Swiftcover.com, the pioneer in online insurance, launches a fun campaign to celebrate the end of the summer.  Using social media and supporting display campaign, swiftcover.com calls on users to upload their favourite photos to its Facebook app from 27 September-10 October.  The photos aren’t the usual shots of people partying: the call is for the saddest faces to “mourn the passing of the British summer”.  Users will also be able to download a playlist of the best of the summer festival music.

The gallery of sad faces will feature on the swiftcover.com Facebook page, updated in real-time, and can be linked to users’ own Facebook pages.  The winner of the best “mourning” face will be announced w/c 11 October, judged by swiftcover.com and will win a Red Letter DayTM experience day voucher worth £300; further prizes include 20 Spotify premium accounts worth £2,400.

The interactive campaign including display advertising, social media activity and advertising in casual games; was devised and conceived by swiftcover.com’s digital agency Steak.  Steak also designed and developed the “Summer Mourning” Facebook application. 

Visitors to the swiftcover.com Facebook page can download a best of the summer festivals top 25 tracks, voted by music fans, from a playlist devised by swiftcover.com, Absolute Radio and Steak.  The list is available for free download via Spotify from 27th September.

Tina Shortle, Marketing Director of Swiftcover says, “We’re excited that social media remains at the heart of this campaign. Last spring, our ‘favourite tracks of the summer’ playlist successfully encouraged sharing between Facebook users, and with the success of this year’s summer festivals; the Summer Mourning campaign and its best of festivals playlist is a fun way of engaging with our audience around the popular subject of the end of the British summer through posting up sad faces. We’ve been delighted to partner with Absolute Radio and Spotify to create Britain’s favourite festival music playlist and it’s been great to see Facebook users take part to vote for their favourite tracks.”
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John Barton, Head of Planning and Social Media at Steak says ” Music and summer festivals are effective passion points for the swiftcover.com demographic and form the basis of our content strategy and Spotify playlist voting campaign. Swiftcover.com is utilising social channels to interact with their audience in an accessible way. People love to share their photographs and then ‘upload a photo to enter’ format is effective for community building. However this format is nothing new. We wanted to close the summer strategy in a different, fun and memorable way by poking fun at the winter blues after an amazing summer of music festivals with swiftcover.com and Absolute radio.”

Kate Hussey, Head of Display at Steak says “We are once again excited about extending the field of our current social activity to further develop a relationship between consumer and client. We believe that integration between all digital and other advertising channels is crucial to gain stand out, but essentially, it’s finding a connection with your consumers that will gain, the all important, traction. We are delighted to partner with a client who is constantly pushing the boundaries of building consumer relationships through digital”.

Really pleased to have been included in the media agency section of NMA’s ‘Top 100 Interactive Agencies’ guide for 2010. This guide lists the top 100 digital, design & build and technical agencies on income earned, but also separately ranks media agencies by gross billings, and it’s in this section that Steak appears. For more info take a look at: http://top100.nma.co.uk/

From the NMA site – “Steak has started building capabilities in mobile and social media over the last year, appointing Mark-Antony Baker as head of mobile and John Barton as its first head of planning and social media.
According to Steak, social media has become an integral part of campaigns. Key projects in this area have included work for Swiftcover, partnering the online insurer with Absolute Radio, Spotify and Facebook to encourage its audience to vote for their favourite songs and to create the ‘summer’s hottest playlist’.”

See press clippings below:

Setting the scene:
Facebook Places was announced yesterday and saw Facebook make their long awaited first steps into geolocation, an area currently dominated by Foursquare and Gowalla. These location based social apps are becoming more popular amongst business and marketers as a way to target people at specific locations, for example checking in at a Starbucks to earn rewards and free coffee. They have huge potential for campaigns, but are currently hindered by relatively small user numbers; they rely mainly on early adopters and have yet to really penetrate the lives of the average social network user.

Why is Facebook significant?
Facebook becoming a player in this game is significant because of the sheer scale of their membership. They already have the audience; they just need to bring the geolocation option into their Facebook experience.

Mobile:
Though Facebook can be accessed as standard via mobile, currently Facebook Places is only available iPhones, or geolocation enabled smart phones from the Facebook Touch mobile site. Currently there is no app available for android or blackberry devices, though they are planned at some stage.

Availability:
Places is only available in the US at the moment and no dates have been released for an international launch.

How does it work:
For the average user, Places will become an option whereby you ‘allow’ Facebook to know your location. Then you will be able to share this with your friends, find out where they are, and discover places nearby. You can add new places when you visit them, and tag yourself and your friends at locations much like you can currently do with photographs and video, and just like the current tagging options, you don’t need permission to tag your friends at locations, this has raised privacy issues already.
Your check-ins will automatically appear in your profile, in your friend’s news stream, and the news stream of your current ‘Place’. These can all be modified in your privacy settings much like everything else you can currently share on Facebook.

