Weatherspoon

Student Marketing Case Study

Students taking pictures of a board of posters and laughing

Campus Media teamed up with Ogilvy Action in launching an Augmented Reality (AR) app for pub chain, Wetherspoon, and drinks brand, Bacardi, to promote Wetherspoon pubs to a student audience.

The Objectives:

Working together, Bacardi and Wetherspoon wanted to launch an augmented reality based smart phone application to deliver drinks vouchers to the youth market in a fun and engaging manner. It’s creative & activation agency, Ogilvy, teamed up with Campus Media to deliver its most cutting-edge digital campaign to date, Wetherspoon Unlocked.

Wetherspoon Unlocked was a mobile augmented reality app, available for iPhone and Android, that delivered food and drink offers hidden on point-of-sale (POS) material within 280 participating Wetherspoon pubs.

Aims of the campaign:

  • To drive downloads of the Wetherspoon Unlocked App
  • To increase youth footfall into Wetherspoon bars across the UK
  • To engage with the youth market through technology
  • To maintain Bacardi as the premium spirits brand for the youth market.

Objectives of the campaign:

  • To reach 30,000 Wetherspoon Unlocked App downloads during the first term
  • To redeem more than 50,000 vouchers by December
  • To increase student affiliation to Wetherspoon

The Solution:

Campus Media planned and deployed a national student marketing campaign across 21 institutions in 11 cities in the UK.

It recruited more than 500 of its student brand ambassadors (Campus Media Crew) to man fresher fair stands and organised outdoor activity to engage with the student market during the start of term.

The Campus-Marketing Campaign solution included:

  • Stands at Freshers Fairs within 21 universities across the UK
  • Poster Deployment in 21 student unions
  • 500 of Campus Media to activate the mobile phone app
  • Social Media Marketing by 65 key influencers
  • Chalk Advertising on 11 non-campus universities
  • 20,000 flyers in the form of playing cards distributed among the London universities.

The Result:

The campaign was a great success and was covered by several technology focused online publications. On top of this, the campaign achieved its objectives in a much smaller time-frame than was set by Wetherspoon and Bacardi, reaching:

  • 35,000 apps downloads in first two months
  • 50,000 vouchers redeemed in first two months.

Watch the video campaign created by Ogilvy here: