MAKE A RABID FANBASE PROVE EXACTLY HOW MUCH THEY LOVE OUR BRAND.

We introduced the world’s first auction on Periscope, THUMP by WingStop, where we turned Periscope’s pointless hearts into powerful currency. Every hour a new prize went up and fans bid with hearts instead of money. Whoever racked up the most hearts, by tapping, won.

And while Periscope told us real-time heart count was impossible, we found a workaround: a backend access point that captured the data and fed our leaderboard. Announcing winners in milliseconds.

BREAKING RULES AND CARVING OUT NEW GROUND

In order to turn Periscope into an auction, we needed to be able to track user hearts in real-time. When we asked Periscope and Twitter if they could help us get the data, they said it wasn’t possible. So, we took a look at the way Periscope was coded and discovered a new way in. By building a backend function that sat between Periscope and the browser, we could capture the data we needed, live.

The day of the auction, a new item went up for bidding each hour. We auctioned off everything from Custom Nikes to Golden Turntables to a year’s supply of WingStop. Our custom leaderboard tracked the hearts and showed users the frontrunners in real-time. At the conclusion of each auction, the winner was announced.

As a result, over 26,000 unique fans tapped 816,686 hearts (which was almost twice as much as the White House's cumulative total), with an average of 6,395 hearts per minute--and at the peak, 94.7 hearts per second--landed us on the top of Periscope's trending page, and people watched over 65 hours of live video. All in under 33 hours.

As a bonus, after the winner of custom Nike's tweeted out a picture of her new shoes, the tweet was picked up by several sneaker websites like Complex Magazine's Sole Collector.

Even the Periscope CEO tweeted his love for the idea. Eventually, Periscope changed its API so others could follow in our footsteps and replicate what we achieved.

Total Reach: 1.2MM