Social Media Campaign Analysis

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Introduction

On April 14, 2021, Pilsen DIY Skatepark launched a fundraising campaign to raise money for the park. The Pilsen DIY is a “do-it-yourself” skatepark created by local Chicago skateboarders with zero outside funding. In order to pour all the concrete and build ramps at the DIY, the skaters doing the labor need to fund themselves. As the park grew, funds started to dry up. As a grassroots organization, Pilsen DIY built a strong community around it and knew that it could tap into the support of its followers in order to raise more money to build. So, it partnered with an up-and-coming Chicago skateboard company, Sapient Skateboards, to create a social media marketing campaign centered around generating more revenue for the spot. Sapient would build 10 boards by hand and pass them on to 10 different skater-artists who hand-painted unique graphics onto each board that highlighted Chicago culture and the Pilsen DIY. Each board would be sold via live auction on Instagram over a two day period and all the money raised would go straight back into the DIY. Bidding was made in the comment section of each board — which had its own post. Ultimately, the goal of the campaign was to generate more money to build new park features, but it was also created in part to foster collaboration within an underground skateboard community that often doesn’t have a legitimate outlet to express itself.

Pilsen DIY’s only presence on social media is on Instagram, and its branding on the platform is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, Pilsen DIY is not selling a product via Instagram, but it is still the only place where Pilsen DIY has the opportunity to project itself and its brand image. Almost all of their posts on Instagram are taken with an iPhone camera and they appear to be “snapshots,” or photos that were taken without too much focus on composition or high-quality production. Despite this, its posts have excellent engagement relative to its follower count (nearly 4,000 as of June 2021). This is due in part to the authenticity of its posts and that despite their photos and videos not being high-production, they play into the cohesive brand image of getting dirty and making something out of nothing. No frills. When it came to the marketing campaign, Pilsen DIY wanted to use the opportunity to add a sense of legitimacy to the campaign posts to not only validate their IG page as something capable of high-quality content, but also to give the art for sale the respect it deserves (Pilsen DIY, 2021).

Campaign

As mentioned previously, this campaign only existed on one platform, Instagram. As a result, the content for this campaign was carefully optimized for IG. Every post was edited to appear like a continuous image with seamless carousel swipes from one frame to the next. The captions also took full advantage of Instagram’s character limits to highlight the artists, unique board shapes and re-iterate auction rules in each post. Images in the posts resembled a collage, including board shape and closeups, behind-the-scenes photos from the artists and photos of the Pilsen DIY. All images were chosen intentionally to take advantage of Pilsen DIY’s defining brand characteristics: local Chicago skateboarding, do-it-yourself mentality and unique art.

The first post was made on Wednesday, April 14 to reveal the board shapes and announce that the auction would be live on Friday and Saturday. These dates were chosen around Instagram’s most active times (Arens, 2021). The first post only teased the top of the boards and did not include the hand-painted graphics — yet. It outlined the premise of the campaign with full transparency, that Pilsen DIY created this community-driven auction to fund projects at the DIY for the summer and to uplift local talent. The second post was made the next day, revealing all 10 graphics and announcing that they would be available for auction Friday and Saturday. Five boards were posted to Instagram for auction on Friday (each with their own post) and the remaining five boards were posted Saturday. Each post was unique and highlighted special parts of each graphic and design process of the artist, but they all followed a cohesive style. The board shape and graphic were displayed clearly as the first carousel image, followed by close-ups and BTS images as well as photos of the DIY in the background. Sapient Skateboards also posted about the fundraiser from its own Instagram on Wednesday and Thursday, directing traffic to @pilsen_diy to bid on the boards over the weekend (Sapient Skateboards, 2021).

The target audience for this campaign was very narrow, as zero dollars were spent to advertise the campaign and that Pilsen DIY understood potential bidders likely already had established relationships with the community and the skatepark itself. This is generally not a good strategy, to limit a campaign to people already “in the circle,” but Pilsen DIY was just playing to its strengths. It is in a unique position where it isn’t actually trying to sell a product for profit, but rather lean into the strength of its tight-knit community to support the cause. This community was the only audience that the campaign aimed to impress, and it had to do so by creating a campaign that was competitive in terms of production quality.

Success of posts

When the dust had settled Saturday night, the campaign had raised $3,040 (just over $300 a board). The campaign gained momentum even before the first board went live for auction. Thursday’s post revealing the graphic of each board is @pilsen_diy’s most-liked post ever, with 739. The second most popular post of the campaign notched 611 likes, good for @pilsen_diy’s third most liked photo ever. Below is a table of the difference in likes and comments between 44 normal posts from Jan. 2020 — present and the campaign’s 13 posts in five days (Pilsen DIY, 2021).

