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Case 06 · Sales and action
Contest 2.0 drew almost four times the participations of 3.0
- Client
- Energy Drink Brand
- Campaign
- Bottle-cap code contest, 2.0 and 3.0
- Markets
- Multiple territories
- Period
- August–November 2022 and August–October 2023
- Channels
- Meta, Google Display, YouTube
The brief
What the campaign had to do
- The mechanic
- Enter the code from under the cap on the website, or send it on WhatsApp, for a draw
- Prizes
- 2.0: weekly prizes and a pickup truck. 3.0: weekly prizes and three grand prizes of 20,000 USD.
- Channels
- Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Google Display, YouTube
- Periods
- 2.0: August–November 2022. 3.0: August–October 2023.
- Influencers
- 2.0: four. 3.0: five.
- My role
- Paid media strategy and execution
The results
What it delivered
| Measure | 2.0 · 2022 | 3.0 · 2023 |
|---|---|---|
| Creative pieces | about 15 | 6 |
| Digital reach | 60.7% | 50% |
| Impressions | 92M | 18M |
| Participations | 485,369 | 123,872 |
| Unique entries | 96,544 | 35,635 |
| WhatsApp entries | 33,571 | 11,929 |
| Cost per entry, USD | 0.31 | 0.17 |
3.0 ran on a smaller digital budget, with fewer creatives and a narrower audience at the start.
The 2.0 customer journey
Five stages, each with its own job
Every stage had its own objective, cost metric and formats.
The 3.0 fix
Reach alone stopped the reminders
3.0 began optimized for reach at 35+, which lowered how often each person saw the campaign. Fewer reminders meant fewer people entering. From mid-September it optimized for reach and engagement and opened to 25+. 3.0 also left free product out of the weekly prizes, which lowered the chance of winning and may have made people less keen to enter.
Learnings
What made 2.0 work
Promote the winners
Each week, the best organic posts by engagement and interaction rate were promoted into the media mix and tested.
Influencers as ads
2.0 was the first test to run influencer content as promoted content.
Budget by priority
Budget was organized by objective, month and audience, with territories grouped into high and low priority by trade volume.
Placements that earn clicks
On Google, placements were prioritized by where target segments clicked and by click-through rate, avoiding sites prone to accidental clicks.
Next season
Lessons for the next season
Meta
- Optimize the best-performing creatives into the media mix.
- Optimize for traffic, engagement and ad recall, not reach alone.
- Promote influencer content, with relevant influencers in each territory and across territories.
- Tier budgets by target market and distribution projections, not territory by territory.
- Keep high-performing creatives in rotation, in as many sizes as possible.
- Use a strong creative mix with the prize visible in every size.
- Prioritize placements by click-through rate, not viewable CPM, and remove accidental-click placements.
- Give campaigns six weeks or more to learn and reach full performance.
Figures come from the campaign's own reporting: The contest 2.0 and 3.0 case study. Budgets and amounts spent are not shown. My role: paid media strategy and execution.
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