Case Studies

Purpose

TracFone wanted to reach out to cell phone consumers and promote their core message of “No Bills, No Contracts, No Surprises” and that the customer is always in control when they purchase a TracFone pre-paid cell phone. They wanted to emphasize their commitment to pre-paid cell phones and the flexibility of TracFone service plans.

Plan

TracFone’s idea was to implement a nationwide grass roots marketing campaign with a simple premise of having the customer talk about TracFone. To achieve this goal TracFone created the “TracFone Casting Call Contest” where consumers would be able to talk about what they liked about TracFone. The ambitious 6-month campaign needed to incorporate many components including a national User Generated Content (UGC) multi-phased competition with both English and Spanish language websites where two separate competitions catered to two different audience demographics. To help reach and accommodate a large and diverse group of consumers, TracFone planned to hold “Live Event” video tapings at Wal-Mart stores in selected cities US, in addition to online submissions.

Solution

Contest Factory’s patented and proven UGC competition platform provided the ideal solution to this nationwide campaign. Consumers visited the customized casting call micro site created by Contest Factory to upload their auditions either into the English or Spanish competitions on how they felt about TracFone products. In addition to online submissions, the campaign required “Live Event” tapings. This allowed consumers to go to TracFone booths in selected Wal-Mart stores nationwide to record their auditions on camera. These “Live Event” tapings were then digitally converted and uploaded to the competition by Contest Factory staff based on a tightly coordinated and managed timeline and schedule. This further demonstrated Contest Factory’s flexibility to mix online and offline platforms.

The 6-month long campaign necessitated the use of Contest Factory’s bracketed tournament platform as the ideal way to manage the national competition and provide the flexibility of accommodating a very large but unknown number of submissions during the first phase of the campaign. Embedded site and media viral tools were also implemented to take advantage of UGC’s viral characteristics. The client was able to monitor the campaign’s performance real time with Contest Factory’s Viral DNA^TM tracking and reporting software.

Results

This UGC campaign was so successful that TracFone decided to retain Contest Factory for a few more UGC campaigns, including the Tom Joyner Talent Contest which was broadcast nationally for many weeks on Tom Joyner’s syndicated radio show.