In 2014, IBM, a multinational concern, planned a confab in conjunction with the Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala-led Ministry of Finance to engage Nigerian Youths on Budget 2014. The interactive session was scheduled for 4 – 6 March 2014. With the technological resources of IBM, in concert with the expertise of local technocrats, all seemed indeed to be set for the programme. But, alas, very few of the people whom the programme was meant for – Nigerian youths – were in the know about it. And without them participating, there would be no session. To make matters worse, 7 days to the programme, barely 50 persons had registered.  

TRW Consult steps into the picture

It was at this point that TRW Consult was summoned to deploy its expertise to create a buzz online about the event so as to create awareness and drive signups. Word had got out about the recent online campaign that the team powered for the third edition of the federal government-organised YouWIN!, a campaign which had resulted in phenomenal success, polling a total of 9,542 views (for YouTube uploads), 42,156 clicks and a whopping 10,725,146 impressions across all frontiers (Facebook, Google, YouTube and 2,929 high-traffic sites). As a result, IBM and the Finance Ministry pinned their hopes on TRW Consult for a late rescue mission. It seemed an uphill task, but the marketing and digital campaigns agency decided to take it up.

The Rescue Mission

The TRW Consult team approached the campaign from three focal strategies: firstly, they made the Jam 2014 message go viral online, targeting virtual media, forums and blogs. At the end of their deployment, the news was published on more than 20 news sites and online forums to thousands of reading audiences.

Secondly, they advertised the Jam on Facebook, targeting the specified demographics. At the end of the short campaign, the Facebook adverts had reached 533,909 Nigerian youths, thus generating a total of 789,129 Impressions, 34,247 Clicks and 8,490 Actions from 7,342 persons.

The third strategy TRW Consult used to spread the Budget 2014 Jam message relied heavily on Twitter. They created a Twitter account for the event with the ID @Budget2014Jam, which was manned by a two-man team running two shifts across the days. In addition, they engaged 45 Twitter Influencers (Influencers are individuals with more than 10,000 followers) to tweet and retweet about the event using the hashtag #Budget2014Jam.

By the end of the campaign, they had generated more than 2,500 tweets from the handle and Influencers, reaching 858,119 Twitter accounts and recording a gaping 8,686,476 impressions!

For a campaign of six weeks, these results were terrific! And none would have been more pleased than IBM and the Federal Ministry of Finance.