Giveaways are among the most predictable formats in organic social. A prize is announced, entry conditions are set out, the post does its work for a few days and then the whole thing is over, usually leaving behind an audience that arrived for the prize rather than the brand.
The Collaboration Effect, created by Jade Rideout of The Soulful Marketing Co for The Butler Collection, was built to avoid exactly that. The Butler Collection is a Sussex-based holiday let management company that curates and manages a portfolio of luxury short-term rental properties across West Sussex, and rather than posting a generic giveaway, Jade built an entire storytelling campaign around one property, 15 Bond Street, and its owner, Sarah Moore.
Moore is best known as a British interior designer, upcycler and television presenter of the BBC's Money for Nothing, and as the winner of the first series of BBC Two's The Great Interior Design Challenge in 2014. That gave the campaign both a larger and more engaged audience to cross-post into, and something more useful, which was a relationship worth showing.
The story around the prize
The reels series created to complement the giveaway gave viewers a look into Moore's world, her interior design career and what went into creating her home at 15 Bond Street.
The videos were captured interview-style, so the audience heard first hand about the history of the house, the unique pieces of furniture she collected to furnish it and why the home matters to her. The point was not simply reach borrowed from a well-known name, but a demonstration of the relationship Moore has with the company that manages her holiday home.
The sequencing did a lot of the work. The first reel in the series went out ahead of the giveaway post going live, which introduced Sarah Moore, the home and the prize before anyone was asked to enter. The remaining reels were then released weekly, and each one brought a rise in entries and an increase in performance across the board. Jade describes this as a creative tactic she will continue to use as a framework for future collaborations.
What the campaign returned
The results Jade reports are all improvements against the account's usual performance. Post engagements rose 264.7%, post views rose 229.5% to 21,907, reach rose 142.5%, saves rose 344% and comments rose 417.2%, alongside follower growth of 945.
There was a commercial outcome beyond the numbers as well. Both of the supporting brands involved in the giveaway expressed interest in running their own exclusive giveaways with The Butler Collection, which turned a single campaign into a pipeline of further collaborations.
Collaboration over competition
Jade founded The Soulful Marketing Co on the belief that the best marketing does not come from competing for attention but from founders choosing to share it, and she works with founders across many industries to build the same kind of collaborative, relationship-first marketing, which she thinks most brands are missing.
The campaign confirmed the principle she started with, that collaboration beats competition and that businesses will grow further together than they will alone. She is candid that entering the awards also generated new creative ideas for her own marketing and content, a part of her business that often gets neglected, and that the framework built here is one she will keep using and developing for client campaigns because it works.
Being shortlisted matters to her because it recognises that a softer, gentler and more soulful approach to marketing is something the industry needs, and confirms that the way she has chosen to work has meaning. What excites her about the future of the sector is that it is becoming more collaborative, and that brands are looking for new and better ways of taking up space in their own corner of the internet.
The winner of Organic Campaign of the Year at the Social Media Marketing Awards will be announced at the awards ceremony on 8 October in London.