World Zombie Day London used Snapchat to amplify its message and increase charity donations. This case study looks at how the zombie walk made smart use of geo-filters at key locations in the city to boost donations to homeless charity St Mungo’s.
Case study summary
• Charity event turns to Snapchat to amplify message
• Geo-filters made available at key rest stops on zombie walk route
• Content incorporated sponsor logos and charity message
• Snapchat snaps attracted 15,700 views with 155 users, helping raise over £2,500 for homeless charity
The challenge
World Zombie Day started a decade ago in the US, letting horror fans join together and raise money for charities that work to relieve hunger and homelessness. Since then, zombie walks have spread across 50 cities across the world, including New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo.
In London, the free event takes place to help raise money for the Homeless Charity St. Mungo’s Broadway.
This year, the event organisers wanted to find a new way to raise exposure for the charity, and turned to Snapchat and its popular geo-filters, which add an augmented reality twist to people’s photos.
The solution
Working with key sponsors, including alcoholic drinks brand Jegermister, the event organisers created a branded Snapchat geo-filter.
On 8th October, as the undead horde shuffled around a pre-arranged route, they stopped at set points, which is where the Snapchat filters were made available.
The Snapchat geo-filter included the sponsor’s logos, alongside text promoting the charity.
However, phone numbers, text codes and hashtags are currently not allowed to appear on the filter.
To further amplify reach on the day, and to make most use out of the user generated content after the event, social images were hosted on the World Zombie Day website.
The website ran a gallery that dynamically displayed all Instagram and Twitter images tagged with #WZD2016 as well as images from the Facebook page.
The results
The geo-filters proved to be a huge success, attracting 15,700 views with 155 World Zombie Day participants taking a snap using the filter.
The after party had the geo-filter for the longest, running for 6 hours.
With over 1000 participants registered for the event, around £2500 was raised for the charity on the day. The event is still accepting donations, which can be made via this page www.justgiving.com/teams/WZD2016 or text BRNZ81 £3 to 70070.
Web: www.worldzombieday.co.uk
Twitter: @WZDlondon
Snapchat: WZDlondon
Hashtag: #WZD2016
