Customer engagement best practice with Carling Black Label Champion Cup

How do you get South Africans to vote 3.2 million times in a promotion that simultaneously drives brand awareness, loyalty and product sales?

With a highly targeted campaign that remains firmly fixed on engaging and rewarding customers through an integrated mix of mobile, online and Facebook mechanisms, that's how.

In 2021, Carling Black Label tasked FoneWorx with building on the momentum of the brand's longstanding Champion Cup competition and elevating it to new heights, drawing in new customers and escalating engagement.

FoneWorx has managed the competition since 2015. We were once again responsible for developing the backend and website as well as all the call to action technology, insights, updated reporting and all the necessary tech support to ensure the smooth running of the campaign.

This was no mean feat for a competition this size, which doubled its entry target and was 141% stronger than the highly successful 2019 execution.

The mechanics

The entire campaign centred around the Carling Black Label Cup - a one-day pre-season football match between Soweto rivals, Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs. The premise of the promotion was that consumers could choose the starting line-up for the game - a world first in a competition of this nature.

Unique codes were generated and printed on the packaging of all Carling Black Label products. Consumers then used their unique code to enter the competition via a mobile site, the Carling Black Label website, or Facebook Messenger, which directed entrants to the competition page.

Once there, they could vote for their preferred starting line-up in the match. Throughout this journey entrants had the opportunity to win data, airtime, products and merchandise. On the day of the match, customers also had the opportunity to choose substitute players, the team captain, and man of the match.

The results

A total of 274 512 unique mobile (USSD) entrants and 280 783 total records were acquired across all the mediums during the competition. This resulted in almost double the consumer records target of 150 000 that was originally anticipated.

Voting broke the 3 million mark, coming in at 3 210 110 valid votes logged by the end of the competition. Participation on match day alone contributed 112 495 of these votes drawn from the 30 000 new consumers that entered the competition in its final week.

The insights

Beyond the engagement numbers, the competition provided the brand with invaluable information regarding the geographical location of the majority of the participants (as well as the provinces with the lowest engagement); the most popular pack size that participants used to enter the competition; and the male-female split of entrants.

The competition also showed which platforms consumers preferred, helping to guide future engagement exercises. For example, the website captured 19 323 votes, with 6 309 unique users registering on the site. The 'Your Team' feature showed the most engagement and time spent on the site, with an average of just over two minutes' viewing time per user on this section of the site.

This highlighted that the increased consumer-oriented content on the platform had been well-received as well as the efficacy of other platforms to drive traffic to the site.

The Carling Pose with the Pros app, which allowed users to take a digital photo of themselves that was then inserted into a photo of their chosen starting line-up for the game, garnered 833 submissions.

On the day of the game, consumer participation was at its highest in the history of the competition, with more than 115 000 votes cast across the mediums. Once the starting lineup voting had closed, consumers had the chance to dial in for a chance to win airtime, which kept the pace going. This generated 7 times more votes on match day than the 2019 execution of the competition.

The outcome

Carling Black Label was once again impressed with the results of this campaign. This campaign serves not only as an example of customer engagement best practice, but also showcases the power of using a highly skilled project team plus the latest technology to deliver an interactive, meaningful customer experience.