The 702 Road trip – branded content drives engagement and results

Welcome back and a Happy New Year full of rich ideas to everyone! In the first egtabite of 2018 we are taking you on an epic road trip through South Africa via Primedia Broadcasting’s radio and online branded content campaign for the South African Tourism office.

The main goal was to amplify the South African Tourism campaign ‘Tourism for All’ by generating memorable and surprising content that engaged audiences across digital, social and radio channels, inspiring them to plan their next break to explore their beautiful country.

The idea - #702ROADTRIP

Primedia came up with a cross media campaign combining radio (it ran on one of Primedia’s regional news and talk stations called 702), online and social media influencers. At the heart of the campaign was a road trip around the country that allowed listeners to experience the most famous tourist sites, but also hidden regional gems. In the first two weeks of the campaign, listeners were asked to submit ideas of places worth visiting in South Africa.

Primedia then recruited teams of multi-disciplinary content creators and influencers for a seven-week exploration all over the country. The content they created drove awareness on social media and the message was then amplified on radio with on air promos throughout the week, live coverage of the road trip during the Morning Drive Show and competitions for listeners to win weekend getaways.

A dedicated content portal was set up to track the teams' progress and to showcase the content they created. Content published on 702 owned platforms such as daily live streams drove traffic to the 702RoadTrip microsite. This site served as the digital home for the entire campaign. It hosted an overview of the campaign, bios of all content creators, aggregated content blogs on each road trip, the competition page and links to the South African Tourism website. Digital content was also published on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter included photos, status updates, videos, live stream, and 360-degree videos.

The campaign focused on combining radio with visual elements and sharing fantastic, high quality content with audiences. The digital response proved that great content drives huge engagement. Especially the drone photographs and videos created a sense of wonder and awe and helped to engage the audience on social media. The influencers and their followers helped to drive conversations all over the country during the campaign proving that a regional radio station can have national reach, impact and resonance.

As a result, the campaign generated 1 094 640 impressions on Twitter, 609 768 impressions on Facebook and 671 855 video views across all social platforms. 100% of Instagram posts generated engagement.  Activity in each region spiked during the teams’ visits.

Since content creation and curation were an important part of the brief, South African Tourism was very happy with the amount and quality of the material produced during the campaign, which they were able to use in the months that followed.