CASE STUDY: Online directory World's Best Bars boosts traffic with app contest

Background

World's Best Bars, a global online bar directory, enlisted Great Works to help them bring their services to the forefront of conversation. Being a resource that bar seekers and enthusiasts benefit from, Great Works wanted to enhance user experience of World’s Best Bars by developing an application for the iPad.

Working with a relatively small budget, Great Works created a global contest to crowd source ideas for a potential World’s Best Bars iPad app. The contest rules were broad and any and all ideas were welcome, including games, drink mixing recipes, application versions of the website, or anything else contestants could concept.

All idea entries were to be submitted in video formation using the video hosting website Vimeo. Each entrant was allowed up to five submissions. Additionally, as with any spirits-­based programmes, those who entered were required to be of legal drinking age in their country of residency.

At the time of the initial conception for this project idea, the iPad had been available for only one month. Great Works and Pernod Ricard, the company under which World’s Best Bars is owned, decided to use the iPad as the source of inspiration for the project since the technology was very new.

Aim

The World's Best App design contest intended to further brand awareness, increase website traffic, inspire creative people and to find a winning idea for possible iPad app for World’s Best Bars.

Execution

The creative team in Great Works Sweden (located in Stockholm) was responsible for the ideation of the project as well as creating the website and all promotional assets used.

Dovetailing with these efforts from Great Works Sweden, Great Works America (located in New York City) handled the project from the PR and outreach side of things. GWA (Great Works America) reached out to developers, students and general creative types through both on-and offline activation and marketing techniques.

Once the entry window closed, online ‘Like’ voting through Facebook Connect opened for a two-­week period in which the public was able to vote for their favourite entry by 'liking' the video.

After all 'like' votes were calculated, the top ten submissions with the highest number of 'likes' were automatically deemed finalists. The final submissions were then put into the hands of a jury comprised of five high profile Pernod Ricard executives and media types. Click here to view all the finalists. 

With each judge considering the originality, creativity, practicability, entertainment value and utility of each submission, the winning idea received a grand prize of US$10,000. Following the winner announcement, GWA interviewed the creators of the winning submission via Skype to talk to them about their their creative process, backgrounds, etc. Click here to view the winner and an interview with the winner. 

Results

Through collaborated efforts between the Stockholm and New York offices of Great Works, World’s Best Bar’s site traffic increased 1628.57 per cent.

Through social media outreach, the team created 17,303 impressions via Twitter, with Facebook accounting for 18 per cent of overall site traffic through referral.

With respect to a very limited timeline and budget, activation KPIs and submission quality from entrants were both exceeded. 

Credits:

Great Works Sweden
Account director Daniel Jonten
Creative director Frederic Sebton
Design Bjorn Wissing
Technical creatives Ellen Sundh, Ola Persson, Isak Burstrom
Account manager Sara Reis

Great Works America
Managing director and executive media director Ed Kelly
PR manager Brittnee Cann
PR associate Hannah Peoples