Clients:
Clients will be able to ‘claim’ their business’ on Places. Whether they’ve been added by themselves or someone else, owners will be able to claim ownership and automatically set up a Facebook business page which will then house and stream all the check-ins people make from their business. So essentially your local coffee house will have its own page acting as a live message board broadcasting customer check-ins.

Development:
Facebook will be making a Places API available to developers to scrape information from public places, and information users allow to be shared, so there should be an oncoming influx of interesting location based apps and games for Facebook users that will seek to take advantage of this new feature, Gowalla and Foursquare have been given access to Places, so checkins can be posted across both networks.

In practice:
Facebook as a platform for marketing becomes even more powerful with Places. Users opting to share their location become open to very focussed and direct marketing opportunities, and there is also the ‘game’ element of geolocation, earning rewards for checkins, following ‘treasure hunts’ around cities, finding out about exclusive and secret locations and so on. These are all ways companies are already using Gowalla and Foursquare to market to customers, with the 500million+ users Facebook currently boasts, the scope for these campaigns becomes even greater and the potential all the more interesting and exciting.

John Barton, Head of Planning and Social Media

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List voted by music lovers through social media app

The campaign from swiftcover.com, the pioneer in online insurance, offered music lovers the chance to create this “Summer’s Hottest Playlist” in collaboration with Absolute Radio.  Building on their ‘Get a Life’ campaign, swiftcover.com extended the campaign theme to encourage users to ‘get a life’ this summer by voting for the summer’s hottest tracks. The campaign devised by Steak, used Facebook as the main hub, hosting an easy-to-use voting application.

A master playlist of 75 tracks was selected by popular Absolute Radio DJs: Christian O’Connell, Geoff Lloyd and Ben Jones.  Spotify and Absolute Radio listeners were prompted by the DJs to visit the Swiftcover Facebook page and voted daily for two weeks via the “sucks” or “rocks” buttons beside the track. This saw the music tracks physically rising and falling, depending on popularity, on the Facebook “chart”.

The final playlist hosted is hosted by Spotify on 22 June through the summer; with Facebook fans, Absolute Radio and Spotify listeners being notified that the winning list can be downloaded and played all summer long.

The idea was conceived by Steak, who is handling the social media and online display campaign.  Audio and display ads including billboards and takeover pages, will appear on Spotify, Absolute Radio and Facebook linking through to swiftcover.com’s Facebook page.  The Facebook app songs then link back to Spotify, which enables visitors to the site to listen to the tracks they’re voting for; and there is an opportunity to win a Spotify premium account for a year.
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Tina Shortle, Marketing Director says, “This is a perfect campaign for the summer – sitting in the park in the sunshine listening to music that you’ve voted for – it epitomises our ‘Get a Life’ campaign.  We’re excited that social media was at the heart of this campaign. Absolute Radio, Facebook and Spotify are the perfect partners for music lovers to create this ‘Summer’s Hottest Playlist’”.

John Barton, Head of Planning and Social Media at Steak says “We wanted to demonstrate how we can effectively integrate social media into our existing through the line digital strategy. This campaign is ultimately about building and fostering relationships between swiftcover.com and their audience in social channels that they’re comfortable with by adding value rather than selling. Music and summer festivals are effective passion point or the swiftcover.com
demographic and form the basis of our content strategy. We are excited and fortunate to work with brands like swiftcover.com who continue to lead the way in digital marketing within the insurance vertical sector”.

Kate Hussey, Head of Display at Steak says “We are excited about enhancing the current Absolute Radio partnership for swiftcover.com along with introducing another key strategic partner, Spotify, as a main driver of our audience. We believe that this campaign has the ability to kick off a summer full of ‘Getting a Life’”.

Steak, the full-service digital agency, today announces the appointment of John Barton and Mark Joseph to the roles of Head of Planning and Head of Affiliates respectively.

Renowned for his interest in digital media developments, ideas and theory, Barton joins from TBG London where he worked on accounts such as American Express, Harrods, Ladbrokes and Moneysupermarket.com. His role will encompass client strategy/development, campaign innovation and new business, and he is tasked with the development and delivery of Steak’s social media offering for 2010.

Mark Joseph joins from PHD Media where, as Affiliate Marketing Manager, he helped set up and run their in-house affiliate network. Prior to PHD, Mark successfully launched and ran his own agency providing affiliate marketing, search marketing, web hosting and website design and development services to range of clients including HMV, eBay, Amazon, Harley Medical, Foxy Bingo and Zavvi. 

Commenting on these appointments, Ollie Bishop, Steak Group CEO, said, “We’re very pleased to welcome Mark and John to Steak. They will play key roles in delivering to Steak’s clients the rounded digital offering that they are looking for from us. We have already seen social media become an integral part of the campaigns we are putting together and expect this area to go from strength to strength. And whilst affiliate marketing has been a core part of Steak’s business for some time we are fortunate that someone of Mark’s calibre has joined us to make sure that continues.”