Snow Day by Rosetta: 2011 IMA Award Winner
CATEGORY: Best in Show, AND
Best Holiday-Themed Campaign, AND
Best Nonprofit Interactive Campaign, AND
Best Use of a Microsite in a Campaign
AGENCY: Rosetta
CLIENT: Rosetta
It’s a whimsical promotion that harkens back to youthful, snow-filled days spent whirling in the wind catching and snowflakes on your tongue.
For its innovation, the judges awarded “Snow Day,” from Rosetta, the top 2011 IMA Award, “Best in Show.” The promotion also won in three other categories: Best Holiday-Themed Campaign, Best Nonprofit Interactive Campaign and Best Use of a Microsite in a Campaign.
This self-promotional program, a first, was designed to show customers that Rosetta had moved beyond just a strategy and segmentation company to a topnotch interactive agency, says Gary Scheiner, managing partner and chief creative officer.
Its traditional holiday card was revamped to demonstrate the agency’s creative thinking and technological capabilities, as well as its expertise in generating successful viral and social media efforts—all with a budget of about $10,000 for production costs.
The campaign launched on Dec. 15, 2009, with a simple email offering a holiday greeting. For recipients, the subject line was the first indicator that things at Rosetta had changed. It read: “This holiday season, give with your tongue.”
Recipients clicked on the link to play “Snow Day” Through a new technology invented by Rosetta that combines facial recognition software (tracking the tongue) and motion-tracking algorithms, players could stick out their tongues and begin to catch snowflakes falling on the screen. Every snowflake caught was added to a universal counter at the top of the screen that tracked the overall number of snowflakes caught by all players, so people could return again and again to view the progress. Rosetta had promised that once the counter reached 1 million, it would make it snow for children in New Orleans.
“It was such a simple delight,” says Toni Hess, partner and executive creative director at Rosetta. “That’s one of the reasons why it was so successful.”
Unbeknownst to the players, their photos were snapped during game play but appeared as a surprise at the end of the game. Players were encouraged to post their images to Facebook, Twitter or other social sharing platforms. They could also enter their email addresses to be notified the moment 1 million snowflakes had landed on tongues.
Once that goal was reached—in just six days, four hours and 44 minutes—the hard work began. Over the next two months, Rosetta worked with local politicians, schools and youth organizations in New Orleans to select a location, the New Orleans Museum of Art, for the “Snow Day.”
To promote the event, fliers were placed in schools, churches, community centers and local businesses, and kids could go online and make their own paper snowflake posters.
On Feb. 20, it began to snow on the grounds of the art museum in 62-degree weather. Nearly 500 kids showed up for an afternoon of face painting, hot cocoa, pictures with Frosty and, of course, snowball fights. Maybe they even caught a snowflake or two.
In just six days, the promotion generated more than 4,000 shared media links, received unique visitors from every state except Wyoming, and from more than 60 countries—even though the email was sent only in the U.S.
“We think of Rosetta as a technology company wrapped in a marketing agency, and ‘Snow Day’ was the perfect articulation of that,” Scheiner says.
