The 2010 FedExCup Global Golf Sweepstakes marketing campaign was launched with two objectives: to generate entries for the sweepstakes and, as an underlying goal, to generate leads for FedEx’s international shipping business. Therefore, we needed to develop an entry method that would simultaneously allow FedEx to educate potential customers about international shipping and unintrusively solicit their business.

Our greatest challenge: with its biggest star not playing, professional golf was in for a season of historically low TV ratings. That meant we’d have to rely less on traditional media to drive sweepstakes entries and more on immersive digital content.The campaign consisted of two parts—advertising that drove customers to our microsite, and on the site, a golf game that served as the primary sweepstakes entry method.

The campaign launched with TV, print and digital advertising using the theme "golf daydreams." Ads drove consumers to fedexcup.com, where they played our golf game by answering global golf trivia questions to earn sweepstakes entries.

To expand reach, we made it easy for players to brag on Facebook, challenge friends to play, and keep track of each other’s scores. Entries could also be earned by answering questions on Twitter and directly in banner ads. The game also became a vehicle for FedEx to educate an affluent audience about its international shipping business. And sweepstakes entries were a natural, unobtrusive way to generate a database of potential customers.

In a year where golf’s TV ratings were about 30% lower, we were still able to increase the total visits to our site compared to last year, generating over 440,000 entries, in addition to an increase in email opt-ins for international shipping.