CME Group launched Commodity Carnival in partnership with the National 4-H Council with one main goal: to help America's future farmers understand what it takes to manage the financial risks of bringing agricultural commodities to market.
With this in mind, we introduced the interactive Commodity Carnival experience at state and county fairs across the country. The experience teaches fair-going families the fundamentals of financial risk management in agriculture, by way of bringing a hog to market. Participating kids fill plastic eggs with grain, feed and other items representing necessary investments required to raise a hog. They then send their "hog egg" down the Plinko-style Risk Ranch board to see if they can avoid market risks, and make a profit. Special prizes are awarded to participants whose selling prices were greater than the investment required to raise their hogs.
Our campaign objective was to take the activity at the fairgrounds and make it accessible to anyone, anywhere.
To do this, we set our sights on a full digital experience supported by a social media campaign involving multiple platforms. We sought to build awareness and discussion around Commodity Carnival, raise in-person attendance and extend the experience to those who might not attend a fair.
In 2015, we visited 120 state and county fairs, and in the summer of 2016, we are planning to visit 150 fairs in nine states.
To recreate the experience at each of these locations for a digital audience, we created an app and online game called Risk Ranch which, like its in-person counterpart, involves investing in your hog in order to bring it to market. A similar plinko-style board represents the uncertain financial risks of raising livestock. The app allows for interactive components not found in the live game, such as an online leaderboard and the option to purchase boosters to continue growing your ranch.
To further extend the campaign, we implemented a social media program supported by organic reach through the #4HCarnival hashtag on Twitter and Instagram, as well as targeted Facebook ads in the 11 states where the carnival appeared live. In addition, organic posts containing a #RiskRanch hashtag focused on the app game experience, encouraging discussion about scores and outcomes while also driving social media followers to download the game. This was further supported by Facebook ads targeted to all 50 states aimed at app downloads.
In 2016, we have added support through a Commodity Carnival Snapchat filter at select locations.
The success of the campaign was measured by social media engagement, Commodity Carnival attendance at fairs, app downloads and earned media coverage.
In 2015, 82,000 youth and adults participated in in the Commodity Carnival live experience, topping the campaign target by 150 percent. Another 7,500 people around the globe downloaded the Risk Ranch app. In its first three years, Commodity Carnival reached 200,000 young people.
#4HCarnival received more than 400 mentions, generating more than 20 million potential impressions on Twitter and Instagram. #RiskRanch posts over the last year have generated an estimated 15 million potential impressions. 25 organic posts on CME Group-owned accounts alone resulted in more than 1,600 engagements on Twitter and Instagram.
Facebook organic and paid posts drove more than 40,000 visits to our Commodity Carnival page listing the locations of fairs where it would appear, and reached more than 2.6 million Facebook users in all.
Commodity Carnival also received more than 6,000 media mentions and 68 unique stories covering all 50 states. The campaign won two major awards in 2015: PRSA Skyline Awards and the PRSA Bronze Anvil Award.
