Company: U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC)
Company Description: The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to a prosperous and sustainable future through cost-efficient and energy-saving green buildings.
Nomination Category: Marketing Campaign Awards Categories - Specialty
Nomination Sub Category: Viral Marketing Campaign of the Year

Nomination Title: #get2GB: Greenbuild 2012 Viral Campaign

Tell the story of this nominated marketing campaign for the judges (up to 525 words). Describe the genesis, planning, execution, and results to date of your campaign. If applicable, remember to describe what's unique or innovative about your campaign:

- GENESIS -

Greenbuild International Conference and Expo is the U.S. Green Building Council's (USGBC) annual event, bringing together nearly 30,000 global attendees for three days of green building industry networking, speakers and education. With the 2012 show located in San Francisco, the country's hub for technology & social media, we wanted to create an impressive “viral” campaign in advance of the event. Our objective was to create a social media based campaign to increase Greenbuild brand awareness, build followers and engagement on the new @Greenbuild Twitter handle, and generate pre-show buzz among Greenbuild attendees, fans, and newcomers.

- PLANNING -

While entering the brainstorming and development process, several objectives guided our thinking: create a fun prompt that would make users think about the Greenbuild brand, offer a prize as incentive for participating, easily track the content that users were submitting, and re-purpose and share the content. This thinking guided us to the final #get2GB campaign concept: users entered to win a free conference registration to Greenbuild 2012 ($1,000 value) by tweeting their answer to the prompt: “What will you do @Greenbuild?” using the hashtag #get2GB. We anticipated that the answers would be positive, fun, inspiring, even humorous - and would provide us with plenty of content to work with.

- EXECUTION -

Working with our friends at Modo Design, we created a custom Twitter dashboard to serve as a contest landing page where users could view the official contest rules, compose #get2GB tweets, view other #get2GB tweets and compete to make it on to our “favorites” list. A small ad budget enabled campaign promotion on Twitter among users interested in key topics, like energy and environment. The campaign was cross-promoted on direct mail pieces and fliers, in newsletters, and on the homepage of GreenbuildExpo.org.

- RESULTS -

We saw big engagement and a growing Twitter audience throughout the campaign. The monthly follower growth rate on the @Greenbuild Twitter account increased by 350% over the course of the campaign, growing from 200 new followers per month to more than 900. Nearly 1,700 visitors accessed the contest campaign page via Twitter. 1,300 tweets/contest entries were sent using the #get2GB hashtag.

Almost 100% of the contest tweets contained positive messages about the users' goals or aspirations for Greenbuild, creating pro-Greenbuild brand identification across Twitter. Some examples:

@ColinPFay: @Greenbuild I will become a better engineer and a better person #get2GB

@AndySchonberger: I want to attend @Greenbuild to find a Platinum home plan for my 2 boys to grow up in. #get2GB

@Jess Huddles: Would love to hear #CandyChang and others speak at #Greenbuild 2012 in San Fran. Last year was amazing. #Get2GB

As originally intended, we were able to share this content across our social media and blogging networks, as well as print larger-than-life signs on-site at Greenbuild 2012 featuring users' #get2GB tweets.

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Provide a brief biography of the leader of the team that planned and executed this marketing campaign (up to 125 words):

USGBC's marketing & communications department is a multi-disciplinary team consisting of writers, public relations professionals, designers, project managers, social and digital experts and product marketers. The team is united behind the common goal of spreading USGBC's crucial message of bringing green buildings to every community across the world.