Olympus decided to unveil one of its most ambitious cameras ever—the new PEN, in a new, highly competitive category at a time when buying any camera was viewed as a luxury rather than a necessity, all on a small budget—Olympus’ competitors were outspending the brand $7 to $1.
To break through the clutter, the agency developed the PEN Ready Project, a social experiment focusing on the consumer’s desire to take high-quality digital photos and video, positioning the PEN as easy to use with professional-quality, point-and-shoot simplicity and HD video.
A total of 1,200 PEN E-PM1 cameras were given to “inspiration seekers”—people who are inspired to capture beauty wherever they find it, to see what they could create. The audience skewed slightly female between the ages of 35 and 54. The team felt that if a small sampling of target consumers could use the camera and become “PEN Ready,” they would create amazing works of art that could be showcased to the world.
The project kicked off Sept. 16, 2011 with a camera giveaway on a JetBlue flight and Olympus gave a $1,000 JetBlue Getaways package to a PEN Ready photographer. For two weeks, the cameras were also given to people who fit the demo on the streets of six cities. In return, they were asked to upload their photos to the Tumblr blog, PENReady.com.
The top 100 Tumblr bloggers, as well as top Instagram and Flickr users, also received the E-PM1 to drive buzz. Other social media influencers, as well as celebrities, musicians and athletes, were also involved, including the Ellen Show, where 125 cameras were given away during the show’s 12 Days of Giveaways. In addition, Yamaha Motor Corporation provided PEN cameras to 25 “scooter blogger” participants in its 2012 Zuma 50F Press Event in San Francisco.
The campaign was promoted through Tumblr, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google Plus. JetBlue also posted on its blog, Facebook and Twitter. Hints about where to find the street teams were tweeted. Media was placed on Yahoo, spongecell, AOL Portrait, StumbleUpon and Unruly Video. Consumers were also driven to retailers through a mobile WAP landing page with store locators in Olympus’ top four markets.
As a result of the promotion, a new Tumblr blog was launched that became an integral part of Olympus’ social network, with the resulting images and videos being showcased in Olympus’ digital online ad campaign, and the content leveraged across multiple social platforms.
Overall, 1,200 cameras were distributed resulting in more than 12,810 images posted and more than 622 million media impressions generated. PENReady.com received 557,051 visits, +1 million page views, 5,185 blog subscribers—with one blog post receiving more than 4,600 comments—an increase in Facebook likes by 70%, 1 million YouTube video views, nearly 110,000 Instagram likes and more than 31,000 Flickr views.
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