Volkswagen

We bring a YouTube miniseries to Facebook, engaging 15,000 voters in this car giveaway contest.

Background

The Volkswagen Polo is a car that’s been popular in the past with female drivers. With the relaunch of the Polo in Spain, Volkswagen wanted to reposition this car as more masculine, using custom social media applications to spread buzz about the car with men aged 18-35. Spanish agency Seisgrados created a YouTube webisode series around two Spanish socialites, Lola and Coco, who communicate with viewers through Twitter and Facebook. The plot culminates with Lola giving away a Volkswagen Polo to a deserving man through a Facebook contest. Seisgrados turned to Friend2Friend to develop and run the contest as a Facebook application.

Objectives

1. Reposition the Volkswagen Polo as a more masculine car
2. Leverage the viral network of Facebook friends to engage the male demographic in Spain
3. Engage fans through a multi-channel social media campaign across YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter
4. Generate engagement through a reality-style miniseries and multi-channel audience participation, rather than traditional advertising

Results

Friend2Friend created a Facebook fan page and application for the Lola y Coco miniseries. The page encouraged interaction from webisode fans and gradually built momentum for the Polo giveaway contest. Men uploaded videos explaining why they deserved the VW Polo, and then invited their Facebook friends to vote on their video to help them win. The workflow and application design was crafted to encourage viral spread of the contest, interaction through comments, and collection of email addresses for Volkswagen’s email newsletter. Almost 8,000 Spanish Facebook users installed the application, generating almost 15,000 votes on the videos over a two week period, a significantly higher level of engagement than would have been possible with banner advertising.

In addition to overall participation, Volkswagen was able to track engagement levels and demographics of the contest participants. Over 30% of contest respondents made a comment, and 63% submitted their email address for the newsletter. Volkswagen did indeed reach their target demographic, with 57% of participants male and over 75% within the 18-34 age bracket. The Lola y Coco Facebook Fan Page gained 2,000 fans who remained active and engaged even after the contest was over.