Skype Wifi Case Study

drove 400,000 minutes of product usage and exceeded the brand’s goals by 30%. This interactive map showed travelers at whichairports where they could find free Skype WiFi

“Skype Brings You Closer to Home”

Free Skype WiFi Keeps Holiday Travelers Connected with Loved Ones

PROJECT BRIEF

Category Best Use of Digital/Social for a Consumer Technology Campaign

Campaign Kaplow and Skype Bring You Closer to Home

Budget We cannot disclose the budget for this campaign.

Description Kaplow helped busy travelers connect with loved ones during the holiday season by offering free Skype WiFi in 50 U.S.airports, generating warmth for the brand and a change of behavior among consumers.

Key Contact Nora Allen [email protected] 212.221.1713

Consumers think of Skype as a way to make free video calls, but Skype needed to raise awareness and increase usage of Skype WiFi, one of the company’s paid products. Kaplow used the holiday season, when so many people are traveling, to launch a campaign featuring Skype WiFi as a great way for travelers to keep in touch with loved ones. With “Skype Brings You Closer to Home” we positioned the brand as a hero to frustrated travelers who wanted to stay in touch with their families. To get people to try Skype WiFi, Skype offered one free hour of Internet access via third-party wireless hotspots in more than 50 airports across the U.S. from December 21st thru December 27th. In addition, Skype also extended its free WiFi offer to many neighborhoods in Manhattan so that revelers from near and far could ring in the New Year with friends and family who were unable to make it to the Big Apple to celebrate the New Year.

The objectives of this program was to:

• Increase awareness and usage of Skype WiFi, a paid feature.

Situation Analysis:

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Kaplow studied the traffic flow of the busiest airports in the U.S. as part of the selection criteria for the promotion. Since moms are the head of the household and much of the travel during the holidays is family travel, we knew that they would be important to reach with a message about our campaign. As a result, we studied moms’ behavior and learned that they are heavy consumers of social networking and social games. Leveraging this data, we distributed an original video touting Skype WiFi through social games to reach this target audience. We also researched Web sites that had a heavy focus on travel, moms and families to include in our mix for online video distribution online.

Strategy


Implementation

Kaplow and Skype used a combination of traditional media relations (earned), branded digital content (owned) and digital distribution across parenting, family and travel sites (paid) to create awareness and drive usage of Skype WiFi by holiday travelers.

Interactive Skype WiFi Map: To make it easy for consumers to try Skype WiFi, we developed an interactive map that travelers could visit to learn which airports were participating in the promotion. Consumer Media Relations: In addition to pitching tech, travel and consumer media, wConsumer media relations” copy after heading with: In addition to pitching tech, travel and consumer media, we also issue an Audio News Release (ANR) and broadcast on local television news stations letting harried travelers know about the free Skype WiFi offer at their local airports. Branded Video Creation & Distribution: To bring Skype WiFi to life, we shot original content at Westchester County Airport illustrating how travelers could use Skype WiFi. In addition to being shared with broadcast media, this video was also seeded across online media sites and social games through Kaplow’s paid distribution network.

The Skype WiFi how-to video showed travelers how to use Skype WiFi and was viewed over 500,000 times.[ [

Social Media Content: To increase engagement, we drafted multiple blog posts about the free Skype WiFi promotion and also disseminated related content on Twitter using the #freeSkypeWiFi hashtag.

Foursquare Tips Campaign: We left creative localized tips on the main airport check-in venues on Foursquare so travelers could learn about the free WiFi offer when they were in a participating airport.


Localized Foursquare tips helped to spread the word to travelers who checked in a participating airports.[ [

Kaplow helped busy travelers connect with loved ones during the holiday season using free Skype WiFi in airports, generating warmth for the brand and a change of behavior among consumers. The “Skype Brings You Closer to Home” campaign drove nearly 400,000 minutes of usage of the product in the participating airports during the promotional period, exceeding the brand’s goal by 30%. During the campaign, we received over 250 media placements, the vast majority of which were online (more than 200MM earned impressions), while tweets about Skype WiFi increased fourteen-fold. In addition, the company went from zero to 2,000 Foursquare followers and gained over 83,000 new Facebook ‘Likes’ and almost 3,000 new Twitter followers.

Summary Results:


“It drives me crazy when I have time to kill at an airport that doesn’t offer free Wi-Fi. With so many business and leisure travelers toting laptops, it seems this should be a no-brainer.”[ [“The folks at Skype are now doing what they can to help make the long journey before the reunion a little easier for travelers.”[ [

“Travelers stuck at the airport during the holidays will find at least one free gift, courtesy of Skype.[ [“If you pick an iDevice, then it’s the Skype WiFi app you’ll be wanting updated in the lead up to midnight.”[ [