Brand Experience and Activation > Use of Promo & Activation
SKIPPY, THE STONE-SKIPPING ROBOT
ELEVEN, San Francisco / SUN VALLEY / 2013
Overview
Credits
Overview
ClientBriefOrObjective
Everyone knows Sun Valley, Idaho, as a first-class ski resort. But it’s often overlooked as a first-class summer destination. With mountain biking, kayaking, fly-fishing, swimming, and miles of hiking, it has everything to offer the summer vacationer, too. So the objective was set: Double traffic to the Sun Valley website and drive engagement for summer visits.
Implementation
Our goal was to give people a real, tangible experience of summer in Sun Valley—one that people could enjoy even when trapped at their desks. And from that, Skippy, the stone-skipping robot was born. Skippy allowed users to skip a real stone across a tranquil lake in Sun Valley in real time and watch the action live via a webcam. All while discovering the wonders of a summer in Sun Valley. When Skippy went viral, we saw a 75% increase in new visits over the same time last year. We far exceeded the desired outcome. All thanks to Skippy.
Outcome
During our one-week campaign, VisitSunValley.com saw a 5,000% increase in traffic. Visitors came from all 50 states, 96 countries, and every continent—2,300 stones were skipped, which was the absolute maximum possible by Skippy. There was a queue the entire time Skippy was active. Before the campaign, Sun Valley averaged 1.6 Twitter followers each day. Afterward, followers increased to 29 per day.
Skippy went viral on numerous websites, news stations, and blogs around the world. He even made it to the front page of Reddit.com. In total, we generated $2.7 million in earned media, well above our $100K goal.
Relevancy
We just wanted to give people a sense of what it’s like to visit Sun Valley in the summer. Our creative solution—a stone-skipping robot on a real lake—is a simple, carefree interactive experience that matches the attitude of Sun Valley. It’s a far cry from the complex interactive campaigns we see populating the Internet. We also wanted to drive people to the Sun Valley site, so that’s where we kept Skippy (and maybe we did too good of a job, since stone skippers crashed the site).
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