Social Media Case Study: How Tesco HSC Raised Money on Social Media With #SpreadCheer

Brand Name

Tesco HSC

Introduction

The festive season and the New Year is a time for giving and sharing. Tesco HSC tapped into their online followers’ collective conscience and passion to raise funds for charity through a social media campaign called #spreadcheer. For every like and share of the community initiatives by followers, Tesco HSC gave back INR 10 to a cause they supported.

Tesco HSC is an integral part of Tesco PLC, a leading global multichannel retailer. Tesco HSC builds world class technology products and platforms, design stores and manages finance and retail operations.

Objectives

The objectives of the campaign were two-fold. It was keen on energizing employees and exciting followers online through the impact they were making on the communities. This be the first of such a campaign run by Tesco HSC to promote its community work using social media and also to garner support for charity.

In late January, Tesco HSC was participating in the Oxfam Trailwalkers event which expected teams from organizations to walk 100 kilometers in 48 hours. This campaign also tied in with the event and helped to continue the engagement.

With over half a million colleagues worldwide, of which about 6500 work out of the HSC offices in India, the potential to spread cheer was enormous.

Execution

#Spreadcheer campaign was conceptualized and run entirely by the HSC Corporate Communications team for the colleagues internally and externally for all the followers on social media channels. The campaign hashtag invited employees and followers to go online and spread the word. The content strategy included re-purposing updates that many followers would have missed during the course of the year. It served up the best moments and key milestones while engaging readers to share and have a conversation on the topic of giving. They were invited to read up more on the best programs run in 2013 and the impact, reach and value.

Tweets were shared via the @Tesco_HSC handle as the campaign progressed. There were frequent updates on the organization’s participation in the Oxfam Trailwalkers event and the team’s training run-up.

Results

Through the campaign Tesco HSC reached over 26,000 people on Facebook and generated 647 likes, 33 shares and 21 comments for 23 posts shared. Tesco HSC’s Facebook page doubled in terms of overall likes from the previous month! The campaign raised about INR 7000+ in a span of two weeks based on the shares and likes we counted.

That’s not all, this campaign also got HSC additional visibility via other channels – it's Linkedin page reached 1600 more people and the 26 tweets from the Twitter account got re-tweeted 40 times. Here is an example of how HSC’s community efforts were recognised:

• @Retailbarcode message on Twitter- 'great idea! HSC have really changed over the last few years, all for the better, great to see them do this'.
• The power of the collective network and effort worked to make this an effective campaign.
• The company contributed funds raised from this campaign to Karunashraya, a charitable trust for cancer patients based at Bangalore.