For the last 6 months Trident Insurance has been piloting a social media marketing campaign aimed at carving out a reputation for honest upfront advice and cover that counts within a specific niche audience.
Mainly focused on Facebook, with some support from Twitter, banner adverts and blogs, to date the campaign has proved to give Trident a platform to engage with people about stuff that is a little more sexy than insurance.
The reason for this blog post is, that for the last six months one individual in particular has been niggling away at our social media staff, with a view to trying to catch us out and deliver a quick win for themselves…
Obviously we cant name the person responsible, but I’ve been advised to post this blog by the agency managing our marketing to get the facts out in the open and reinforce our open and honest approach to our business.
Our Facebook competition encourages folk to upload pictures of their interior design and other folk to vote for the one they like the best.
The project kicked off in September 2011. We were relying heavily on the viral nature of Facebook to promote the competition (i.e. someone posts, others see, others follow, they post and so on).
We have now built up some solid momentum on the campaign with interior designers, DIY enthusiasts and Joe public uploading and engaging. Initially the competition was due to end in March. We all decided (Trident, our partners and our agency) that it would not only be best for Trident but also give more people more chance to win, if we extended the competition until April.
The response to our extension was positive across the board. I decided we should invest a little more in the promotion of the completion to give it the best chance of success (I bought more banners, encouraged more blog posts etc. – and we recently took half a dozen expert interior bloggers out for a dinner in Soho, great fun and great contacts)…. Before kicking in the extra spend, we awarded the submission with the most votes at that stage with £250 Ikea vouchers.
It now appears, after continual questioning, that my agency has been able to bring our troublesome follower to a head. At this point the person informed us they were a lawyer, were going to take us to court and offered us the ability to settle immediately if we sent them a £7,000 cheque.
We are not going to pay out, cave in to bullying or blackmail or shut down a fantastic competition with an opportunity for more people to win and get involved.
I have spent ten years building this business and our reputation as open, honest and upfront. And this blog post is about nipping this in the bud, being honest and standing up for what I believe in.
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