Last week we executed an excellent example of a promotion through Facebook that didn’t ask for a huge budget to be effective. The promotion, developed for Taste of Amsterdam, ran for little more than a week exclusively on Facebook and aimed to generate awareness for Taste of Amsterdam, a multi-day exclusive openair food-event in Amsterdam. The whole idea was centered around playful participation aimed at people’s natural curiosity and willing to share, a few very cool prices thanks to participation of Philips, Gassan Diamonds and others, and enthusiastic active participation of the organization itself. The latter being, imo, the most important factor why this promotion was such a success. Often we find ‘advertisers’ executing their campaigns and then sit back to wait for the results. Although this was the way of yesterday’s marketing – could you do anything else? – but it sure isn’t what is required on the social web. Staff from both Taste of Amsterdam and Seqwood were active contributors to the contest promotion and maintained a high presence on the network replying to all questions and comments swiftly.

Each day within the campaign a set of photos was published through Taste of Amsterdam’s Facebook fanpage and a special action site challenging participants to be the first to recognize the exact location where the photo was taken. Each day a new winner with a price was announced. All leading to the grand prize; an exclusive shiny diamond from Amsterdam’s most famous Diamond House Gassan Diamonds. As an extra the campaign was supported by a few movies portraying the winners often with a spontaneous and hilarious twitch presented by our team’s talented presenter Laura Tabrizi. You’ll find the video’s here.

Already within a few days the campaign, supported by a small low-cost Facebook ad campaign, generated millions of pageviews and quadrupled membership of the Taste of Amsterdam fanpage. The campaign targeted only Facebook members in the central Amsterdam area being Taste of Amsterdam primary audience.

I think this friendly promotion is an excellent example of being successful without the sometimes ridiculous investments similar promotions seem to ask for, such as Samsung’s YouTube 3D and the Kaiak scented banner promotions I talked about here and elsewhere. But most of all the campaign was a success because it did just what is was designed for; generate exposure, participation and increase awareness and active contribution to the fanpage and sponsors.

With all modesty a textbook example of how to campaign within the new context of the social web.