A Website Dedicated to Everyday Heroes
27July 2007 - What better way to make guests feel special than asking them to share their life experiences? At the Holiday Inn, an online campaign to celebrate the dedication that ordinary people put into their work is the way to recognise the everyday heroes that walk in and out of their hotels.
Wiz Werx successfully executed this meaningful campaign featuring real stories, from real people. An email broadcast was sent out to more than 500 people, most of them guests of the Holiday Inn hotels, asking for story submissions. Stories had to be inspiring and motivational, describing the length that people would go to for their work. These stories were then posted onto the Everyday Hero website and people could visit the website and award medals for their favourite story. To add interest and excitement to this campaign, the person with the most medals at the end of the campaign would win a free vacation for two, to any Holiday Inn in Asia Pacific.
A point that Wiz Werx had to keep in mind was that client requested for a web 2.0 style for the Everyday Hero website. Given that no one can exactly pin point what web 2.0 really meant or looked like, Wiz Werx had to work her magic. And wielded the magic wand we did. The client was pleased with what the home page looked like, with a moving filmstrip of pictures scrolling across the page, and flash banners adding visual interest to the website.
There is also a Chinese language version of the website aimed at users in China and Hong Kong, as this was a regional campaign. One of the challenges of this project was to maintain content parity between the English and Chinese website. For example, Wiz Werx had to monitor and make certain the submitted English stories were translated to Chinese versions within a given time frame.
Wiz Werx also understands that for a successful online campaign, the website has to be visible to the public online. Hence, for search engine optimization, Wiz Werx ensured that the website was designed to be effectively spydered by search engines.
To further promote this campaign, Wiz Werx launched a series of online banners mid-campaign. These were placed on widely-used search engines such as Yahoo! and Google, and popular web portals like Qunar and Sina. Wiz Werx ensured that the call-to-action, asking for story submissions, was prominently featured on the banners. This proved to be effective, as there were a total of 36,395 clicks on these banners within 4 weeks and page views of the website increased tremendously after the launch.
Offline efforts to promote this campaign came in the form of print ads on The Sunday Times and Today publication, and radio ads on Class 95FM. As this was a regional campaign, print ads were also placed on other countries’ popular media platforms.
The Everyday Hero campaign ended on the 31st January 2008, with 217 stories submitted, 3,779 votes cast and 4,641 people registered with the website. At the peak of the campaign, the website had an average of more than 16,000 page views in a week.
To round off the campaign, the winners’ names were posted on website on the 14th February 2008.
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For media queries please contact:
Muhammad Alkhatib
Wiz Werx Pte Ltd
6848 6174 / 9451 6502
Email: muhd@wizwerx.com
