The Bomgar Birthday Bash was created as an exciting way to celebrate Bomgar's 10th year as a company. Bomgar, the leader in enterprise remote support solutions, conducted a multi-phase competition which started out by asking customers to send a picture of their service desk team celebrating Bomgar’s 10th birthday, led to an onsite visit by Bomgar's CEO and culminated in a trip to Disney World for the entire Bomgar company and a lucky Bomgar customer. Customers were encouraged to use fun visual elements, such as printable Bomgar Birthday hats and lots of orange, to create a photo of their support teams celebrating Bomgar's 10th birthday. Second and third place finishers received a catered lunch for their entire support team, while the first place winners, CareWorks, received a visit from Bomgar CEO, Joel Bomgar, who took their entire IT support department out to lunch in a stretch Hummer. Recognizing the importance of single power advocates as well, in addition to the team prize, the individual who submitted the first place photo was invited to join the entire Bomgar company as they celebrated their 10th anniversary in Walt Disney World. The customer was provided with airfare, park entry and lodgings for two for the October 2013 trip. Bomgar's goals for the Bomgar Bash campaign were to: • Use visual imagery from customers to promote the Bomgar brand and create and share online content about Bomgar’s growth and success as a company over the past decade on social media and communication platforms. • Create brand loyalty by rewarding entire customer teams for their participation and publicly recognize the importance of wonderful customers in Bomgar's 10 year history. • Give Bomgar an easy way to publicize the Disney World 10th Anniversary celebration that relates back to the customers on social media and through online media. • Compile these images into photo collections that drive visitors to social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and Instagram. • Identify top brand advocates to be invited to join Bomgar's new customer advocacy program based on contest interactions. • Leverage images for powerful, unique content (e.g. blog posts, slide presentations) to use at Bomgar events and tradeshows. Each of the three stages of the Bomgar Birthday Bash allowed for content creation and various themes of focus spread out over time, making it a year round affair that allowed multiple aspects of Bomgar's story and the customer's story to come to life. The Bomgar Birthday Bash campaign provided a way to use Bomgar's 10th anniversary as a valuable public relations event, as well as a way to build rapport with Bomgar customers by honoring them, engaging with them, rewarding them and celebrating with them! By focusing on the customer experience and their story rather than simply relaying the success and history of Bomgar's last 10 years, Bomgar was able to present a much more authentic, meaningful and emotional message. By giving the contest three distinct levels, all occurring at different times, Bomgar was able to create three individual events, each one generating unique content that tied together with a single theme. Each stage of the Bomgar Bash brought it's own unique benefits: Stage 1: Photo Contest In this stage, customers were alerted to Bomgar's 10 year celebration through social media and the Bomgar Community and were invited to submit birthday celebration photos of their support team. This allowed customers to link the Bomgar brand with a fun culture and also gave Bomgar a collection of customer generated imagery celebrating the Bomgar brand. The Top 10 photo submissions were published to Facebook and Google+, which allowed for social brand impact and new social followers as well. This phase also allowed for a team hero. Bomgar recognized that most team contests have a single individual who spearheads participation. So team prizes for first, second and third place winners were offered as well as a grand prize trip to Disney World for the single individual who submitted the first place team photo. This motivated individuals to organize a team effort but also made participation by the whole group important, appealing and rewarding. In the end, all top 10 teams were also sent Bomgar swag as well, continuing continuing with the theme of making our strongest fans "team heroes" and creating loyalty among teams at large. Several of these relationships have become key finds and have resulted in published case studies, speaking engagements and media opportunities for Bomgar. Stage 2: On-sight Visit By having Bomgar's founder and CEO personally visit the winning team, give them a private presentation on Bomgar's origins, mission and future and take them all out to eat in a stretch hummer, Bomgar was able to give a tangible example of how customers are honored and valued. CareWorks of Dublin, Ohio became a real example of the thousands of businesses that have made Bomgar a successful company - a message that vibrated throughout the entire Bomgar Bash campaign. In addition, the camaraderie developed between the Bomgar and CareWorks team members during this time was priceless, and gave Bomgar itself a close-up look at the kind of support team their solution enables every day. The visit was such a success that the CareWorks support team actually put together the following documentary of the Bomgar visit. Stage 3: Disney World Trip As the final piece of the Bomgar Birthday Bash, Bob Jennings, who submitted the CareWorks winning photo entry, was invited to attend Bomgar's 10 year celebration in Disney World. Bob and his wife, Anita, joined 225 Bomgar employees in Disney and served as the guests of honor at the opening dinner and ceremonies. The grand prize included airfare, three nights at a Disney resort and three days of park entry into Disney World. As the CareWorks team as a whole served to represent the IT teams around the world using Bomgar, so Bob Jennings became an example of all the individual users who use Bomgar daily to be more efficient and who love the Bomgar brand. By inviting Bob as the guest of honor, Bomgar was able to bring attention to the amazing, entire-company trip to Disney World but stay focused on thanking and celebrating customers, making a wonderful story to share with customers and media alike. Conclusion In the end, the Bomgar Birthday Bash allowed celebration of not only 10 years of great company success, but 10 years of wonderful customers. In addition, it created: • Content for five blog posts, which generated 1200 unique page views. The contest's opening blog post is the fifth most viewed Bomgar blog post to date. • More than 20 photos of service desk teams celebrating Bomgar's 10th birthday, most of which include Bomgar branded items. • Two customer-generated videos and one Bomgar video. • Albums on Facebook and Google+ for our entries and Joel Bomgar's visit to Ohio that tell compelling visual stories. • Face-to-face visits with two entire service desk teams using the Bomgar solution. • Two media articles that share details about Bomgar's growth and success over the past decade. • Several key relationships that have resulted in case studies, customer presentations at industry events and media opportunities. • A great story to to tell about Bomgar's 10th year and how both employees and customers were celebrated. The unique and out-of-box way the Bomgar Bash allowed interaction with customers from social media outlets all the way to face-to-face meetings make it a great example of the true value of social platforms - building relationships. Unwilling to settle for an easy and typical customer contest to celebrate a 10 year anniversary and wonderful customers, Bomgar created a multi-faceted campaign that brought visual story telling and relationship building to the forefront - from customer generated photos, to in-person videos to actually inviting a customer into the company celebration as a representation of the integral part customer fans play in Bomgar's success.
