Imagine a big flashy contest for your dream job. Would you apply?
Well, Olipop offered content creators across the USA that exact opportunity!
An Inside Look At Olipop’s Dream Job Contest & The Creators Who Won discusses how Olipop went from a fan favourite beverage on social media to choosing fans as brand ambassadors.
The well-known beverage brand launched the dream job contest
with the intention of building awareness of their brand and products across
social media platforms including Instagram, TikTok and Threads.
Well that plan worked with the contest getting over 2,000
applicants.
Although the afore-mentioned Forbes article doesn’t focus specifically
on physical events so much, they are still a part of the overall picture of
this campaign. This Dream Job Contest idea is an incredibly interesting means
of marketing. Contests in general aren’t an uncommon way of gaining interest in
a brand or product but Olipop utilized its existing brand popularity in
combination with the audiences of established influencers to build a large
campaign with relatively little financial investment.
Social media is an invaluable tool for marketing and can
gain attention from diverse audiences especially when connecting with a variety
of different influencers. This contest created both an exponential growth of
attention on Olipop soda and the allure of a symbiotic relationship for
influencers.
When I say exponential growth of attention, I’m referring to
the fact that upon introduction of the contest there would’ve been a handful of
influencers knowing about it and promoting Olipop. Once those influencers
promoted Olipop and divulged details of the contest it was further publicized increasing
the number of influencers taking part in promoting the product and contest. The
repetition of this pattern caused the campaign to reach larger and larger
audiences with relatively little effort from the company itself.
The symbiotic relationship for Olipop and influencers was
not merely for those that won the contest but for anyone who posted additional
content using the hashtag #OLIdreamjob and tagging @drinkolipop. The more
influencers posted about Olipop using that hashtag the higher likelihood that #OLIdreamjob
would trend. When a hashtag or topic is trending it comes up more on people’s
feeds. This means that even smaller content creators using those hashtags will
have increased visibility and reach on their posts potentially drawing in new
followers to their content. Small content creators were able to reach more people;
larger content creators were able to garner more attention and possibly win the
contest and Olipop itself was highlighted on multiple platforms.
All this talk of attention and we still haven’t talked about the contest winners: Maggie Chang and Tam Hoang! Although I’m sure this boom of publicity for their personal brands resulted in an increase in followers, even if it didn’t, as the article said “the assignment presents a powerful portfolio-building opportunity” for individuals interested in content creation careers. In the article the contest winners talk about how much this opportunity means to them and how this made them feel supported as content creators with Hoang mentioning how “coming from an immigrant background, it’s not something that feels very supported”. This turned the contest from a simple contest into more of a feel-good story and people love brands that make them feel good.
Since marketing for events is specifically why we’re here I’ll
finish this post talking about the prize. The contest winners prize involved
doing content creation for campaign events in various cities. After all of the
contest buzz the subsequent campaign events were in a great position to pull
attendees from multiple sources: die hard fans of Olipop, people who have newly
heard of Olipop and want to try it and people interested in meeting the contest
winners.
Overall, I think this campaign gained traction for creators, Olipop soda and the Olipop events in a very creative and cost-efficient way.
What do you think about this kind of contest and what changes would you make if you were promoting your own event or product?
