Race Online

Race Online 2012 is a national campaign which aims to get the entire UK online by the Olympic year. Currently 10 million people cannot access the benefits of the internet. A fully networked nation could save the UK an estimated £22billion, as well as delivering huge social benefits.

The Aim

CG was tasked with using social media to inspire UK businesses to support Race Online 2012 and encourage 10,000 organisations to make a pledge.

The Approach

Everyone at CG believed in the Race Online 2012 mission and we knew that others would too, they just needed to hear about it. CG’s challenge was to target the decision-makers, explain the initiative and get them to sign up. Working alongside Martha Lane Fox (UK Digital Champion) and her team, we developed a social media strategy which targeted business leaders directly, as well as targeting their influencers (opinion leaders, staff, partners, children).

Social Media

Using the latest social media techniques and digital platforms we created advocates out of passionate internet-users, used crowd-sourcing to generate mass awareness, generated exciting new content and blogs and inspired business leaders to pledge to help get the whole nation online. We managed all of Race Online 2012’s Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn platforms; creating new networks and contacts. 

Email Marketing

We also developed an email marketing programme to keep in touch with advocates and partners, serving them with the latest content, and a special microsite for employees to get their bosses to sign up – www.tellyourboss.co.uk.

Web Development

CG designed and created a widget which can be easily embedded onto the websites of Digital Champions.

Race Online 2012’s partners, forward-thinking organisations such as John Lewis, will be invited to host the widget on their website and intranets so that their audiences can support the campaign.

So how does it work? Just like all of CG’s developments it’s a little bit different and a little bit clever. The bespoke tool was designed and built to integrate the existing email communications solution we provided with partner websites, allowing Race Online 2012 to manage the deployment of multiple widgets while giving their partners access to the data collected, subject to permissions. Once the public sign up they will receive monthly information and offers on how they can become a digital champion, i.e. inspire, encourage and support others to access the web.

It’s a win/win situation — the public feel great for supporting, Race Online 2012 gets more supporters and can manage the system efficiently, and their partners get closer to their customers.

Further information about the widget can be found on our blog.

The Results

In just eight weeks CG increased Twitter followers by 400% (to over 1000 followers), Facebook followers by 500% and boosted its LinkedIn profile and connections.

Our social media activity accounted for 54% of all referral traffic to the website.

There were 32,345 views of the sign up and pledge widget in the first two months, from thirty three different websites.

So far over 600 organisations have pledged to support the campaign – including the likes of Google, Microsoft, BBC and Talk Talk.