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CASE STUDY:
HUMANA | BIKE SHARING GOES VIRAL ISSUE: Humana, one of the nation’s largest health benefits companies, was looking to motivate Americans to take up bike-sharing – the social movement that began in Europe whereby bikes are situated throughout municipalities for people to use for short trips for a designated amount of time. A win-win for people’s personal health as well as the health of the environment, Humana sought to bring bike-sharing to the masses, and Humana turned to Coyne PR to help them introduce their program, “Freewheelin,” at two of the biggest events of 2008: the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. To launch Freewheelin on a national scale, however, Humana and Coyne knew they had to develop and execute a robust social media effort to drive program buzz. IDEA: The progressive concept of bike-sharing was tailor-made for a social media campaign, given the strong interest in green initiatives and the role of new media at the conventions. To maximize Freewheelin’s impact, Coyne PR developed a strategy that called for an aggressive blanketing of social media with a social media press release (SMPR) custom designed by Coyne’s internal graphics department. The SMPR integrated all of the social media and viral elements of the Freewheelin program for bloggers to access, including event photos, MPEGs and videos, fact sheets and pull-out quotes. The SMPR also pointed bloggers to the Freewheelin social network sites on Facebook, YouTube, UstreamTV and MySpace, as well as Flickr and Twitter. Lastly, the SMPR directed bloggers to live streaming video of Freewheelin from the webcams set up at each convention. IMPACT: Freewheelinwaytogo.com enjoyed more than 10,000 unique site visits. More than 1,500 pictures were submitted to Flickr, generating 17,000 views, and 374 people followed the Twitter feed. The YouTube videos garnered nearly 3,000 views. Bloggers from The Huffington Post and National Geographic’s “Intelligent Travel” blog embraced Freewheelin, as well as cycling and eco-friendly blogs including “The Daily Green,” “A Year of Bike Commuting,” “Girl Meets Bike,” “Bike Blog” and “Pedalaround.” And, bloggers not only wrote about Freewheelin, they participated and shared their experiences. Rep. Cynthia Dill, D-Maine, took a spin and wrote about it on her blog, “Dill’s Conventional Wisdom.” Writers from “Sandy and Genevieve” blogged about their participation in the Denver mayoral ride, and the writer of “Jurisdictional Limit” described his first time on a bike in 15 years, on a Freewheelin bike! |
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Social Media Case Studies
