How The Safe Shop is managing its £5000 Easter Charity Challenge

Using marketing, PR and social media hooks for a Easter egg hunt charity challenge

Campaign name: The £5000 Easter Charity Challenge
Brand:  The Safe Shop
Audience: Local charities in Preston, supporters, business sponsors and the local community
Regions: Preston, Lancashire, United Kingdom (UK)
Duration: 17/02/2014 to 21/04/2014
Channels: Blog, marketing, public relations and Twitter
Budget: £6,000

Social Media Portal (SMP): Agency behind the campaign

The Safe Shop (TSS): Search Laboratory

SMP: The brand

TSS: The Safe Shop is a security website selling a vast range of security products including safes, security cabinets, lockers, fireproof filing cabinets, postboxes, door locks and many more.

SMP: What regions is the campaign for?

TSS: The campaign is only for the UK, local to where our business is based in Preston, Lancashire.

SMP: The official campaign name and why was it chosen?

TSS: ?The £5000 Easter Charity Challenge? name was chosen because it clearly states the intention behind the campaign and also indicates to charities the amount of money that is up for grabs. In truth, it should be £5700 as this is the total amount of donations to be given on the day but we felt a round figure of £5000 was more memorable. The three jackpot safes are as follows; £3000, £1000, £1000 and then £100 for the other seven charities that didn?t succeed in unlocking any of our three jackpot safes.



SMP: What was the start date of the campaign and when does it end?

TTS: The start date of the campaign is on the 21/04/2014 at 11:00am and ends on 21/04/2014 at 16:00pm. We have been planning and communicating about the campaign from the 17/02/2014.

SMP: The target audiences of the campaign, who are you trying to reach and why?

TTS: Our main audience for the campaign are the local charities of Preston, their supporters, fans, business sponsors of those charities and the local community in general. We wanted to showcase all the great charities in our community and this campaign has already raised a lot of awareness of these charities throughout the area, having been covered in various newspapers in print (opens in a PDF) and online.

SMP: Briefly, tell us about your campaign

TTS: Every year in Avenham Park, The Preston City Council put on the Annual Egg Roll, which is a very historic event. We will be having a fantastic Easter egg hunt for our local charities with our eggs containing secret pin codes. Three of these pin codes will open our three jackpot safes that will be on the main stage in the park amounting to £3000, £1000 and £1000 donations. Ten charities have been invited to find one Easter egg each and every charity that doesn?t successfully crack the safe, will still receive a £100 donation for taking part.

SMP:  What are the goals of the campaign and why is it different?

TTS: Our main goals were to increase our brand awareness online, increase traffic to our website and raise awareness of the local charities in our community.

SMP: What are the channels, platforms and methods you?re using?

TTS: We have used our blog page to create a poll for the public, allowing them to vote for 10 charities to take part in our event. We used social media such as Twitter @thesafeshop to gain traction about our event and increase the votes using the hashtag #crackthesafe. We designed a branded graphic specifically for the Easter Charity Challenge which has been used throughout our marketing and online PR, by charities, newspapers, tourism sites and will be used on the day of the event.



SMP: What do you hope to achieve?

TTS: The KPIs include links to the voting panel, which so far we have received over 10 from charities, newspapers and the Preston Council. This will build our authority and allow us to be more visible in the SERPs
 

• We received over 2700 votes in The Safe Shop vote to select which charities will be selected, increasing local engagement and awareness in the Preston area.
  
  
• We have received ROI on the mentions in the local press, as this avoided having to pay advertising rates.
  
  
• Overall, it has been a successful offline campaign, which has been optimised to maximise online visibility.

SMP: How are Preston City Council involved in the campaign and how are you working with them?

TTS: We wanted to create a campaign closely related to Easter and already knew of the Annual Egg Roll, so we decided that we wanted collaborate with the council and host our charity challenge in association with them on Avenham Park. They were delighted to support our campaign which gave local charities more exposure and donations, with the Annual Egg Roll in Avenham Park attracting over 40,000 people in previous years. They have also included us in there web listings to the event, which has helped massively in promoting our event.

SMP: What were the challenges in creating the campaign and how did you overcome them?

TTS: The main challenge was the logistics of the campaign, working out exactly what needed to be done in a relatively short planning period. As a general rule, PR campaigns are 70% planning, 30% luck! We are hoping for good weather on the day of the event to encourage people to tweet photos using the hashtag #crackthesafe

SMP: What are you doing to measure the campaign and what measurement tools do you have in place to do this?

TTS: We are using fresh web explorer to monitor any mentions of the brand, domain authority of the links pointing to The Safe Shop website, Tweetreach to see how much social interaction we are getting as well as good old fashioned press monitoring.

SMP: What is the budget used for the campaign?

TTS: Price for the campaign cost just over £6000 for the prize money. We tapped into the great Preston Council event, so the costs of getting people to the event were minimal, and all we needed was the prize money for these great charities.

SMP: How are you making the campaign social and shareable?

TTS: We have asked all charities to initially promote the campaign on their charity websites and social media accounts helping them to gain more votes from the public and be selected for the event. We will also be taking images and videos on the day for us to share online and asking the 10 invited charities to use the #crackthesafe twitter hashtag on the day to promote and share the activates online.



SMP: Are there any dedicated hashtags or social media profiles for the campaign and how/why did you chose these?

TTS: We have been using the #crackthesafe which is a play on safes and eggs being cracked. Something simple but effective and highlights the theme of our event which was what we were going for. Making sure to tweet all of the participating charities was important to get the ball rolling on social.



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