Despite the campaign being a significant deviation in the type of content that Pilsen DIY usually shares to their Instagram, posts from the campaign enjoyed more engagement than their normal posts, on average.The Pilsen DIY Instagram also gained over 300 followers during the five-day campaign, resulting in an 8.2% increase in followers. Many of the comment sections featured a healthy back-and-forth of bids all the way until the deadline. The two top-earning boards sold for $420 each (Pilsen DIY, 2021).

According to the folks at Pilsen DIY, the results of this campaign exceeded their expectations. They did not expect over $3,000 in donations, they would’ve been happy to get to $2,000. They credited its success to the snowball effect of engagement and shares on people’s Instagram stories as well as the commitment of the community to supporting the cause (Pilsen DIY, 2021).

Results

In terms of both analytics and personal expectations, Pilsen DIY’s fundraising social media campaign would be considered a success. As a result, the @pilsen_diy account enjoyed a significant boost in followers, more engagement throughout the campaign than in its usual posts and netted enough funds to continue building the DIY with little restriction. On top of that, the folks at Pilsen DIY firmly believe that the campaign shined a much-deserved spotlight on the individual artists by giving them each their own posts, and to local skate company Sapient.

The content that received the most engagement out of all 13 posts were the two teaser posts and the final “thank you” post that featured all the artists next to their creations. Those three posts received 739, 611 and 537 likes, respectively. Engagement on the individual board posts fluctuated, which was expected since some boards will naturally be more popular than others and therefore generate more bids and likes.

Nothing in the campaign went terribly awry. Copywriting was prepared and reviewed weeks in advance and each board edit was created as the artists completed their board (in some cases, months before the auction). Auction rules were clearly stated for two days before the auction and were reiterated in each post. There was no confusion in any of the comment sections on how to place a bid. However, the fact that the auction was held exclusively on Instagram likely made it difficult for potential bidders to view everything in a centralized location. Each item had its own post and had to be searched for manually. In the future, it should be advertised on more platforms, and perhaps even promoted more in advance.

Discussion

It wouldn’t be fair to attribute the success of this campaign to any one factor. To name a few contributing factors:

-unique and expressive art by local artists

-professional presentation and production

-clear, easy-to-follow rules

-the use of teaser posts to build hype prior to the auction

-re-sharing of user-generated content on @pilsen_diy IG story throughout the auction nights

-intensive collaboration between Sapient Skateboards and Pilsen DIY to create a campaign that lines up with their respective brand identities.

That said, the grassroots coalition of local skateboarders that bid and purchased these boards did not appear out of thin air. The legwork was done for several years to build a strong sense of community and care between anyone who interacted with the DIY and its locals. The scope of the target audience was notably narrow — arguably too narrow for any campaign like this to be successful. If not for the brand trust earned and hard work done by the people at Pilsen DIY over the past several years, the campaign would not have generated as much money for the spot as it did. In a way, Pilsen DIY tapped into a niche market of exclusively Chicago-area people who feel a strong connection with the spot and the skaters in the city. Had the campaign been advertised to people outside of the city, it might not have had such an impassioned response.

Conclusion

By evaluating this campaign, one of the biggest things that I started to realize is how the success or failure of a campaign is a case-by-case situation. There is no formula that will result in a successful campaign every time, and there are factors outside of the campaign’s execution that affect the results. For example, most companies would have a hard time creating a successful social media campaign on a single platform for only five days while advertising it to less than 3,700 followers. However, by incorporating “best practice” techniques into the campaign, you will always be able to play to a platform’s strengths and ultimately produce a favorable result (Schenk, 2021). Another thing I realized is how much market research is required before the campaign in order to gauge potential success. Agencies that advise larger companies on these campaigns won’t always be able to translate a strategy that worked for a past client to this new client. Every brand’s following is different and the way their followers engage in their content is different. I learned not to deviate too far from what already works for you, instead you should take full advantage of it. Pilsen could have tried to raise money for more advertising and marketing strategy, but it knew its audience and their tendencies and instead played to its strengths. As a result, it improved brand trust even more, and created a collaborative project that benefitted the artists, board makers, skatepark and anybody who ever wants to skate there in the future.

References

Arens, E. (2021, May 10). The best times to post on social media in 2021. Sprout Social. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/best-times-to-post-on-social-media/.

Pilsen DIY [@pilsen_diy]. (n.d.). Profile. https://www.instagram.com/pilsen_diy/

Pilsen DIY [@pilsen_diy]. (2021, April 19). Photo of artists. https://www.instagram.com/p/CN3dpDXllBV/.

Sapient Skateboards [@sapientskateboards]. (2021, April 15). Fundraiser graphic teaser. https://www.instagram.com/p/CNsRXjfhMc3/

Schenk, L. (2021, June 16). 4 Social Media Marketing Trends to Implement in Your 2021 Strategy. Entrepreneur. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/370892.