Overview:
FedEx had the exclusive opportunity to collaborate with PGA Tour and Twitter on an Amplify program during the 2014 FedExCup Season. This new launch partnership was recommended as a way to extend the FedExCup sponsorship beyond PGA Tour and help reach the golf audience, specifically the casual golfer, with awareness and reach/frequency as primary KPIs.
Objective:
Raise awareness of new FedEx One Rate® (FOR) pricing to business and consumer audiences – specific to golf enthusiasts and casual fans.
Strategy:
Reach golf enthusiasts and casual fans with real-time updates targeted to their specific interests.
Opportunity:
Our target seeks real-time updates and video highlights on key tournaments. The PGA Tour has access to this content, and FedEx can deliver it turning the platform into a virtual sportscast.
Execution:
We created Vines that were leveraged as pre-roll prior to real-time PGA Tour highlight videos on @PGATour. These clips were then promoted by FedEx via Twitter's native video product.
Real-time social teams across FedEx, PGA Tour, and all agencies worked with Twitter in providing content alignment and micro-audience targeting.
Outcome:
The program exceeded Twitter Amplify engagement rate and cost per engagement benchmarks by 28% and 33% respectively.
The audience opted in to see more as @PGATour follow rate rose 20% over the campaign.
Reduced frequency at scale was also a big campaign ask, as the golf fan universe is smaller in comparison to other sports. Versus other platforms, Twitter Amplify was one of the leading digital resources in this regard.
CHALLENGE:
The total golf fans are relatively small compared to other major sports (American football, basketball, etc.). According to Google Trends, interest in the sport has steadily declined over the last five years. Worse, it has been a truly celebrity driven sport where a handful of faces (e.g. Tiger Woods) drive an outsized portion of fan interest. In recent years, these celebrities have not performed as well. So, we were tasked to drive incremental scale over dotcom properties at a minimized frequency.
PARTNERSHIP SOLUTION:
The performance speaks for itself, but where this campaign rises above other social efforts is the innovation available through Twitter.
As one of the first advertisers in Twitter Amplify Sports and the first to use a golf initiative, the teams needed to be nimble as they were breaking new ground.
REAL-TIME OPTIMIZATION:
We saw great opportunities arise in the first half of the campaign. Through Twitter, we identified optimizations to apply for the second half of the campaign.
- Revised the video player to be "media forward"
o The original video player experience was sub-optimal.
o The user had to go through multiple clicks to play what was intended to be an in-the-moment real-time sports experience.
o In addition, the video was often displayed as link versus a playable video thumbnail directly in the user feed – or what is now commonly referred to as "media forward."
POST MEDIA-FORWARD PERFORMANCE:
The FedExCup campaign became the leader in terms of minimized frequency versus all other digital channels – proving the scalable opportunity even for a niche interest like "casual golfing" inside Twitter.
- "Media forward" experience
o Engagement rates rose 441% with cost per engagement plummeting 57%.
- Key Demographic Engagement Rates
o Female Audience
Jumped 3.5x and overall KPI of reduced frequency dropped by 77%. Overall, the new Twitter experience dropped the frequency to a third compared to all other digital channels.
WHY SHOULD THIS PROGRAM WIN?
Looking at social behavior of sports fans, we successfully made professional golf as engaging as football on Twitter (in terms of engagement rate). Huge.
FedEx, on social, is changing with the times; Twitter used to be a 140 character or less platform (for text), and by way of strong collaboration with others, we are moving to a more visual and video-centric strategy along with the consumer.
