Contiki Vacations, a leader in travel for 18-35 year olds, was looking to generate awareness and purchase intent for the Contiki brand during the critical travel-booking season. To reach the younger target audience of Contiki and capture the vibrant personality of the Contiki brand, while at the same time emphasizing the key selling points of the exciting excursions Contiki offers, Affinitive (a member of the Facebook PDC program) developed "Get On The Bus", a fun and engaging contest application that ran within Contiki's Facebook Page.

1. “Get on the Bus” Facebook Contest

2. Summary Contiki Vacations, a leader in travel for 18-35 year olds, was looking to generate awareness and purchase intent for the Contiki brand during the critical travel-booking season. To reach the younger target audience of Contiki and capture the vibrant personality of the Contiki brand, while at the same time emphasizing the key selling points of Contiki tours, Affinitive (a Facebook PDC program member) developed "Get On The Bus", a fun and engaging contest that ran within Contiki's Facebook Page. The contest encouraged fans to create their own "virtual" tour bus (complete with a personalized bus name and 'story'), choose their trip (from one of eight Contiki destinations), invite and fill up their bus with four Facebook friends, then campaign for votes for a chance to win a trip of a lifetime worth up to $25,000.

3. Summary Affinitive leveraged the Facebook platform to provide a level of personalization not found in typical online promotions, which added an exciting game-like element to the contest. In additional to showing the average age and gender breakdown of the passengers on the bus, each buses' "personality" was displayed through an interactive experience that incorporated the music, movies, likes, and interests that passengers had in common via their Facebook profiles. Bus pages also included Facebook comments for bus-mates to communicate and strategize during the voting period, as well as Like buttons and sharing tools to "get the word out" about the promotion across their social graphs.

4. Creative Samples

9. 127,000 Unique Visitors

10. 516,000 Page Views

12. 5,400 Total Registrations

13. 28,300+ Votes Cast

15. 4,900+ Bus Shares

16. 15,000+ Bus Likes (during voting period)

17. 800+ Twitter SharesIn addition to growing the US fan base by 8,000, Contiki GOTB messaging was shared with users’ social networks nearly 5,000 times, with the average Facebook share receiving 55 interactions (Likes, comments, or clicks.)

19. 392,000+ Share impressions

20. 6,750,000 estimated feedback impressions (2nd generation)

21. 200,000+ estimated Twitter impressionsFirst generation viral reach impressions exceeded 3,000,000 through Facebook and Twitter, and nearly 10 million including second generation impressions. Reported numbers only include recorded and estimated impressions of GOTB sharing, and does not include other means of contestant promotion such as YouTube videos, social bookmarking, organic link sharing and email.

23. 172,000 Visitors | 516,000 Page Views | 116,000 Active Users

24. 5,400 Contest Entries | 28,000 Votes

25. 5,000+ Shares

26. 10,000+ Google Search Results

28. 64% lift in mentions on TwitterContest Start Keyword Cloud – All Media during contest Post Volume during contest – GOTB and Contiki

29. Sentiment Shift Contiki experienced a 24% lift in positive mentions during the contest period Positive Negative