Sequels 2.0
The Overview:
The first quarter is the most critical time for all insurance companies. It’s the beginning of the year and customers are searching for money-saving options after the holidays, before receiving their tax returns. GEICO introduces the second round of ads starring Pinocchio, the memorable raccoons, and the irascible woodchuck. The goal was to reacquaint our audience to these notable characters in a fun way.
The Challenge:
In the past, an outside agency designed our past campaigns that aligned with the commercials. However, in 2019, I led a small team of lead designers and copywriters as we were tasked with influencing GEICO stakeholders. We developed an engaging, interactive and integrated campaign that would align with the commercials created by the previous outside agency. This was the first time the internal marketing creative team had full control of all assets of the campaign's extension outside of the commercial.
Research:
We focused our research on the original campaign, ‘Best of GEICO’ commercials. In that campaign, the intention was to encourage people to vote on their favorite commercial and the voting was incentivized by the possibility of being featured in a future commercial. Although viewership engagement was high during the campaign, there could only be one daily winner and after their initial vote, viewers did not continue voting on other ad choices.
The Solution:
The creative team wanted to create an experience in which customers were motivated to return the landing page daily with the possibility of winning as well as spread campaign awareness to friends and family. Ultimately, the team aimed to generate interest through ‘word of mouth.’
As a solution, the team decided to create a social component to the endeavor.
This promotion offered visitors the opportunity to view two continuations of previous GEICO commercials, vote for their favorite character, share their vote. Prime motivation to vote was a chance to win a bag of GEICO swag, including a $100 movie card from a daily drawing.
It involved creating a new landing page (geico.com/sequels) and engaging the visitor by asking them to vote for their favorite sequel character, which is limited to once per day. Sharing is accomplished by clicking a link to Twitter, Facebook, or copying the link to the specific page before entering the sweepstakes.
Votes were considered visitors who click on 'Vote'; this is counted once per visit.
Shares are total clicks on the icons for sharing (Twitter, Facebook, GEICO link) on the model, and do not include Facebook Frames, or Snapchat filters, which are counted separately.
Sweeps entries are those visitors that click 'Enter' on the model during a visit.
The Results:
For the duration of Sequels 2.0, there were approximately 2.5 million visits, with return visitors making up about one-third of the total.
Facebook had the highest number of shares, followed closely by Twitter.
The Sequels produced more social media buzz (188,400 shares). Character support was strong; Racoons stole the show.
January 2020 was the highest inquiry month ever with over 1.2 million
January inquires were 3.1% above plan
January new Business was 1.7% above plan
YTD inquires are 3.7 above Plan
Raccons 45% votes, Pinocchio 24% and 32% Woodchucks
2.49 MM Page Visits / 404,200 total Votes
Programmatics Sequels Remarking:
CTR more than doubled those of standard Sequels
VCR was 10 points higher than standard.
Paid Social
FYC and 10-year challenge had the highest outbound CTR
Saw a total of 97,707 votes across FB and IG
Instagram generated 88% of votes for the poll creative
Social-post voting sequels spot had the highest average
Amazon Results
Fire Table Takeover had 402K clicks to Sequels LP
Pinocchio Twitter
Engagements 4K | ER% 3.26%
Internal Communications
30k out of 40k employees voted
7k store items were sold
The Team
Creative Director: De Lisa Patterson
Lead Designers: Kelly X. & Donald B
Lead Copywriter: Christian L.