A remarkable event deserves a remarkable campaign. Boondoggle covered the birth of a baby elephant at the Antwerp ZOO earlier this year. Instead of making stuff to be issued through –expensive– standard media, we came up with our very own medium. An online dashboard called www.baby-olifant.be. This digital platform incorporated various digital and social networking tools through which fans and visitors could stay tuned for one of the biggest events of the year. Culminating in the live web streaming of the baby elephant’s birth. Another internet first for Boondoggle.
Additionally the platform launched a series of direct, PR and viral massages that found their way in news headlines all over the world. The news of the pregnancy and the birth of the elephant became an international hype, our campaign a big success and little Kai-Mook famous overnight.

http://www.baby-olifant.be

The Will is our Road Safety Campaign For Youngsters. Too many young, reckless drivers and their friends die in traffic. How can we help youngsters confront their reckless driving friends without losing their cool? First we asked youngsters a simple question: “Is your friend a reckless driver? Tell him what you’d like to inherit from him.”
Then we launched a website where they could make up a will for a reckless driver and send it via e-mail, Facebook or Netlog. Enabling kids to criticize their friend’s reckless driving in a cool way without sounding like their mums. In the weekends, we flyered 50,000 blank wills at clubs, movie theatres and mega parties. And we spread a video on the internet.

Find out more:

• Read the case
• Discover the site

Beyond Engineering. That’s the baseline for Boondoggle Group T campaign, as well as the philosophy underpinning the Group T engineering programme. Beyond Engineering is about looking at old problems in a radically different way and to come up with solutions that don’t create new problems. It’s about making a sustainable difference. For that, you need agents of change. And Boondoggle.
Together we created a print campaign featuring some good old Julian Koenig style long copy engineering stories and breathtaking illustration to get the message through. Every ad invited people to participate in a fascinating online test at www.beyondengineering.be. Using real life engineering problems, we had people check their beyond engineering skills through animated cases that clearly showed the unexpected consequences of their choices. The campaign resulted in a dramatic increase in young people applying for a higher engineering education. And less concrete.

http://www.beyondengineering.be

Last June 7, millions of Flemish had to vote in what was regarded as one of the most critical regional Belgian elections in years. One global financial crisis, one socialist party under fire and one nationalist catastrophe were all the ingredients we needed to produce a political campaign that put the socialist party back in the Flemish government.
First, just when everybody was busy ignoring the socialist party, we produced a campaign that said:“If you don’t want to hear anything from sp.a, then just listen to what’s going on.” Claiming that if it hadn’t been for sp.a over the past few years, things would have been even worse for most people. Through ads featuring sp.a ministers we invited people to debate the party leaders online and at a number of large street events. Gradually, more and more people were willing to listen to sp.a again. We followed this up with a campaign for Minister Kathleen Van Brempt that featured a portrait of a girl and a headline that said: “I wish I were a cow.” Opening the debate on social priorities in Europe. Should we invest even more in agriculture or is it about time to end child poverty in Europe? This part of the campaign led to some classic presidential campaigning on the internet for Minister Frank Vandenbroucke whose results, ideas and programmes provided enough content to dedicate a website to. Putting his name high up the list of the most popular politicians in Flanders.

http://www.frankvande.be
http://actiekathleen.s-p-a.be
http://nuzeker.s-p-a.be
http://durfplan.s-p-a.be

Car advertising should produce car sales. Not CO₂. Exactly the point we made with Volvo’s CO₂ neutral campaign promoting a new, greener series of Volvo cars called DRIVe which is probably the Swedish way of saying less pollution for less money.
Essentially, the CO₂ emissions of the campaign will be neutralized via certified CO₂ compensations. Volvo will not only compensate the CO₂ emissions of the website, but also the Google searches and banner impressions resulting in a remarkable car campaign with impact in people’s minds instead of people’s breathing. Exactly the way it should be.

My Restaurant is of course the widely known reality television series that follows the lives of several amateur cooks and their ambition to win a professional restaurant. One of our clients, Electrabel, sponsored the Flemish edition of the show and asked us to produce some banners about it.
Of course we refused. Presenting them an interactive campaign called Our Restaurant. Our Restaurant was an online restaurant where a professional cook would prepare a menu every day the show aired on tv. Only here, you had to guess how much power the cooking consumed. Each menu resulted in a winner. Eventually, one participant won a super deluxe kitchen. And Our Restaurant served some great meals flavored with an insight that you don’t have to fight oil tankers in rubber boats to save the world. Cooking a steak with fries can do the job too.

http://www.electrabel.be/residential/lifestyle_leisure/contest_restaurant.aspx

Over the years, festival ticket prices have gone completely mad. Leaving several teens bankrupt after a long hot summer of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Big deal? Yes, actually it is. If the prices of festival tickets keep on rising there will be no more youngsters at the festivals. And who would want to see a crowd of mature mums and beer bellied dads at the summer festivals? Right…
Something had to be done. So Axion youth bank once again came to the rescue of the zit-faced part of humanity with a great festival deal.
Axioneers could get 5 euros off ticket prices of selected summer festivals. And we did a campaign featuring 40-year old subculture icons like an emo girl and a tectonic guy making the point about the disaster that what was bound to happen if someone didn’t do anything about the ticket prices.

