2010 – Bulmers Pear and Pizza Hut Delivery

Social media is playing an ever more important role in the make-up of any Irish brand, a fact now officially acknowledged by the Irish advertising industry. This year, for the first time ever, two social media campaigns have won prestigious awards; Pizza Hut Delivery and Bulmers Pear, both created by ICAN.

Pizza Hut Delivery was the first Irish social media campaign ever to win a Shark at this year’s Kinsale Shark Awards. Their Facebook page ‘Get a free pizza for every goal scored against France’, created by ICAN, won a silver in the new category ‘Digital Fresh Thinking’ for ‘Conversation Generation’. The page got 18,000 fans within 3 weeks and saw over 2000 pizzas given away, generating a lot of buzz online. It got mentions on Today FM, RTE Six One News, The Irish Times, The Irish Independent, and abroad was reported by the BBC, Le Figaro, The Guardian and The Washington Post to name drop but a few. It even provoked French Pizza Hut into creating a revenge campaign, as they gave away free pizzas for every goal scored by France. View the campaign here.

Claiming another first for social media, the Bulmers Pear Facebook campaign was awarded a bronze bell at ICAD, also created by ICAN. To promote sampling nights, this page used the ‘Events’ application, a first ever for an Irish alcohol brand, and created the ‘Pearapist’,  the first interactive video invite created specifically for an Irish alcohol brand. To keep fans engaged, ICAN created applications and competitions such as ‘Pearify your Face’, an application where thousands of fans uploaded their faces into pears. ‘Pear Factor’ was a talent competition where fans could upload and vote for poems, videos or photos. View the campaign here.

With the excellent brand awareness created by the viral nature of these cost-effective campaigns, it’s clear that social media is no longer just an extra consideration for Irish brands, but should be an integral part of any marketing strategy. And ICAN is leading the way.