Skype had just launched a partnership with Toshiba which included one month free of Skype’s Unlimited World Subscription package for consumers who purchased a new Toshiba encore tablet. 1000heads were tasked with raising awareness of the Skype and Toshiba partnership during the holiday period; our brief was to raise awareness of Skype’s multi-platform story through promoting the encore tablet partnership among US holiday shoppers. Tablet and mobile activation for Skype represented a key objective for driving connected users of the products. Recent Skype research highlighted that users who logged on to Skype across more devices were 3x less likely to churn to another brand. We developed project #SmileStation, a unique Skype powered experience connecting shoppers in New York with smile-inducing comedians located across the world in London. The Station, situated outside of the Flatiron building in the center of New York featured a giant screen encased in 6 feet wide Toshiba encore tablet broadcasting a live Skype call between the NYC street and a team of comedians situated in Skype’s London studio. The comedians could observe passersby who looked like they could do with a smile and engaged them by calling them over to the screen for a video chat. Throughout the day, Passersby were randomly given the opportunity to nominate the people in their life who most deserved a smile. Using the Toshiba Encore tablet, they called their nominated friend or family member via Skype and, as a complete surprise, informed them that they were about to be shipped a brand new Skype enabled Toshiba tablet – which put a big smile on their face. Awareness of the event was driven via paid social as well as real time status updates across Skype’s social channels targeted to New York fans in particular. These took the form of highly visual posts depicting a giant emoticon sitting amid the skyscrapers of New York inviting people to come down and check out the #SmileStation. Whilst the conversation started offline, it was a pre cursor to our online activity. We didn’t just want to make New Yorkers smile, but also the rest of the world. A showreel of the experiential activation was created, helping to capture all of the cross-Atlantic interactions from the event. This showreel was posted on YouTube with a call to action to share the video and share a smile over Skype. All they had to do was share the video on Twitter tagging a friend in the post that most deserved a smile and both were given the chance to win a Skype enabled Toshiba Encore. Leanne Johnson, Head of Social, Skype/Microsoft, had this to say: “The Skype #SmileStation was a great example of how to blend the social and offline world. Connecting people across the world and making people happy is exactly what Skype does well – this activation captured that perfectly whilst also making it conversational for others." Katerina Karellas, Senior Global Partner Marketing, Skype, had this to say: “The #SmileStation concept is something we want to continue to invest in. It puts our product at the heart and surprised us all with the amount of engagement and awareness the initiative drove." Our primary objective was driving awareness of the Skype and Toshiba partnership within social media. During the campaign, people talking about using Skype on Toshiba devices increased by over 200% globally and over 425% in the US. There were nearly 60 million program impressions at a cost of $3.25CPM (video views cost $0.08), significantly better than the target KPI. Over 4,000 people used the campaign hashtag on Twitter in less than a month and over 200,000 new followers joined Skype’s Twitter channel during the campaign period. This increased reach, sharing awareness helped to double traffic to the product webpage. The campaign has performed so well in the US that Toshiba and Skype have asked 1000heads to take the #SmileStation on a world tour activating in 5 markets across Europe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6ozU9Qc0x4 https://twitter.com/search?q=smilestation&src=typd&f=realtime
