Global social media campaign development for a long-term client with employees on the ground briefed to support content development.
REQUIREMENT: Working with one of the world’s largest escalator and elevator companies, Schindler Group, for three and a half years to identify, develop, and manage social content opportunities reaching audiences globally. This is an example of a Social Campaign that includes briefing local project managers and department heads to generate on-the-ground content, giving them a platform to share their expertise around a local project.
The strategy was part of the Social Media Playbook I created for the Group.
Global social media content management in this instance is identifying a huge Egyptian infrastructure project with a sustainability focus, on during COP27, as an excellent content opportunity to support their sustainability leadership position in the MENA audience using employee advocates.
A decision was made to use Meta for this campaign due to their reach in MENA. (Months later the same campaign was created on LinkedIn as requested by the client as they felt the campaign messaging was still relevant. This article is on the Meta campaign. Ask me about LinkedIn if you’d like to know more – Short story – we spent more than twice the budget for a smaller audience, and received a higher quality crowd with triple the effectiveness of getting people to view 100% of an ad and those who clicked through also spent longer viewing the video on YouTube. So, fewer people of a higher quality for a much higher cost.)
Scope
Create content including insight from those working on the project to target an infrastructure audience in the MENA region during COP27 and use the campaign to identify an audience to retarget with lead-gen material in future MENA campaigns. Align the content with the COP topics and brand values of sustainability and accessible, future cities.
Process
- Create the Integrated plan on the messaging and content around the sustainability messaging of COP27.
- Draft a social proposition to identify an audience, lead them to become an warm audience, then into leads.
- Write briefs for diverse Egypt team on how to film Q&A content sending them a list of questions. Six video variations were created from the content for testing copy and themes that most resonated.
- Brief and manage the creation of the video ads with a London freelancer.
- Write all the ad copy, create, make live and managed the social paid campaign, first during COP27 on Meta, then at a later date, LinkedIn.
- Deliver the results and insights to build upon the success.
RESULTS META:
- €2K on Meta over 6 days of COP27 → MENA Infrastructure Audience Identification and Awareness.
- 64.5K plays of the videos 100% through → Qualified Retargeting Pool established for Future Targeting.
- 81% of the Meta MENA infrastructure audience who watched 3 secs of the ad stayed to watch 15 secs of the video. Thumb-stopping content.
- This resulted in 1.34M 15 secs video plays reaching targets for growing awareness of Schindler Group in the MENA region.
- 65.4K went on to watch 100% of the ads (which were approx. 1 min long) beating expectations for how well the creative content resonated with the targeted audience.
- The retargeted audience was offered a link to YouTube to learn more about Schindler's sustainability offering, increasing YouTube traffic 300% during the campaign.
- Retargeting pool identified as a warmed up audience to be targeted with new MENA projects and updates to push them through the funnel and contact / be contacted by Schindler's MENA locations.
Content variation for testing creative approaches
There were 3 ads made, each with a different 5 sec introduction. One intro of a busy scene, the other or a more middle-class scene. By creating 6 different video assets from the selfie videos provided, we tested which topics (aligned to the brand values and COP27 days) and visual approaches resonated best with the audience.
The ads that were most popular in order were:
- ‘People-first and city solutions that are sustainable’, showing footage of people and the busy city of Cairo. It included the Head of Schindler Egypt talking to camera in English from his office.
- The middle-ground ads were on ‘Climate solutions work best when they work for everyone’. These included Project Managers onsite at the build speaking in Arabic.
- The ads that were least popular were on ‘Megacities being innovation centers’, opening with footage of a lecture hall and training setting.
The video left below was the top performing post. It was supported by messaging of supporting the accessibility of the 21 million strong city while advancing climate action “helping remove 180,000 cars off the road per day starting mid-2023. It will connect entire communities, move 600,000 passengers per day and offer everyone a fast, sustainable mobility experience.”
The first 5 secs are different to see which was more effective. The first video with more middle-class footage was more popular with our prospect audience, and the busier city footage was more popular with our smaller retargeted audience.
The two versions of that include the Arabic speaking project managers. The more popular one across all audiences and in third place was with opening footage of people catching the train.
These two proved the least popular and were turned off as they proved ineffective. They were about Egypt being a megacity and a climate action innovation centre.
