The Digital Royalty team developed and implemented a cross-platform social media campaign to deliver worldwide happiness leading up to the launch of Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh’s first book, Delivering Happiness. The book, ranked #1 on The New York Times Bestseller List just a week after its launch, demonstrates the power of focusing on company culture and customer service, which has led Zappos to $1 billion in gross merchandise sales annually, and make Fortune magazine’s annual “Best Companies to Work For” list.
The goal behind the cross-platform campaign, was to make use of the organic nature and reach of social media, to not only generate exposure for the book, but to also create a dialogue and a happiness movement that everyone can be a part of, no matter where in the world they are located. The movement is less about encouraging people to purchase the book, and more about the quest to deliver happiness through the path of profits, passion and purpose.
Below we’ve outlined the campaign’s concepts and results:
Livestream Events:
For eight weeks, we hosted a series of Delivering Happiness Virtual Happy Hours from a different city each week. The Happy Hour was broadcasted live on the Delivering Happiness Ustream and Justin.tv channels and was focused on one central theme–happiness….oh and not to mention, featured a baby kangaroo as a guest, drinking dice, karaoke… just to name a few.
Delivering Happiness Virtual Happy Hours were viewed by more than 300,000 people from around the world, and those viewers consumed 340,000 minutes of Delivering Happiness.
Blogger Program:
No matter what their platform or page traffic, bloggers were encouraged to apply on the Delivering Happiness website to become apart of the Delivering Happiness Blogger Program. If selected, each blogger received two advanced copy of the book – one for themselves, another to give away. In return, they would write a blog post/review of the book the week of the launch and anytime prior.
By the launch of Delivering Happiness, there were 800 total bloggers in the Blogger Program who helped promote and review the book.
Facebook:
Facebook was leveraged to encourage interaction among fans, as well as encourage those who had advanced copies of Delivering Happiness to post photos of their ‘Happy Place’ on the Facebook wall, whether that happy place is on the beach or from their own backyard. Two winners were selected for their photo submissions and announced on the day of launch. One winner’s photo was from the sandy beaches of San Sebastian, Spain, while the others Happy Place was with his college-ruled spiral notebook. Both won a free autographed copy of Delivering Happiness and a Delivering Happiness t-shirt.
Delivering Happiness received photo submissions from all over the World in the three weeks prior to the official launch of the book. The contest built a strong momentum, and despite the fact the contest has concluded, Delivering Happiness continues to receive photos from fans and followers.
Twitter:
Delivering Happiness partnered with the LIVESTRONG crew and set a goal to raise $33,333 by the launch of Delivering Happiness on June 7. Leveraging Twitter, we encouraged followers to join the Delivering Happiness and LIVESTRONG movement by making three promotional pushes leading up to the launch party.
Combined, Delivering Happiness and LIVESTRONG raised $50,000 to help support the organization. A base of more than 5 million Twitter followers was created by pulling togethere influential tweeters such as @LanceArmstrong, @Zappos, @LIVESTRONGCEO and @DigitalRoyalty, among others.
Meetup Everywhere and Sponsored Meetup Book Clubs:
Meetup.com recently launched a new platform, called Meetup Everywhere, which allows likeminded people from around the world to organize groups and events in their own community. To celebrate the launch of the Delivering Happiness book on June 7, people were encouraged to organize a Delivering Happiness Meetup group and join the Delivering Happiness team on June 7 to watch the livestream coverage of the launch party in New York. Each group was sent complimentary copies of the book, so that their groups could chat about the book and everything happy. We even had a Delivering Happiness group all the way in Ireland, Malaysia and Peru.
A total of 133 Delivering Happiness Meetup groups joined the movement and hosted events from locations around the World. Each group watched live coverage of the launch party in New York via livestream. In addition, Delivering Happiness has sponsored 100 Book Clubs across the country on Meetup.com with access to more than 43,000 people.
DailyBooth:
DailyBooth was a great platform to encourage people to submit their Happy Place photos with the book, including people like Ashton Kutcher. More essentially, DailyBooth allowed author and Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh and the Delivering Happiness team to put a face and personality behind their names, by uploading photos of themselves.
Delivering Happiness currently has more than 6,600 followers on DailyBooth.
Delivering Happiness officially hit stands on Monday, June 7 and in it’s first day it was ranked #1 on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Not bad, considering none of us have ever launched a book before. What’s next on the agenda for Delivering Happiness? We’re hitting the road on a cross-country bus tour to promote the book and more importantly spread happiness throughout the country.
Digital Royalty came up with the idea to have readers tell us, via social media, where the happy bus should stop along the tour. Readers are encouraged to submit a short video, photos or 100-words or less telling us why, the bus should stop in their city.
And fear not, you won’t miss a beat, because we will be live streaming along the way. The fun has just begun, so stay tuned for more details about the Delivering Happiness bus tour–BIG things to come.
