ATLANTA: In less than one week, Atlanta-based social media marketing agency Everywhere conceived and executed a one-day pro-bono campaign that raised more than $70,000 for four nonprofit cancer organizations. The effort also set a Guinness World Record for the most widespread social network message in a 24-hour period with 209,771 mentions on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs.
The campaign ran from October 16 at 9am PST to October 17 at 9am PST during the BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Las Vegas (October 15 -17). Guinness World Record spokesperson, Stuart Claxton said in a statement that this effort “will set a benchmark for social media monitoring moving forward.”
Everywhere cofounder Danica Kombol, said agency managing partner Tamara Knechtel, who is a cancer survivor, came up with the idea to illustrate social media's power in driving social causes and raising money.
“We're acutely aware of the power of social media to drive brands' messages,” Kombol explained. “Clients often complain that they don't understand how social media is relevant to their messages. We were going to be at this congregation of top bloggers and Twitters at BlogWorld, and we wanted prove that social media can be used to do social good and deliver powerful messages.”
BlogWorld attendees were asked to post tweets and Facebook updates promoting the effort and using the phrase #BeatCancer. MillerCoors Brewing Company, eBay/PayPal, and nutritional supplement company, Genesis Today agreed to donate one penny for every #BeatCancer mention on social media platforms, but all ended up donating more than one penny per mention.
“It went way beyond BlogWorld in one hour,” Kombol said. “We started at 9am and by 11am we were a trending topic on Twitter. It shows the power of the influencers in social media space.”
Tweets and Facebook updates were posted by numerous celebrities, including P. Diddy and Jermaine Dupri. Media coverage of the campaign included a CNN segment about the power of social media to raise money for social causes. Sfgate.com and Mashable are among other outlets covering the story, and Kombol said a New York Times story is slated.
Kombol said the agency recruited MillerCoors because it had a relationship with the company, and BlogWorld sponsor eBay/PayPal jumped at the opportunity. Genesis Today committed sponsorship upon learning about it about the campaign at the expo. Design and development agency Slash7 donated and built a Web site for the campaign. The benefiting nonprofits—Stand Up to Cancer, Bright Pink, Spirit Jump, and Alex's Lemonade Stand—were chosen because they were BlogWorld attendees.
Robert Chatwani, director of global citizenship at eBay, said the campaign was a great fit for the company.
“We liked that it relied on a community of individuals with a clear and simple call to action and that the impact would be measured," he explained. "Those three things got us very excited about being the lead sponsor. We were very pleasantly surprised at the coverage. It underscored and demonstrated the power of social media. We broke the record in 24 hours, but over the course of the week it hit close to two million social media messages shared.”
