How Tribeca and Retroviral rocked Rocomamas’ marketing

media update’s Nikita Geldehuys caught up with Tribeca PR’s owner, Nicky James, and Mike Sharman, owner of Retroviral Digital Communications, after their win.

The PRISM Awards were held on Saturday, 6 May and saw 73 awards presented. The RocoMamas #ElectionBurger campaign received the South African Campaign of the Year overall Gold Award. It also won the Social Media as the primary method of Communication Award for #ElectionBurger. This category considered the best use of social to lead a programme with no media spend.

The #ElectionBurger campaign ran for six weeks and exceeded RocoMamas’ business objectives by increasing sales by 20% year-on-year. It relied on digital and social media platforms, and was supported by PR and positive word-of-mouth.

Retroviral was responsible for the #ElectionBurger campaign idea, the voting phase on social media, customer interaction on social media, the microsite, and brand fan engagement.

Tribeca did the #ElectionBurger launch, content development, and media relations. It also organised restaurant reviews and executed the final media push to mark the campaign end and drive final sales.

What does it feel like to be the overall winners?

Sharman: It’s still surreal having won the Campaign of the Year. It’s definitely a career highlight and also a testament to our processes, ideas, and collaborative nature of how we work with clients and partners such as Tribeca.

James: This was the first year we’ve entered the PRISMS’ South African Campaign of the Year category, the first year we’ve entered a collaborative entry, and the first time we’ve won this prestigious accolade. All of this makes for a career highlight of mine too!

What won this award was our intense focus on helping RocoMamas achieve its business objectives for the campaign. We played to each agency’s strengths and core capabilities and, in so doing, proved that cross-agency collaboration is a winning formula.

Can you give us a quick rundown of the elements that made up the campaign?

Sharman: The personalities of the RocoMamas #ElectionBurger options – The Donald, The HillBill, and The Joker – and their humorous descriptors were central to the campaign. They were featured in store and via Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

We delved into 12 months of data to see who the most influential people were who also happened to be RocoMamas fans. We invited these people to an event to launch and sample the burgers.

The consumer journey was: purchase your favourite burger, ‘vote with your thumbs’, and share a picture of your candidate to social media – with the hashtag #ElectionBurger and the candidate’s hashtag.

A microsite featured all three burgers and was effectively a digital poll that ticked over as soon as people shared their purchase and favourite.

Traditional PR and social media creative complemented each other to generate coverage, create talkability, and resulted in global exposure for the campaign and brand across all media.

In what way do you think more collaborations like yours can benefit the local marketing industry?

Sharman: The fast-paced world of digital communications is geared towards specialists and collaborative relationships that favour nimble solutions. This award is a case study of how you can get things SO right when you partner smartly and collaborate with your client.

James: Cross collaboration should never be a power struggle between agencies or a quest for glory to outdo each other. There are so many egos in our industry and that needs to stop.

Retroviral and Tribeca’s roles were clearly defined upfront. We don’t do what Retroviral does and vice versa, so each agency played to their respective strengths – and delivered amazing results.

The campaign was very successful, even though it had no paid social media element to it. What can the industry learn from this?

Sharman: Over the past six years, we have had at least six campaigns go globally viral. On every occasion, the campaigns had no media spend to accelerate that dissemination. Smart storytelling is at the heart of the most powerful creative. Tell the best, most relevant stories.

James: It’s so easy to throw money at social media campaigns that it seems to be the de facto for agencies nowadays. As Mike said, if the content is engaging and the story believable, people will naturally share it.

This campaign achieved well above the targets you set and has now also been recognised in the industry. What was your secret to this success?

Sharman: Tapping into a relevant, topical zeitgeist; writing clever copy; a brand that makes incredible food; and keeping things simple and not over complicating the process – the work spoke for itself. Once again, a brave client enables kick-ass work.

James: Extensive research was conducted to deeply understand the RocoMamas target market. Through this, we determined what channels they consume information through, how they like to receive information, and how they engage with and what they expect from brands.

This meant we knew exactly how to reach RocoMamas’ consumers with attention-grabbing messaging. The campaign was brilliantly executed, funny, engaging, and newsworthy but, most importantly, the burgers were delicious.

Visit www.tribecapr.co.za and retroviral.co.za for more information. 

Another social media campaign that recently received recognition is Ogilvy PR Johannesburg and Anglo American’s #ProTESTHIV campaign. Read how a powerful social media strategy drove the success of this campaign in our article, How Ogilvy PR got people to take a selfie to #ProTESTHIV.