the application with their Facebook accounts.

With this unique online feature fans are acknowledged for their support and are no longer annonymous faces in the crowd. The relationship between fans and the team becomes a bit more personal.

These two new features proved to be a great boost for Vodacom Player 23 online as traffic to the website shot from to around 65 000 visits by 50 000 unique visitors within two days from launch. We are especially proud to have worked for this campaign and get behind the Bokke for the 2010 season!

Check out both features on the Player 23 website, and read the press release on BizCommunity.

When Jupiter Drawing Room approached us to help out with a new campaign for The Sunflower Fund we jumped at the chance. The Sunflower Fund is a wonderful organisation which was founded in 1999 by parents of children with leukaemia, to try and get financial support and raise the number of bone marrow stem cell donors in South Africa.

The 1 in 100 000 Challenge was conceptualised as a build up to National Bandana Day on 12 October 2010. The campaign, designed by Jupiter Drawing Room, demonstrates the harsh odds that only one in every 100 000 people suffering from leukaemia will find a bone marrow stem cell match.

The Sunflower Fund has challenged popular personality DJ Fresh to ‘meet’ 100 000 people online in 1000 hours. Every user that signs up to join the challenge counts as a ‘meet’.

Digital integration

We designed and built an integrated mircosite which allows users to engage with the campaign via their Facebook accounts, pledge monetary donations, as well as send emails to their friends, inviting them to join the cause too.

A unique feature of the site is the campaign tracking feature, whereby each user who signs up is represented by a simple graphic profile. This allows users to be acknowledged for their contribution and also monitors the progress of the challenge to reach 100 000.

We also added a mechanism which monitors monetary donations and displays the individuals and companies who sponsor them.

The 1 in 100 000 Challenge runs until 12 October and there’s still a long way to go until the 100 000 target. Show your support for leukaemia and sign up to meet Fresh by visiting www.1in100000.co.za.

It’s always one of the most satisfying feelings when a few months hard work and a good couple of late nights finally manifest into a beautiful end result. We were very excited to launch finally an all new website for brand and research consultancy OIL Insight last week.

OIL (Original Insight Learning) is a brand strategy agency owned by the Lowe Bull group. Our task was to build an online space to differentiate OIL and establish a more independent image for the company. Part of the challenge was to digitally represent OIL’s unqiue approach to brand strategy, which combines comprehensive research insights with creative solutions.

Our design team did a  particularly great job in creating the colourful and striking website interface. The quirky cartoon-like illustrations, produced in collaboration with Once Horse Town,  are customised for each page of the site, with an animation effect on the Home page. This visual theme is integrated throughout OIL’s various digital and social media channels.

Visit oilinsight.co.za to see the finished product! We are confident that our work will help OIL Insight maintain a solid and powerful online brand as they continue to develop as a business.

Read the story on BizCommunity.

Readers of BizCommunity, South Africa’s marketing and media hub, may have noticed our Feliny for Lucky Pet campaign amongst the top news headlines on Wednesday.

The Feliny Heist is an interactive digital promotion which invites users to participate in solving an intriguing online mystery over a two month period, for the chance to win an Apple iPad.

The project is a fresh approach to petfood marketing, which traditionally emphasises the health benefits of products, for the purpose of introducing Lucky Pet’s new Supreme Dry Kibbles.

Despite the elements of excitement and intrigue, a social responsibility factor is incorporated into the promotion, whereby a donation of petfood goes to the SPCA for every new member who joins the Feliny Heist. So far a substantial donation of 450 bags of petfood has been collected.

Campaign statistics

Feliny.co.za has been live for a few weeks, and the latest figures from our data analysts confirm that the campaign has really begun to take off.

Statistics measured from when the site received its first visits on 19 April to this week:

• 454 sign-ups from 1446 visits by 1005 unique visitors; this is a high conversion rate of 31.3%
• Of these visits, 281 (20%) originated from the banner campaign
• 122 visitors (10%) opted to send the campaign email to a friend
• Of the 1005 visitors, 365 chose to view the campaign video
• The video has been viewed a total of 500 times

Clickthinking worked closely with Jupiter Drawing Room on the Feliny Heist. We can’t wait to see how the campaign fares as it moves into the exciting second phase.

Join the challenge by visiting the site, and keep track of the investigation as it unfolds on Twitter and Facebook.

We have archived our random thoughts and reviews of projects on our previous blog (pre 2009). Click here to visit the old blog @ http://blog.clickthinking.com .