Brand Experience and Activation > Digital & Social

INVISIBLE STORIES

BBDO SAN FRANCISCO, San Francisco / 826 VALENCIA / 2016

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Overview

Credits

OVERVIEW

CampaignDescription

With no budget for advertising, we turned to Instagram. We noticed that – with more than 400million users – nearly every noun, verb and adjective is currently being used as an Instagram name. We realized it was possible to take our students writing and spell out their stories one word at a time, tagging those unusual names in our posts to create “invisible stories”, which would only appear when you tap on our post.

Execution

After recreating our student’s writing one word at a time, by matching each word to an Instagram username and tagging them, we created a series of unique posts, designed to look like they were missing something. Each design hinted at a story that wasn’t there, and the caption copy prompted the user to tap the image and reveal the story.

Outcome

With the first flight of invisible stories published April 2016, it will be some months before new volunteer numbers are available to us. New volunteer enquiries through our website are strong. (These potential volunteers then go into a relatively lengthy background check process, before they are cleared to work with children.) Word of mouth feedback has been very encouraging; with an added boost earned from the unusual use of the Instagram tagging feature.

Relevancy

We had to think differently for this campaign, given that our client is a non-profit without money to spend on their advertising. The unusual solution is unlike any promo or activation we have created for them in the past. We believe we are the first to use Instagram in the way described below.

Strategy

Our strategy was to make best use of the only available media – the 826 Valencia Instagram feed. Our target audience of potential tutors is young and active on the platform. If we could reach out to a large number of them with a surprising use of the familiar tagging feature, we knew we had a strong chance of recruiting a new generation of volunteers.

Synopsis

“826 Valencia” is a non-profit organization providing free tutoring to inner-city kids. Through creative writing and story telling exercises, the students gain confidence and self-esteem. But they need volunteers to donate their time to help these kids. Without new volunteers, their stories might never be told.

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