Holy Cow! Social Media Gave Away the Farm

Posted by Jeannine De Richemond on 18 February 2009 | 0 Comments

Tags: Branding, Interactive, social media, Holiday Project

Like most companies, at the end of every year, we like to send our clients a special holiday gift. In years past, we’ve sent gourmet foods, adventure gear, even a build-your-own snowman kit. But as we all know, 2008 was not an ordinary year.

So we set out to create a holiday gift with one simple idea: give something back to help heal the world.  Our partner? Heifer International.  Heifer helps fight global hunger and poverty by providing livestock and education to needy families around the world. For example, a cow’s milk contains valuable protein that helps hungry children grow strong.  Healthy cows can produce a calf every year—a gift that can be passed on and help an entire community move from poverty to self-reliance.

Our goal: spread the word about Heifer and the amazing work they do.  First we mailed a plush farm animal and card driving traffic to www.garfieldgroupholiday.com.  Using video and flash animation, we explained the value each animal brings to a family, and let visitors choose which animals they wanted us to donate by dragging and dropping them into a barn.

Then we put our traffic generation and social networking skills to work, using everything from YouTube, to Viddler, StumbleUpon, and Digg. We even created a special Facebook page for a cow we named “Hope Heifer,” who also shared her story via Twitter.

In the end, over 1,500 people visited the website were educated about Heifer.  Plus, we drove a high click-through rate to Heifer’s site, encouraging additional donations.  All of which prompted Ray White, Public Relations Director for Heifer International to say, “This may be the most clever thing anybody has ever done to support Heifer.”