bpTT #I4TANDT

Identifying the Challenge

bp Trinidad & Tobago was a corporate sponsor of the T&t Olympic Committee. The company  had recently announced continued support of the Olympic Committee through 2016, and wanted to create a campaign that could capture the imagination of the local public during the 2012 Olympics, while also positioning the brand as a key supporter of local athletes and talent. In addition, bpTT committed to put its money where its mouth was so to speak, promising an additional $200,000 donation to support future Olympians and Paralympians if the public at large rallied and showed great support for the cause of T&T’s athletes and the country at large.

Always forward-thinking and progressive in its approach, BPTT chose to focus this campaign primarily on the social media space and Twitter primarily, given its rapidly growing usage locally, and because of the digital media’s advantages with respect to direct customer engagement. BPTT challenged its primary marketing partners McCann Erickson and our team at Caribbean Ideas (our former digital-only agency name) to bring this vision to life.

Creating the solution

Both agencies worked closely together to help bpTT seamlessly combine cause-based marketing and an ability to build brand value by engaging people on topics and content they were interested in, as opposed to traditional advertising or making a “hard-sell”. This was particularly unique in the regional market at this time, where most brands were still wrapping their minds around the best ways to engage customers digitally.

The mechanic used was simple yet incredibly effective – by including the hashtag #I4TANDT in one of Twitter’s standard 140 character messages anyone could contribute to the conversation and keep track of the messages of support for our athletes and statements of patriotic pride in our 50th year of independence.

This initiative placed a major emphasis on engaging people around a worthy cause, and relied on ongoing interactive communication while also giving people an opportunity to shape the initiative themselves. Caribbean Ideas manned the #I4TANDT Twitter account, creating the BP Tweety persona who encouraged the ‘Tweet Posse’, as participants were known, to spread word of the movement and recruit others to the cause.

Throwing Down The Gauntlet

bpTT set the local market an incredibly challenging goal. 100,000 tweets or retweets with the hashtag #i4TANDT would unlock the $200,000 pledged as potential additional funds for local Olympians and Paralympians. In addition, the campaign target was set as a goal that needed to be achieved entirely on Twitter, even though this particular challenge was just developing in the local market..

The Results