Driving Benfield’s Charitable Donation to New Heights
OPR has created a social media campaign for Benfield Motor Group that has driven its online presence into new territories.
Working in partnership with Different Advertising, OPR created and managed the ‘Benfield Charity Drive,’ a unique campaign which saw three small local charities each take a share of £10,000.
Benfield’s Charitable Trust donates 5% of its profits every year to worthy causes, and charity drive put the power in the hands of their Facebook fans to nominate smaller local charities it might never have heard of.
Digital sales and marketing manager, Benfield Motor Group, Mark King: “We’re delighted with the amount of activity and involvement the campaign has generated online and offline. It shows how passionate people in the North East are about helping their chosen charities gain much needed funds.
“This is the first time we’ve used social media to help decide who we donate money to and it has been a real success which highlights how influential this type of innovative campaign can be.”
Benfield used a Facebook application on its Drive Benfield page to ask the general public to nominate and then vote for a local charity that they would like to see win a share of £10,000.
The campaign ran from the start of August up to October 30 and saw Benfield’s Facebook page increase its likes from just over 100 to well over 9000 fans.
The Charity Drive application allowed users to nominate a local charity by a set date, with the top ten most nominated charities then going to a public vote. Each nomination and vote was automatically posted on Benfield’s wall.
In the final month of the competition voting went to a different scale, with just under 10,000 votes cast. The winners were 4Louis, Metro Kids Africa and Sweet Dreams our Angels.
Kari Owers, OPR chief executive, said: “Benfield’s charity drive campaign has been very successful on a number of fronts. It has obviously increased the motor retail group’s reach on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, but more important than the numbers, it has created massive swell of engagement and two-way dialogue.
“It has spilled over into offline PR, with numerous media articles picking up the initiative. It has also had a viral effect with charities and their supporters posting on their own Facebook walls, and tweeting to their followers to increase reach even further.
“Benfield’s ‘enjoy the journey’ marketing campaign is all about lifestyle and appreciates customers don’t always want to talk just about cars. Cars are about freedom, journeys, experiences and daily life.
“By using this approach in the social media strategy, they have become the retailer of choice with Facebook and Twitter users across the North. We are now running the Enjoy Rewards weekly treats on Twitter, and planning for a series of new campaigns in 2012 that will continue to drive their online conversations with customers.”
