Today I’ll talk about more marketing initiatives that I found to be winners at SXSW Interactive.
Catch a Chevy
By day two of the conference, my legs were killing me from all the walking. I’d imagine everyone else in the city of Austin felt that way too. I’m standing on a corner near my hotel, preparing to make the trek over to the convention center, again. Out of nowhere, this little Chevy pulls up with a sign on it that says something like “If I’m empty, flag me down for a free ride anywhere.” So we did just that. We had the nicest driver, Cynthia, who gave us some great music and refreshing air conditioning for the ride. We asked about the car, and she told us about the Cruze that we were riding in, a car that gets over 40 miles per gallon. We also talked about the Volt, which is electric for about 50 miles, then kicks into a highly efficient gas car as well. I don’t even know how many miles per gallon my own car gets, but now these facts are ingrained in my brain because of the short, pleasant experience thanks to Cynthia and Chevrolet.
I told many other friends and colleagues about the program over the several days of the conference. We talked about how we liked the cars, what a great idea it was. Chevrolet didn’t require anything in return. The cars had QR codes on the back of the front seat headrests, so you could scan the code to find out all the details of the car. This surely appealed to the tech crowd at the conference. I was completely impressed and likely did exactly what Chevrolet hoped for: I talked about how cool the program was and how helpful it was in times of need. Many other friends later caught a Chevy and told me about it afterwards…word of mouth – the original social media.
I appreciate Chevy’s subtle move here. People are tweeting often with #ChevySXSW to talk about these experiences out of sheer excitement. Nothing was required of people for any of the Chevy initiatives from what I can tell from researching them, but people are happy to have gotten to catch a ride, test drive a Chevrolet, recharge at their lounge, and more. According to http://www.twittercounter.com, @Chevrolet increased by approximately 80-100 new followers per day throughout the interactive conference, a steady increase.
Many brands gave away free things, from lunches to rides to experiences. Some required a Facebook like or a Twitter follow. Others were completely free. Which angle do you think is most effective for consumers? Do you like it when brands trust you to do what they ask (just follow us and you’ll get ___)? Do you think they should require proof? Or are you more impacted when brands allow you to take away what you will from any experience?
Intuit’s free pedicab rides
There are a lot of pedicabs in Austin during SXSW® – these are brave people who ride bikes with mini “couches” attached and they bike you from point A to point B. They’re typically a minimum of $10 per person per ride. Intuit, however, was offering free rides if you followed @GoPayment on Twitter. You simply told the driver/biker that you had followed them, and at the end of the ride, he/she pulls out an iPhone with an Intuit payment app on it. He creates the transaction that your $10 per person has been paid, and you sign the iPhone screen with your signature, although no money has been exchanged. Since $10 is expensive every time you want to go even a few blocks, I thought this was a great idea.
We stumbled on the Intuit driver/biker randomly, but immediately jumped at the thought of a “free” ride when all I have to do is follow them on Twitter or like them on Facebook. [Side note: the driver/biker started the conversation with “Do you have Twitter?” which I found incredibly funny to be asking a SXSW® Interactive badge holder as well as the fact that it was kind of quaint the way he said it. I’d bet this guy doesn’t “have Twitter” himself!] It was so easy and such a great deal that I talked about it all week whenever someone mentioned a pedicab: “OMG you have to find the Intuit pedicabs! You just have to follow them on Twitter then all your rides all week are free!” I also tweeted while in the Intuit pedicab about how great the experience was.
In thinking about this effort, I realized that Intuit is essentially paying $10 for each new follower or fan during the event. I of course don’t know how much money they invested in creating the program, so it is hard to know their ROI. We can look at http://www.twittercounter.com and see that @GoPayment increased followers by approximately 98 followers per day throughout the interactive conference. They ended their program on March 16, and if you compare how their number of followers was increasing, to what it looks like after the marketing initiative was over, you can see that the program was surely working while active, and increase in followers completely leveled off after the Intuit pedicabs were off the streets of Austin.
I know that I won’t unfollow them unless they become incredibly annoying to me on Twitter, and I surely talked about it a lot over the few days of the conference. As soon as I followed @GoPayment, they followed me right back and sent a Direct Message with a link to more info about GoPayment, pedicabs, and their efforts. And who doesn’t like another follower himself? Great idea, cool execution in demonstrating their GoPayment ability to accept credit cards on an iPhone, and a crowd-pleaser.
What could Intuit have done differently? Do you think gaining approximately 500 new followers on Twitter (at approximately $10 per user) was worthwhile? How do you think @GoPayment will keep its new followers engaged and interested? Or will it be able to do so?
