Local & Influencer Marketing Campaign Case Study: Orbus

The Goal

This hyper-local campaign turned attitudes and got Queenstown on the bus.

With just two months from awarding the tender for a new $2 bus service to rubber on the road, the challenge was to shift mindsets from ‘drive everywhere’ to #betterbybus. Scope Media and our client Otago Regional Council, in partnership with QLDC and NZTA, tightly targeted the 20,000 Queenstown residents through a fully integrated PR and marketing campaign: if locals got on board the visitors would follow.

Though a small community, Queenstown is active on social. A social media influencer as brand ambassador, LOLworthy videos on pain points of driving, and face-to-face engagement, resulted in a doubling of passenger trips in the first month.

Scope Communications managed the full delivery of the campaign – including community engagement, press releases, media relations, advertising creative, digital marketing, social media management and stakeholder relations.

Drive brand awareness and engagement for ORC over a two-month period:

Aim: Positive coverage in traditional news media: 1 x TV, 5 x print, 10 x online

Actual: 1 x RNZ (Live on Morning Report and package for Checkpoint), 2x TV (supply footage to Newshub and TVNZ), 1x online TV news (South Today), 10 x print, 30 x online.

Positive online traditional media sentiment: 64.10%, Neutral: 17.95%, Negative: 17.95%.

Positive social media sentiment: 78.68%, Neutral: 15.44%, Negative: 5.88%

Drive organic social media reach over a two-month period:

Aim: 100,000 impressions, 2000 engagements, 1000 Facebook Likes
Actual: 373,560 impressions, 4576 engagements, 338 clicks and 1476 likes (from 0 as at October 16). Of this number, 1151 likes were organic, 336 were paid.

Scope Media was a finalist in the Best Integrated Campaign category in the 2018 PREScom Awards for this campaign.