TheMarketingBackpack

Here’s a social marketing case study on Levi Jean’s Project 501 by Alex Nesbitt.

Levi’s launched a marketing campaign to promote awareness about their brand by allowing fans participate in a contest to design a new pair of jeans (great idea for brand awareness/advocacy). They used a branded entertainment segment on Bravo’s Project Runway and complemented it with an online campaign. The results were a big success.

They got 3,000 design submissions to the contest for designing a new Levi’s product. Over 2000 of the submissions complied with the rules. The campaign got 134,000 unique visitors and almost 19,000 registered users. Two-thirds of those were women in target age group of 18 to 25 years old. They had 122,000 design ratings. They also got 924 social networking/blog badges with over 30,000 views.
Interestingly word of mouth marketing on social media like blogs and social networks turned out to be a major driver of awareness about the campaign. Social media drove 38% of the awareness about the campaign as compared to 30% of awareness coming from TV and low single digit for everything else. (Alex Nesbitt)

The project manager said they encountered some problems with some of the design losers posting negative comments on the site, creating some bad brand image. But rather than interfering or removing the comments, Levi’s let it play out. They couldn’t have made a better choice. The negative comments were countered with other comments from Levi fans who stuck up for the brand - what could be better than your own customers talking about how great your brand is?

I think this is an example of how powerful online and social media marketing can be. Not only does it bring awareness to your product or service, increasing traffic and sales, but it also creates brand advocates who will love your brand and become a mini-advertiser for you for free. This keeps customers loyal for longer and they will be much more convincing to their friends than any ad or marketing campaign can be. If one of their friends wants to buy a new pair of jeans, you can be sure the brand advocate will recommend the Levi’s store.

Do you think this project was a success? Do you think they could have done better? Have you ever experienced something like this (either participated in the campaign as a brand advocate or launched the campaign for a brand)?