Case study: How OCBC got 200,000 Singaporeans out of their homes

When it comes to gaining enough awareness for your campaign, getting the right marketing mix is crucial - especially when it comes to getting an early head start in garnering traction. This was the main objective for OCBC Bank, together with one of its campaign partners Sqkii.In a bid to raise awareness on its new payment solution application, OCBC Pay Anyone, OCBC Bank created a campaign involving a mouse hunt to engage and reward its customers. The campaign allowed OCBC to secure a Bronze in the recent MobEx Awards 2018 for Best Campaign – Social Platform and a Gold award for the Best Campaign – Viral Marketing category.The post was done in conjunction with OCBC Bank.ProblemSqkii, a company that is developing a new community sharing application to unify all discounts, promotions and offers on a single platform, was relatively unknown until it started organising a series of cash hunts known as "Hunt The Mouse".At the same time, OCBC Bank had just launched a new all-in-one payments solution application called OCBC Pay Anyone. The application gave users the ability to scan QR codes to make payments. QR payments are an extremely competitive market with large investments from the Singapore Government, NETS, as well as other competitors who had launched similar applications shortly before the Pay Anyone launch.Essentially, getting mass awareness and driving usage for both brands was the key objective of the campaign.SolutionOCBC Bank and Sqkii then formed a partnership where OCBC Bank would sponsor a SG$50,000 grand prize for the event so as to give both companies the mileage and traction they needed to hit their business objectives.The model put in place for #HuntTheMouse was that participants need to collect hints and to piece them together to find where the SG$50,000 is hidden.Aside from the three daily hints posted on Sqkii’s Facebook Page, participants can collect extra hints (in the form of scratch cards) when they make use of OCBC Pay Anyone’s QR feature at participating outlets (including LiHO and PastaMania). For participants looking to gain an extra edge on winning the cash prize, this would be an incentive to download the app and use it.[caption id="attachment_213868" align="alignnone" width="557"] Various types of physical marketing collateral[/caption]The company knew that early interest and participation would be crucial to the success of the campaign and the media mix was carefully selected to achieve this objective.ExecutionThe first announcement post on Facebook went live just past midnight on 31 August 2017. The image used was a box of bills to immediately drive the association between a large cash prize and to entice the viewer to read further. In less than five minutes, the post received more than 100 shares.[caption id="attachment_213869" align="alignnone" width="556"] Announcement post on Sqkii’s Facebook Page[/caption]Daily hints were put into one single album to make it easy for participants to find all the relevant information they required.[caption id="attachment_213870" align="alignnone" width="606"] Some of the daily hints posted on Sqkii’s Facebook Page[/caption]To supplement the campaign’s social strategy and reach, 50,000 announcement cards were disseminated across the whole of Singapore; collateral (i.e. event standees and event counter stands) was put up at all 128 participating outlets; as well as transit advertisements at Newton and Tai Seng MRT stations. Just in the two MRT stations, the campaign received an average unique reach of 258,750 and 177,710 weekly commuters respectively.[caption id="attachment_213871" align="alignnone" width="551"] Commuters taking a close look at the transit advertisements found in Newton (NSL) station[/caption]All the physical marketing collateral developed drove traffic to the website, where it took a unique storytelling approach to interest viewers into finding out more about #HuntTheMouse and participating partners.[caption id="attachment_213872" align="alignnone" width="580"] Screenshots of event website which include a mysterious letter (second from the left)[/caption]The event website featured a mysterious letter which contained important yet ambiguous hints—in the form of a poem—aimed at creating conversations amongst participants and their friends.Results#HuntTheMouse became viral right from the get go. The launch post reached 746,191 unique individuals, garnered 175,724 engagements, 8,400 reactions, 3,400 shares and over 7,300 comments with a media spend of just SG$1,500.Over the 23 day campaign period, the event website clocked more than 500,000 page views. Furthermore, the album that released the three daily hints throughout the campaign racked up a total of 2,155,289 clicks and 26,801 reactions, comments, and shares. In total, the campaign received over 2,879,682 engagements and 30,000 comments on social media, a staggering amount given the minimal media spend.[caption id="attachment_213873" align="alignnone" width="429"] An update posted on Facebook when it was confirmed that the coin has been found[/caption]Throughout the campaign, more than 12.5 million impressions were generated. 79.8% of the impressions came from the event's primary communication channels—where participating partners were prominently featured—including the event website and Sqkii's Facebook page.There were 2,408 self-generated pieces of content posted by participants on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. If you factor in privacy settings, the true number would have been much higher.[gallery link="file" ids="213866,213874"]There was even a forum thread created on HardwareZone, entitled “Hunt The Mouse to find SG$50,000 CASH”, which racked up more than 10,309 comments and 1,633,905 page views in less than a month—of which OCBC Bank was mentioned as the prize sponsor repeatedly. The thread turned out to be one of the most viewed threads in HardwareZone history.[caption id="attachment_213867" align="alignnone" width="605"] A forum thread on HardwareZone with 667 pages of comments[/caption]In total, the island-wide cash hunt attracted an estimated 210,565 participants actively hunting for the coin.In addition to the staggering social media impact seen, brand awareness for both OCBC Pay Anyone and Sqkii increased significantly, with many mentions throughout the campaign. This is reflected in the business results of both partners.For Sqkii, numerous new business opportunities came along as it acquired a more significant following (40,492 on Facebook which was 4x larger than before) and a new-found credibility of organising an island-wide activation that drove more than 100,000 sales transactions for its partners  (i.e. PastaMania, LiHO, Kraftwich) through this campaign. In addition, Sqkii received numerous features from various media outlets, bloggers, and influencers including The Straits Times, Shin Min Daily, Lianhe Zaobao, Vulcan Post, to name a few.For OCBC Bank, the number of monthly downloads of the OCBC Pay Anyone app increased by 14% with nearly 5x more transactions using QR codes compared to previous months. Overall, the total value of transactions increased 3x from previous months, resulting in a highly successful campaign.Furthermore, the momentum did not stop there. Once the campaign ended, the rate of new downloads slowed down, however, the volume and value of transactions remained high, with many customers repeat customers who had downloaded the app during the campaign. This also tells the company that it has a good product, as customers are seeing the value and repeatedly using the solution.