In the world of Facebook, a small brand can face some big challenges. A “like" quickly gets buried, and prime real estate can be costly. So how do you make a splash when you’re the smallest car in America without a big car budget? You think like a hacker. We realized two things about Facebook. By loading a video, frame-by-frame, into a photo album, we could create a “flipbook" story that brings the static interface to life. And by getting our fans to tag themselves in these albums, we could organically reach the News Feed without a media buy. So we created “Tag Your Own Adventure," a visually-arresting, interactive experience based on the classic choose your own adventure format. Using these insights into albums and tagging, we gave smart an unprecedented level of exposure to the Facebook world. From the content release strategy to the voting mechanism itself, the entire campaign used familiar Facebook interactions in unique new ways. When “Tag Your Own Adventure" was launched, brands had been experiencing a decrease in Facebook tab views as fans were choosing to interact with content instead. smart capitalized on this change in user activity by untapping the potential within native Facebook photo albums, rather than building a separate ¬– and more likely to be ignored – customized tab. Once the content was live, we turned the power over to the fans. Their tags (aka “votes") decided each twist and turn of the adventure, giving them ownership of the brand experience and a reason to keep coming back for more. And with each tag, they vaulted us organically beyond the costly borders of Facebook and into the prime real estate. Over the course of the four-week campaign, Tag Your Own Adventure generated over 36 million impressions. Our photo views increased 441%, and our rate of fan acquisition spiked 977%. Best of all, we opened up a channel of exposure to a world of fans who would have never seen us before.
