Farm Aid
Farm Aid is a national nonprofit organization with the mission of keeping family farmers on their land and promoting fresh local food. Farm Aid raises awareness with a large annual music concert featuring top artists, including Willie Nelson, Dave Matthews, John Mellencamp and Neil Young.
Campaign Goal
Farm Aid's website typically has lots of activity in early July, when the annual benefit concert is announced, and again in late September, when the concert is held. But users tended to disappear during the interim 90 days.
We sought a way to keep users interested and involved in the site during the full three-month period. Our idea was a viral contest that captured authentic stories from Farm Aid fans and engaged them in a fun contest that has visitors returning multiple times over a two- to three-month period. Oh, and did I mention we had an extremely limited budget?
Concept
A campaign microsite called Top of the Haystack was created to seek out the ultimate Farm Aid fan. The champion would receive an all-expense paid trip to the 2006 concert. The site went far beyond a typical sweepstakes, encouraging fans to upload a photo and explanation of why they were the ultimate fan. Fans then were pitted against each other in head-to-head contests. Results were tallied on the site, and a leader board tracked fans moving up and down in the rankings.
Not only was the site highly engaging, encouraging repeat visits, but it also shared the amazing stories of Farm Aid's many supporters. Additional random drawings, sponsor involvement and integration with the main website kept interest high and drove significant results for Farm Aid during a normally slow period.
While the microsite had a separate brand than the main Farm Aid web site, careful attention was put into how to effectively integrate them to encourage visitors to engage in our mission-oriented content. Google Analytics was put in place to measure the effectiveness of the campaign.
Seed Strategy
We helped Farm Aid contact friends and family first to get enough entries to fill the contest before going live. Then, we announced the contest in an outbound email to Farm Aid's house list of 20,000 users and linked to it from the website and blog. We provided our early entrants with e-cards and tell-a-friend tools to encourage them to help spread the word.
Buzz Generated
- July 11, 2006 – Haystack featured on www.youthnoise.com
- July 12, 2006 – Contest mentioned on owensraffle.net, a blog about sweepstakes and contests
- July 17, 2006 – Blog entry on Agwired.com
- July 17, 2006 – Mentioned in Ning's blog
- July 26, 2006 – Fan asks members to vote for her on the Mothering.com discussion board
- July 27, 2006 – News entry on John Mellencamp's online fan club
- July 28, 2006 – Haystack is featured on the home page of the Randi Rhodes show and mentioned on the radio show
- Listed as one of the top apps on the Ning site for the duration of the contest
- Contestants asked people to vote for them on their own personal blogs and MySpace sites
Specific (Goal-Related) Campaign Results
We went beyond traffic to measure the ultimate success of the campaign. The goals that really mattered were how well we engaged visitors in crossing back to the Farm Aid website and engaging in our mission-oriented content. Results exceeded Farm Aid's wildest expectations. They included:
- 73% increase in paid membership accounts year over year during the campaign period
- 56% increase in new accounts in August (The concert is announced in July and held in September, so this is a key month)
- 11% of the microsite visitors traveled on to visit the main Farm Aid website
- Visitors were viewing an average of 60 pages per visit during the contest peak
- More than 500 people submitted amazing and heartwarming stories and photos
- Early success secured a sponsor for the campaign to cover the prize cost
- Hundreds of fans promoted the contest virally with e-cards
Biggest Learning
The most surprising part of the campaign was all of the fantastic stories that came in from the entrants. It opened up our eyes to the power of user-generated content and gave us more ideas for how to incorporate the same ideas on the new main site.
Visit Farm Aid
Visit Top of the Haystack
Services
- Web Strategy
- Information Architecture
- Creative Design
- Application Development
- Content Management