http://www.axionweb.be/static/NL/applications/festivals2009/home.aspx

Being young just got more difficult than it was ten, twenty or thirty years ago. Sure, today’s teens probably have more freedom and more rights than they did back then. But they also have less money to spend and more expenses to make than their parents in their teenage wonder years. What should a youth bank do? Bore the kids with yet another goody bag? Or help them make ends meet with clever services that really matter? That’s why Boondoggle created the Dexia Youth Index. Essentially, it’s the same as the regular Belgian index system of consumption prices. Only in this case, it monitors the average prices of products and services that are specifically designed for youngsters. This way, Dexia offers youngsters a tool to monitor their cost of living a decent teen life and it enables the bank to intervene where and when needed. Film tickets on a rise? Let’s do something about that. Festival tickets are too expensive? Let’s give youngsters a reduction. This way, a youth bank becomes a relevant part of any teen’s life. And not just a big company that’s waiting until they’re old enough to sell them a car loan.

http://www.axionweb.be/NL/applications/youthindex/index.aspx

Vincent & Peter bring another of Boondoggle's quality cases: The last will of...

This is a campaign that got launched for the public sector in general. Traffic safety is most of the times funded by the government, and in this case it's no exceptions.

How to get young reckless drivers thinking as a first step to behavioral change?

Many youngsters feel that the government interferes too much in their lives
To much information of the same kind in the same context might trigger the opposite effect

Insight !: We will have to use peer group pressure in an inventive way

Insight 2: We will have to give 'means'; to the peer group to have valid arguements

Insight 3: We have to avoid being too soft and dare to talk about the real consequences

Campaign:  Het Testament van...   ('The last will of...')

    Website concept: if you have some friends who drive really reckless, use this site to let them know
    what you want to inherit from them if they die.

It's a conversation starter. The reckless driver got an e-mail from his friend, alerting him that that friend claimed some of his possessions. It's hard as a rock, very confronting, especially if the last will could be signed by many people (in group) This give the peer group extra strength.

Most discussions around reckless driving happen when it's too late. Now the reckless driver is confronted with this topic while he's sober, behind his PC.

Launch: PR event at VUB university. (made TV news headlines that same day)
      Radio attention and viral clip:

Additionally: Netlog brand page / discussion forum

50 K + empty Last Will have been handed out to people during weekend awareness controls.
The Results:

    * Massive PR in the written press
    * Hundreds of conversations / discussions
    * 15 K visitors on the brand page
    * 76 K views on YouTube
    * 21K visitors on the site
    * 1777 wills have been created

The discussion is sparked, that was the purpose of the campaign.

Bart De Waele, the man, the brand, the medium himself lights up the room to talk about something he started a little while ago: Talking Heads,  Social Media Marketing.

Small introduction of: what is web 2.0 / It's about social, creating and decentralising content.

I thought it was invented by #pascalvyncke  , but I can be wrong. Anyway.

Social Media engagement requires 3 steps: Listen / Facilitate / Join

1. Listen

    * Tracking tools
    * LiveStream (it happens NOW, tomorrow might be too late)
    * Analysis
    * Feedback
    * Kwantitative +Qualitative

+> Where is your target audience? Where are your ambassadors? Where are your influencers?

2. Facilitate

    * Let people create
    * Make sure they can share their creation
    * Don't try to control everything from a central location. (prepare to let go)

3. Join

    * Make sure you have a stable home base you can refer to. Social networks come and go
    * Content is a seed you plant in Social Media. By Tracking it you see it grow.

FUTURE VISION: Self-Organising Marketing Campaigns (will brands eliminate agencies?) ???

Presenter: Dennis Claus (no relation to Santa) from InSites. 

Most influencers influence naturally. They don't do it on purpose. They live their lives and by doing so inspire or consult others. That just happens to be very impactful in some cases. The credibility is bigger because the stories stick and are authentic / genuine.

How will you indentify influencers?
How will you measure their impact?

Online + Offline conversation tracking. 

Insites recruited 800 Belgians who would record their conversations around brands for a certain period in time. They had to keep a sort of diary. The first two weeks about 6000 conversations were recorded. Scaled up to the Belgian population: 25 mio brand conversations a week. That equals 25 mio opportunities to impact the tone of the conversation.

The Status of Change, and what is measured:
    I changed
    Others changed
    Everybody changed
    Nobody changed

Rules of engagement:
    OBSERVE / FACILITATE / JOIN

KPIs in a Strategic Framework
   Bashing vs Serenade
   Barking vs Bonding

Example: mohave experiment:

Bashing: if the product fails, deal with it and be honest. If the bashers are just bashing your brand for no real reason, bring them together and face them with their wrongs.

Disputable elements / non-disputable elements for a conversations. In the Bonding segment of the market, arguments are needed that are objective. (good causes etc)

In the Barking segment, you deal with 2 fan bases that argue out of a gut feeling. Very rarely 2 parties will agree. (example; StuBru vs Q-music)

Case: Dell Hell => leads to IdeaStorm initiative

New approach to conversation marketing:
    Design your questions
    Scarsity of information (don't give it all at once)
    Facilitating the conversation