“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” Benjamin Franklin

The re-opening of Harts Pub in Sydney’s historic Rocks precinct created the opportunity for a new, yet powerful, word-of-mouth campaign using social media.

In March 2010, Harts Pub re-opened its doors under the ownership of The Rocks Brewing Co, an independent brewer of craft beers.

One Small Planet met the new owners and talked about the use of real-time, web-based social media for marketing – in this case the use of Twitter.

With a limited marketing and promotional budget the new owners engaged One Small Planet to embark on a personalised awareness campaign designed to save the owners both time and money by capitalising on the new media tools available to them.

One Small Planet created a Twitter account for Harts Pub – @HartsPub – which would strategically manage, monitor and engage on behalf of Harts Pub but carefully crafted to ensure that all Twitter ‘conversation’ was strictly in keeping with the brand and personality of Harts Pub.

One Small Planet account managers thoroughly researched the client and scripted the tweets to be sent from the @HartsPub Twitter account.

A ‘follow strategy’ identified several target audience groups, including connoisseurs of beer and people interested in craft beer. A larger target group included people living and working in Sydney’s CBD and visitors to The Rocks.

Harts Pub management had built a business which offered fabulous food but also the signature of ‘craft’ beer – beer brewed by privately-owned, independent brewers including The Rocks Brewing Co.

Keeping in mind the limited budget, it would be a waste of time and money to simply ‘yell and sell’ using Twitter.

There were, of course, lunch specials and events like Halloween and the Brewers’ Feast to be promoted, but the key to social media is sociability – it is the engagement with individuals that gives social media its power. Facebook and Foursquare check-ins promoted meet-ups and tweet-ups with, to date, over 1000 check-ins by nearly 400 people on Foursquare and nearly 500 check-ins on Facebook.

And that’s not all.

Utilising the best social media tools available, the account manager then enabled a system of 24-hour monitoring any mentions of Harts Pub whether or not the mentions use the @HartsPub name or simply Harts Pub.

This meant that Harts Pub, via their One Small Planet account manager, could now engage with people live and in real time.

In this example, @franksting tweeted, “Harts Pub has been found”. One Small Planet’s account manager was then able to ensure that Harts Pub replied with, “Try a paddle” – a reference to a popular craft beer sampler.

In this example, a customer at Harts Pub tweets their choice and a picture. Harts Pub acknowledges by re-tweeting:

In both of these examples, a customer has been engaged and acknowledged – a powerful step in customer loyalty.

“Beer makes you feel the way you ought to feel without a beer.” Henry Lawson

Now it’s Anzac Day 2011: 12 months on and the new Harts Pub has over 2000 followers on Twitter, nearly 1000 fans on Facebook, …. online newsletter members and is often fully booked out for lunch and dinner.

@Keep_Carmel Case Study: #NSWvotes

Twitter should not be ignored.

In 2010, in the lead up to the NSW State Election which was held on 26 March, we proposed Twitter assistance to two sitting Members of Parliament in two very similar electorates, both demographically and geographically. The two electorates were Balmain and Marrickville, both in Sydney’s inner west. These electorates have been held by the Labor Party for decades, Marrickville since 1910 and Balmain since 1927 except for a short period held by an independent member after the 1988 election.

The two sitting members were both very high profile Ministers in the, then incumbent, Labor Government. Verity Firth, Member for Balmain was Minister for Education and Training, while Carmel Tebbutt, Member for Marrickville was Deputy Premier and Minister for Health.

Both sitting Members were being challenged by very high profile Greens Party candidates and the general consensus was that both seats would most likely fall to The Greens.

The ABC’s respected political analyst, Antony Green, wrote on 12 March, two weeks before polling day, “A Galaxy poll in the Daily Telegraph reveals the [Greens] party is on track to easily win the inner-city seat of Marrickville, held by Deputy Premier and Health Minister Carmel Tebbut” and went on to say that if the swing was mirrored in Balmain, then Verity Firth would also lose her seat.

Both campaigns for the seats of Balmain and Marrickville were identical in many ways. Both had a “Keep” slogan: “Keep Verity” and “Keep Carmel”.

But there was one very big difference in their campaigns…

Carmel’s campaign used Twitter while Verity’s campaign did not.

The problem was this: Carmel Tebbutt and her campaign team were flat out keeping up with media relations and the usual hustle and bustle of campaign management but were not resourced to deal with social media and the real-time web, a medium in which there is increasing expectation to both comment and respond. Ms Tebbutt’s press secretary was concerned that The Greens were stealing a march on their campaign with Twitter. The Greens, and the Inner-West demographic generally, have largely adopted Twitter. The campaign team felt they could manage Facebook, as it was not as time-sensitive as Twitter but Twitter needed to be addressed somehow.

One Small Planet (www.onesmallplanet.com.au) took on the challenge of becoming the “Unofficial Twitter Campaign to Keep Carmel”. The concept was to create a very well informed advocate for the Keep Carmel campaign without pretending to actually be the Campaign or the Member. There were a number of reasons for this but the main one is quite simple: as the Member was not on Twitter herself it would lack credibility to have someone ‘ghost-tweet’ on her behalf and would result in a Twitter backlash and bad press.

The Twitter account @Keep_Carmel was set up and first tweeted on 1 February, and with 54 days until Election Day began tweeting with “Let’s keep Carmel in Marrickville” and tweeted in total 368 times up to and including on Election Day.

