Vodafone Ghana Limited, a telecommunications company, has a history of undertaking various amazing youth-centered activations, be it experiential, digital, and/or influencer marketing. Vodafone Ghana led the industry in creating youth-centered products that were heavy on data.
Over the years, it has been able to build community on a number of social media platforms where it engages its mostly young followers on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
However, before last weekend, Vodafone Ghana was yet to build a community on one of the growing social media platforms popular among young Ghanaians – TikTok.
The video platform is a hub for content creators and consumers. It hosts videos with durations from 15 seconds to 10 minutes from various genres. It has become a very powerful medium to start trends. For marketing purposes, TikTok has helped brands gain a wider and young community base.
Nonetheless, there is some level of creativity that comes with creating, managing, and growing a TikTok platform for a client.
For a brand such as Vodafone making a foray into the world of TikTok, there was the need to play with something that the brand is already associated with and what TikTok users can easily gravitate to.
EchoHouse Ghana Limited, developed the VGMA Red4 campaign that was used by Vodafone Ghana to break into the world of TikTok.
The VGMA Red4 campaign touched points in influencer engagement, experiential marketing activation, and digital activation.
Leverage
Celebrity and influencer culture is a big part of any social media platform. However, there are other youth cultural points that come naturally to Vodafone Ghana. As the title sponsor of the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMA), Vodafone is basically playing host to celebrities in the creative arts industry as well as influencers. The VGMA, therefore, became a perfect opportunity for Vodafone to create content that will help it make a grand TikTok entrance. With everybody who matters in the creative arts space in one place, the VGMA served as a perfect launchpad for exclusive made-for TikTok Vodafone videos.
Influencer Engagement
TikTokers have joined the fold of influencers who have become digital spokespeople for brands. If brands want to get their message out to a number of people on social media, recruiting influencers is one sure way to achieve that. For the VGMA Red4, we recruited a cohort of four TikTok creators to serve as the influencers ushering Vodafone Ghana into their world. The VGMA Red4, which included, Wesley Kesse, Portia Wekia, Kcreietin, and Erkuah Official, engaged musicians, actors, fashion icons, and media personalities in two well-curated Vodafone studios to meant to specifically create TikTok content that was then shared on the newly created Vodafone Ghana TikTok handle.
Experiential Marketing
The two Vodafone studios used to create the TikTok’s at the VGMAs were also on a larger mission than serving as Vodafone’s TikTok creator hub. It had to also stand out in the midst of many photo ops at the event. The BTL team at EchoHouse, was tasked to create the studios for the telecommunications giant. EchoHouse ensured that the studio met its other key goal of making Vodafone Ghana’s studios a crowd puller. Achieving this means, on the ground, people were also interacting with the brand sponsoring the event they were attending. This was an effort to feature Vodafone Ghana in user-generated content backed by the insight that not everyone attending the event would be featured in the VGMA Red4 TikTok content.
Join The Conversation
Yes, influencers check, Music platform check, experiential activation check – for TikTok, one way to get recognized is to contribute to an ongoing trend. With most current songs coming with their own dance challenges, the task for the VGMA Red4 was clear. When musicians came into the studios, the VGMA Red4 engaged them in a dance move to their own songs. For the other non-musician celebrities and personalities who came into the booth, they engaged in an already known dance challenge. These videos then became the exclusive TikTok videos Vodafone Ghana posted on its new handle.
Results
Going into the activation, Vodafone Ghana had set a target of achieving 5K followers on the account at the end of the VGMA, however, by the end of the activation, the team had gone beyond the target. The new account had gained 14.9K followers.
The 20 videos posted from the awards ceremony have gained almost a million views. The account itself also gained almost 32K profile views with content from the account shared more than a hundred times.
Always on the lookout for charting courses in uncharted territory, EchoHouse was excited to embark on this new journey with Vodafone Ghana into the world of TikTok. It is the beginning of exploring the endless opportunities available to building a community on digital for a brand in the new age of digital marketing with a blend of experiential marketing.
The two Vodafone booths at the event were also popular among attendees who took their own videos and photos to share on social media. This created maximum positive exposure for the brand in many user-generated content shared online.
The People Behind The Project
