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Top five experiential campaigns of 2013: Blinkbox, Lynx, Nutella and more

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By Ishbel Macleod, PR and social media consultant

December 20, 2013 | 5 min read

2013 really has been the ‘year of experiential’. Here, we take a look at five campaigns that did not just provide a ‘stunt’ but played part of a greater role in a wider campaign.

Blinkbox - Game of Thrones dragon skull

In July 2013, a giant dragon skull, the size of a London bus, was ‘found’ on a Dorset beach as Blinkbox looked to promote the launch of Game of Thrones season 3 on the service, with Taylor Herring.Within hours of revealing the spectacle on a beach in Dorset, #dragonskull was trending on Twitter as Blinkbox landed on the home pages of Mashable, Buzzfeed and Reddit, with 250 pieces of fully credited coverage appearing in all.“When it came to highlighting the third series of Game of Thrones landing on Blinkbox before rival services, our quest was to create a disruptive piece of marketing that would strike a chord with diehard fans while tempting the uninitiated to check out the show,” Ben Ayers, head of PR at Blinkbox explained to The Drum. “The challenge was that the series had just aired on Sky and its launch had been extensively covered by the media. We needed to do something very different and found our inspiration in a scene from the first season in which Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) stumbles across dragon skulls in the castle dungeons. What if someone stumbled across the remains of a dragon in Britain today? A 40ft skull washed up on a beach famous for its paleontological history? What would the reaction be?”On the day Game of Thrones Season 3 arrived on Blinkbox the service saw a 632 per cent year on year revenue hike and celebrated its biggest ever day of trading.

Lynx – Apollo

Buzz Aldrin was the face of the Lynx Apollo experiential campaign, which saw the public offered the chance to go to space to promote the fact that the bodyspray was ‘out of this world’.The online competition had over 87,000 entries, and over 650,000 votes for those entrants, and the competition itself garnered over 200 pieces of coverage.Mark Aschmann, brand manager for Lynx, told The Drum: “The launch of new variant Lynx Apollo was supported by one of the biggest marketing campaigns for the brand to date. On 10 January, we executed one of the biggest media road blocks ever. In the first ad break after 9pm, Buzz Aldrin appeared on every single TV channel, all 102 of them in the UK and Ireland, to announce that Lynx is sending someone to space. We hit every 16-24 year old watching TV, and reached over eight million people on rail, underground and city centre stations. “The real success of the ground-breaking campaign though has been the fact that sending someone to space doesn’t happen overnight. The truly epic idea has lent itself to on-going conversations with our audience, which has not only helped drive higher levels of engagement but also increase our loyalty rates.”

Nutella - Win a day everyone will love

In October 2013, Nutella offeried the public at Westfield London the chance to 'win a day everyone will love' in a campaign by retail agency B STREET London, as part of a wider on-pack campaign.The event saw shoppers having the chance to win their ultimate day out by drawing it onto a 2m-high virtual slice of Nutella-covered toast. It increased sampling of Nutella by 17 per cent."We took a much loved brand on the road to drive further emotional connection through an innovative and interactive stand. This helped us create added interest in the promotional competition and integrate our on pack, digital, social and experiential channels whilst also sampling nutella to a large audience," explained Mark Burgess, business director at B STREET.The experiential also helped achieve over 300,000 Facebook fans and over 15,000 competition entries to date.

Coca-Cola - Share a Coke roadshow

Following on from launching its range of personalised bottles for those with the 100 most common names in the UK, Coca-Cola took pity on those with less common names in July, with 70 stops across the UK.The trip sought to help those with more unusual names get hold of their own personalised bottle.Jon Woods, general manager for Coca-Cola Great Britain and Ireland, said: “This summer’s Share a Coke campaign sparked the nation’s imagination. We’ve already seen thousands of people engaging with it; sharing their bottles online or tweeting their excitement when they find a bottle with the name of a friend or loved one on it. We are delighted to be able to now take this campaign on the road so that everyone can have the opportunity to create a personalised bottle of Coke with their best friend or family member’s name on it.The reception for this campaign has been phenomenal; it truly highlights how much fun the public have had in finding and sharing the names across our Coke range. Share a Coke truly represents an authentic and personal brand experience.”

Ben & Jerry's - core tour

Ben & Jerry’s took over Covent Garden on Saturday 15 June as part of its Core Tour, which saw customers receive free ice-cream and listen to music.The public was invited to follow the action and interact with the ‘Core Tour’ through social media, including Facebook and Twitter, and through an app on their phone. Throughout the tour, the public could additionally ask through social media for the tour vans to stop off at their own offices and homes while they completed their journey across the UK.

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