That’s an average of about 7 tweets a day. However, the nature of Twitter is such that on some days there were more tweets than others. For example, @Keep_Carmel live-tweeted during the Marrickville Town Hall forum and debate between the two main candidates and, on the day that Sydney Morning Herald journalist Georgina Robinson (on Twitter @geerob) toured the seat of Marrickville live-blogging and Tweeting, @Keep_Carmel engaged and ensured there was a presence in the evolving story @geerob was posting to the Sydney Morning Herald.

A photo-sharing, Twitpic account was set up (twitpic.com/photos/Keep_Carmel) and candid, ‘on the campaign trail’ photos were put up via Twitter.

The photos were viewed hundreds of times throughout the campaign reinforcing the message and the ‘Keep Carmel’ and ‘Carmel Tebbutt’ brands. When a radio interview went well and the announcer openly endorsed Ms Tebbutt and denounced The Greens candidate, the audio was tweeted and re-tweeted so that within minutes of the interview concluding, it spread virally via Twitter and thus the endorsement was heard by a vastly greater audience.

It was crucial the Twitter account be accurate so One Small Planet remained in regular contact with Ms Tebbutt’s Press Secretary to source up-to-date material for content for the @Keep_Carmel tweets. The strategic timing for the type of content was an important factor. Constant monitoring of Greens supporters and their content on Twitter meant @Keep_Carmel could address issues in real time. A tone-of-voice was established that would complement what Ms Tebbutt was herself saying. Without engaging in debate, per se, @Keep_Carmel could take the challenge up to The Greens in the medium that they were using to attack the campaign – Twitter.

From a standing start on 1 February @Keep_Carmel went from zero followers to nearly 2000 – in a mere 54 days. While the One Small Planet follow strategy was focused on the electorate, the nature of Twitter is such that a lot of followers will not be in the Marrickville electorate. However, the word of mouth that Twitter generated resonated from outside the electorate with voters within the electorate and the engaged audience on Twitter certainly included people in the electorate.

Think of Twitter like talk-back radio – not everyone listening calls in but everyone listening hears those who do.

Conversations on Twitter are often consolidated into searchable groups by the use of a hash-tag in front of a word, acronym or phrase. Anyone wanting to have their say and monitor what others had to say on Twitter about the NSW Election used #NSWvotes in their tweets. The @Keep_Carmel account regularly included #NSWvotes and other relevant #tags in tweets to ensure the broadest audience for those tweets.

In the closing stages of the campaign the focus was on local issues demonstrating Carmel Tebbutt’s commitment to the electorate. So @Keep_Carmel tweeted constantly about Ms Tebbutt’s achievements as their local member. In keeping with Twitter-speak every tweet with this subject matter included the tag #LocalFocus. This #tag was created as a demonstrable device and used in each relevant tweet. Given that tweets are limited to 140 characters, it eliminated the need to explain the meaning or geographical relevance of the tweet. @Keep_Carmel was quite prolific with this subject matter drumming the #LocalFocus message into the audience which is something one can do with Twitter better than any other medium. The corollary of this was to demonstrate that no other candidate, in particular The Greens, had as much #LocalFocus

Before establishing the advocate account, @Keep_Carmel, the Twitter sentiment towards Carmel Tebbutt reflected the attitudes expressed in polls and press about the incumbent Labor Party Government – very negative. Pundits, like the ABC’s Antony Green, who is also on Twitter (@AntonyGreenABC), were also writing and tweeting links to their material, with negative sentiments. Without any Twitter presence the Keep Carmel campaign would have been unable to provide any counter arguments to swing sentiment towards a more neutral or even positive position. From the end of February and through to the election in March the sentiment had changed to become primarily neutral and the positive sentiment out-weighed the negative at least 5:1.

As at the time of writing, 30 March 2011, without all votes counted (awaiting postal and absentee votes), Verity Firth has had a swing against her of 8.6% enough to potentially lose the seat. On a two party preferred basis, after counting preferences, there is a slim chance she will hold her seat.

Carmel Tebbutt, however, has only a 7.1% swing against her and a clear majority of the primary votes. Carmel Tebbutt has retained her seat and claimed it on the afternoon of 30 March.

The conclusion is simple. Twitter cannot be ignored

It all started with a tweet

A Twitter phenomenon: @theashes is a real life, tangible example of the power of social media

• It began for @theashes when she received thousands of tweets from cricket fans during the Brisbane Ashes Test.
• Off the back of her response of “I’m not a freaking cricket match”, an online conversation #gettheashestotheashes was started
• One Small Planet’s tweet centre pushed this conversation along
• She has now a following of around 14,000
• We brought in @LJLoch of Republic PR who channelled the tsunami of global media interest across Australia, the UK, the US, India and South Africa, coordinating live cross after live cross
• Now, for example, from one tweet @theashes can generate nearly 20,000 impressions
• One Small Planet picked up on the call to #BringTheAshestoTheAshes
• …we then coordinated:
  • QANTAS @QantasAirways to bring her to Australia
  • Travelscene American Express @travelsceneaus for a hotel
  • Vodafone @Vodafone_au to provide a phone
  • Ford @FordCastleHill to provide local transport in a Ford Fiesta
  • Harts Pub @HartsPub to put on a backyard cricket match and a BBQ
  • Holy Cow @SailingAus for a tour on Sydney Harbour
  • A visit to The Bradman Museum with @crickethof
• The Prime Minister welcomed @theashes to Australia
  
• American Ambassador called – and tweeted
  

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