Race to LA Sweepstakes

The Opportunity
A leader in the Consumer Packaged Goods industry, Right Guard has been one of the top Brands in the Antiperspirant and Deodorant category for fifty years. In January of 2011, Right Guard launched its new line of Total Defense 5 deodorizing body wash. With the launch of a new product line, Right Guard expanded its offering from just antiperspirants and deodorants while increasing reach among the key male demographic and developing the Brand as a global leader in the space. Under drastic budget cuts, Right Guard tasked Defero with helping the Brand promote its new product, encourage trial, raise awareness, and contend in the increasingly competitive landscape among other heavyweights like Old Spice -- all while leveraging Right Guard’s existing relationship with the NBA. As the official antiperspirant, deodorant, and body wash of the NBA, Right Guard resonates with a very particular audience. Just weeks before the 2011 All-Star Game in mid-February, 2011, Right Guard reached out to Defero to help capitalize on an NBA asset – ticket packages to the NBA All-Star Weekend. With just days to activate, Defero rose to the challenge and created the “Race to L.A.” NBA All-Star Weekend Ticket Giveaway, which transpired on Facebook, and saw incredible wins with the engagement of our key audience. With no incremental marketing budget, Defero helped Right Guard realize its goals of activating a dormant audience and leveraging the NBA partnership to the fullest.

The Approach
As Right Guard’s Digital Agency of Record, Defero manages all digital assets for the Brand including the Facebook Page, Twitter account, YouTube Channel, and RightGuard.com. After developing a Digital Brand Voice and Content Calendar to chronicle digital engagement for 2010 to 2011, Defero had planned several “peak” periods where Right Guard could activate the base and continue to grow its digital audience. In early February, the Brand came to Defero with a new challenge. The NBA had just given Right Guard a ticket prize package to NBA All-Star Weekend – and Right Guard wanted to do something with this incentive. With no incremental marketing budget, Right Guard was stuck. In an effort to help Right Guard excite their digital audience, reach new demographics, activate the social space, and garner incremental impressions, Defero proposed creating an entire campaign around the fast-approaching NBA All-Star Weekend. Within 48 hours, Defero conceived, designed, and programmed “The Race to L.A.” NBA All-Star Weekend Ticket Giveaway.

The campaign was launched via Facebook and was housed as an app on the Right Guard Page. In order to participate, users were encouraged to “Like” Right Guard. The campaign ran for five days, boasted five great prizes, and honored fifty years of Right Guard. The Grand Prize was of course the NBA All-Star Weekend ticket package, complete with travel vouchers and hotel vouchers. Four first place winners were awarded year supplies of Right Guard body wash and a plush Right Guard robe. Periodic winners were also chosen every eighteen hours (for Right Guard body wash’s 18-hour protection) and were each given a bottle of body wash and a Right Guard shave kit. While activation of the campaign was, in large part, organic and viral, Defero also managed a micro media buy on Facebook – by borrowing some media funds that were allocated elsewhere. Highly targeted ads ran each day of the campaign, driving users to “Like” Right Guard in order to enter the sweepstakes.

Much of the activity on Right Guard's Facebook Page was a direct result of the limited media spend placed on Facebook.com from 2/10/11 through 2/15/11. However, activating our audience continued to pay off throughout the course of our sweepstakes/promotion. Right Guard garnered an unprecedented amount of new "Likes" via Facebook media. While this number tapered down as the sweepstakes wound down, unlikes did not decrease. As such, Right Guard’s new fans did not "Like" just to participate in the sweepstakes and then “unlike” after entering. Similarly, Daily Active Users remained constant throughout the promotion. More interestingly, total Post Views increased over time, while Unique Post Views decreased - which shows us that our Fans were returning to the Page to view our content, which they found relevant and valuable enough to seek out. Fluctuation of engagement is to be expected with any Facebook activity, but we saw large spikes during the promotion that can be attributed to the engagement garnered by the activity around the sweepstakes, our promotional posts, and, even more, continued engagement throughout All-Star Weekend.

The Results
Over the course of the five day sweepstakes, total number of fans increased by over 20%, Daily Active Users increased by over 6,165%, Post Views increased by 1,930% and monthly active users increased by 81%. With such a minimal spend on Facebook, the goal of this campaign was to optimize engagement - driving awareness of the sweepstakes, new "Likes," and conversion on the Right Guard Page. Running around 20 to 30 unique ads, several of these were clear winners in terms of impressions and click-thru rates. Over the three days of our Facebook media microburst, Right Guard garnered over 11 million impressions with our target audience based on interests and likes and even the generic audience of just 18+ Males. CPC ranged depending on the ad, with an average CPC of .54. However, some ads were as high as .91. This performance, given our audience, is incredibly exciting as Right Guard has not played in the Facebook media space prior. Given the short amount of lead time for this promotion, there was no opportunity to 'tease' the sweepstakes or inform our loyal digital audience of the opportunity to enter before the promotion was live. Because of this, the immediate adoption and conversion of users speaks volumes to the efficacy of the program. With incredibly limited media supporting the sweeps, Defero relied heavily on organic promotion of the sweepstakes in addition to Right Guard's involvement in All-Star Weekend. With over 2,000 total unique entries and a 70% entry rate, this sweepstakes provided valuable incentive to our audience while generating word of mouth on a variety of digital platforms - further providing exposure and raising awareness of the Right Guard Brand. While Right Guard has an email family of over 85,000 individuals, Defero strategically deployed the "Race to L.A." email to a segment of users to whom we wanted to message for this particular promotion. As such, the final email list was comprised of around 33,000 users. With a 99% deliverability rate, this email performed very well. The open rate was around 14%, and of those that opened the email, around 22% clicked through to Facebook. By leveraging this opportunity with the appropriate list, we were able to perpetuate awareness of the sweepstakes and continue to funnel activity to the Facebook Page.