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Vodafone looks to Snapchat to take NZ Music Awards beyond Vector Arena

For the upcoming Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards (scheduled for 19 November), Vodafone is following in the footsteps of the Coachella organisers by enabling those not in attendance to experience the event through Snapchat.

Vodafone hopes that this will get the event to reach thousands of Kiwis beyond the 8,500 capacity of the Vector Arena. 

Earlier this year, the Coachella Music Festival was attended by a few hundred thousand people, but another 40 million around the globe tuned in to watch the action via Snapchat.  

“Young people in New Zealand are no different,” said Vodafone’s consumer director Matt Williams in a release. “They’ve really embraced Snapchat as a way of experiencing an event through the fans who are actually there.”

According to Vodafone’s brand engagement and sponsorship manager Graham Wright, the campaign is already gaining some good momentum.

“We are already reaching hundreds of thousands of people through our integrated engagement campaign, across a variety of new and traditional channels,” Wright said. “We are expecting tens of thousands of kiwis, particularly youth, to actively participate with our Snapchat Vodafone NZ Music Awards channel in the build-up and on the night of the awards.

Over the course of the night, Vodafone Snapchat users will upload ten-second videos featuring—sometimes exclusive—content of the stars performing and strutting their stuff at the event. 

Vodafone will then bring in Mish Guru to string the clips together into a single, continuous narrative of events from the night.

Snapchat has already been downloaded 1.7 million times in New Zealand, so Vodafone won’t have to bring an audience to the channel. Getting people interested in its campaign is, however, a completely different challenge. And to drive early awareness of its Snapchat event, Vodafone is running an advertising campaign across social media, television and its Fantastic Fridays loyalty programme that provides incentives for Snapchat users to join add the vodafonenz handle. 

Thanks to Fantastic Fridays, we’re kicking off the Vodafone NZ Music Awards season with hundreds of prizes to be won. Add us on Snapchat for more!

Posted by Vodafone New Zealand on Monday, 26 October 2015

The biggest prize on offer is the opportunity for two Vodafone customers to become official Snapchatters at the event, including red carpet access and backstage passes (customers are required to submit auditions via Snapchat).

Vodafone will also be looking to link its digital channel with television by arranging to have fan messages sent through Snapchat broadcast during the event on TV3. 

 “We’re offering a truly interactive experience for viewers,” said Williams.

This is not the first time Vodafone has linked television and social media for a campaign. As part of its One Weather sponsorship, Vodafone recently encouraged customers to send in short weather reports, which were then cut into the weather programme’s pre-roll. 

However, this is the first time the telco is using Snapchat as an integral part of its comms strategy. 

“This is the first time we’ve used Snapchat as part of an integrated nationwide campaign, so it’s exciting new ground for us and our customers,” says Wright. “Having launched our campaign on Monday this week, the initial results are really promising. Vodafone has successfully used Snapchat for one-day, one-off promotions in the past during ‘O weeks’ with university students, but this is our first large-scale campaign to digitally engage and reward our customers in a place we know they are playing.”

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