bmibaby #myeurope Instagram case study - Eye For Travel Conference 2012

#myeuropebmibaby.com and The Rabbit Agency

Today’s presentation• About bmibaby, #myeurope

campaign & our awards

• Instagram and the rise of the visual web

• The brief fulfilled for #myeurope

• About the #myeurope campaign

• The results

An introduction to bmibaby

bmibaby, were a small (fleet of 14) low fares airline based in the UK who flew to 39 destinations around Europe. bmibaby’s last flight took place on September 9th 2012

Over their ten years as an airline bmibaby strived to use their size to their advantage, aimed to inject the fun in flying and always focused on the importance of inspiring their customers to travel

I’m Zoë Baker from Rabbit, bmibaby’s social agency - @zoewithdots

The awards• The #myeurope campaign has

achieved: 1 award, 5 x finalists and 3 x nominations

• Winner:

• Econsultancy Innovation Awards for Innovation in Travel and Leisure

• Finalists:• PR week - Most Innovative use of Social

Media• New Media Age - Best Travel Campaign• Loyalty awards - Best use of Social Media

to Enhance Loyalty• Revolution Awards - Best Use of Social

Media in a Travel Campaign, Best Online PR Campaign

• We are waiting the results of 3 industry awards nominations for Digital impact awards!

What is Instagram?

Instagram is a photo sharing social network it is also the world's largest mobile only international social network with over 100 million users (only 16 million last December)

Launched in Oct 2010, purchased by Facebook for $1bn in April 2012

Instagram integrates Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Foodspotting, Foursquare, Posterous and Flickr

Available on iPhone and Android devices

Who uses Instagram?

Users are engaged: Comscore revealed last week that Instagram has more daily users than Twitter

Users are spending over 50% more time on the network than Twitter users (that’s not even counting image capture, seletion and editing!)

Founder Kevin Systrom revealed at SXSW 2/3 of users had logged in the previous day.

Early adopters are not the usual social media suspects.

Brands that were early adopters included Burberry, ASOS, Red Bull and bmibaby!

Instagramers or ‘IGers’• There are 330 Instagramer

communities worldwide, so far - it’s a rapidly growing community.

• Users identify themselves as part of this community by tagging their images eg. #IgersLondon

• Coordinated by the main Instagramer feed and website run by @PhilGonzalez

• Communities have presence on Twitter, Facebook, MeetUp & organise offline ‘Instawalks’

• It is now common place for brands to work with these communities (but we were first!)

Creative Challenges

Instagram is a photo sharing social network it is also the world's largest mobile only international social network with over 100 million users (only 16 million last December)

Launched in Oct 2010, purchased by Facebook for $1bn in April 2012

Instagram integrates Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Foodspotting, Foursquare, Posterous and Flickr

Available on iPhone and Android devices

Creative challenges are common

Launched by users, community feeds and

brands

Simple, to avoid language and tech barriers

Often hashtag lead

Our favourite: @joshjohnson

The three social networks in the headlines this year have been

visual

Pinterest

Tumblr

Instagram

The visual web and mobile

Instagram is a photo sharing social network it is also the world's largest mobile only international social network with over 100 million users (only 16 million last December)

Launched in Oct 2010, purchased by Facebook for $1bn in April 2012

Instagram integrates Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Foodspotting, Foursquare, Posterous and Flickr

Available on iPhone and Android devices

Creative challenges are common

Launched by users, community feeds and

brands

Simple, to avoid language and tech barriers

Often hashtag lead

Our favourite: @joshjohnson

Already in the US and UK, most phones are smartphones

In 2008, six megapixels were standard on entry level cameras. Today’s iPhone has eight

Phone calls the 7th most popular activity on smartphones...social media 2nd (02)

Digital camera sales in the UK are down 29% (Mintel)

Camcorder sales are also down 21%

Posts on Facebook that include an album, picture or video increase engagement by 180%, 120% and 100%

Pinterest - now the 2nd biggest driver of social media traffic to sites after Facebook

The campaign

The Brief• Work together with our online

community to inspire our customers to travel

• Priority route focus

• Work with international tourist boards

• Airline first, in the increasingly competitive social space!

• Cross platform & able to be brought to life offline

• What better way to inspire customers to travel, than visually, using Instagram?

Getting started• Feed set up

• Regular content

• Follows of travel influencers on the network

• Cross post to existing social channels

• bmibaby community tag: #bmibabygram

• Started building relationships with Instagram community managers

#MyEuropeCampaign Launch:• Stage One of the campaign:

Instagramer challenge

• Working with a different regional Instagramer feeds each month we ask the communities to help us create visual inspiration guides in exchange for flights!

• Simple message (low barrier to entry): Tag the beautiful sights of Italy to win flights!

• Each month a different priority route focus

• Each month an inspiring visual destination guide created!

#MiaItalia6,400+ entries images tagged

#MyGermany18,000 entries images tagged

(11,000 since winner announced!)

#MyHolland1,800 entries images tagged

#MySwitzerland10,800 entries images tagged

#MyFrance11,000 entries images tagged

#MySpain7,700 entries images tagged

Who wins? The community decides!

#MyEuropeInstameet exchange• Stage Two of the campaign:

Instameet Exchange

• Embracing another Instagramers community trend - Instameets

• Each month following the #MyCountry campaign leaders of the Instagramer group (huge influencers on the platform) and London Igers were flown to each others countries to attend local Instameets in each others’ cities

• Each visit created another inspiring visual destination guide!

#MyLondon4,300+ images tagged & featured in The

Daily Telegraph!

#MyVenice1,300+ images tagged

#MyAmsterdam1,350+ images tagged & featured in

Reuters!

#MyAmsterdam1,350+ images tagged & featured in

Reuters!

#MyEurope: Visual destination guide

• Stage Three of the campaign: Visual destination guide hosted for each destination, country and city on the bmibaby blog

#MyEurope: spreading the word• Stage Four of the campaign:

Ongoing PR opportunities

• Campaign: world first and ongoing regional, social and travel angles

• The UK’s first Instagram Exhibit

• Campaign animation

• Over 100 pieces of coverage, so far!

#MyEurope: winding down• Stage Five of the campaign: saying

goodbye and thanking our community

• We held one last competition: #myeurope, asking the community to tag images of Europe old and new for chance to win a limited edition photobook showcasing the best images of Europe collected from the whole campaign.

• We wanted the community to have legacy and longevity so we invited the community to continue to the their images and hundreds new visuals are added each week

#MyEurope1,700 entries images tagged

The results so far

Almost 67,000 images tagged

Third most talked about

airline Worldwide

100+ pieces of coverage

What makes this campaign award winning?

• Worked with existing community, longevity, extensions outside of Instagram, competitor benchmarks, priority route focus

• Here’s what the judges had to say at the Econsultancy awards:

“Rabbit started out by seeding the campaign among Instagram’s super users in Italy, Germany and Holland, who helped to raise awareness. This has resulted in more than 10,000 pictures being submitted to its destination guides. The offline aspects of the campaign were brilliant, with meetups and a photography exhibition that generated coverage in more than 100 publications.”

Think the visual web is not relevant to your industry? Think again!

Thank you!Find me online:

• Twitter/IG: @zoewithdots

Find IG resources online:

• www.therabbitagency.com

Find this presentation online later today, on Slideshare:

• www.slideshare.net/zoewithdots