CHE Proximity’s Billion Point Giveaway for Velocity Frequent Flyer (VFF) won a haul of creativity and effectiveness awards. Now CHE Proximity has come up with a new ingenious way to boost the Velocity loyalty program’s success.

Velocity’s marketing challenge was this, “How do we get more people, doing what our Points-obsessed members do?” So Velocity and CHE Proximity tried to imagine how much further these Points-obsessed members would go to earn Points. Would loyalty members would do Velocity’s job and promote the program.

The result is the campaign, #Earnbassadors, which turns the program’s 9 million Velocity members into Velocity promoters. It rewards Frequent Flyer members in Points, for educating other members about the Velocity program. The more creative they get, the more points will be given.

Dean Chadwick, chief marketing officer at Velocity Frequent Flyer, explained, “Our most engaged members will do almost anything to earn our Points. We see them drive out of their way to earn Points at BP, pick up the bill at a restaurant with friends for Points, even fly all the way to New Zealand just to maintain their status and top up their Points balance.

“Moving away from the traditional marketing campaign, we decided to give back to our Points hungry members and feed their Points appetite; giving members the chance to earn more Points by promoting the program.”

The campaign launched today with a 90-second online film, Call to Earns, a call to action to VFF’s 9 million members to come up with interesting ways to promote the loyalty program and earn Points. Members can visit the Velocity website and read the official Code of Earning, which details all the ways in which they can promote VFF. Briefs include educating people that flybuys earns Status Credits, Velocity has more reward seats than any other airline reward program and members can fly to over 600 destinations on Points.

Content created by members on Facebook and Instagram under the #Earnbassador hashtag will be monitored, ranked and scored by VFF using a purpose-built tool called Earnie. Part AI, part human, Earnie, will help validate the creator and make a recommendation on the appropriate amount of Velocity Points which should be awarded. Using IBM Watson, Earnie will allocate Points by analysing three factors – creativity, reach and relevance to the brief. The more creative the content is and the more reach it achieves, the more Points the creator will get. Earnie will then identify in real-time which content to repurpose and put media spend against for members, analysing reach, engagement and sentiment.

Ant White, chief creative officer at CHE Proximity, noted, “Members don’t need a big following to get a big lot of Points. You don’t have to be an influencer to be an Earnbassador. It’s not about the size of the following you have, but how well you promote the program and how creative you are. For example, get yourself on national TV with something that’s on brief, you’ll get lots of Points. If you have lots of followers, but the content isn’t great, no Points for you.

“We’re using the attraction of VFF’s Points, to see what people will do for us, which is really exciting.”

A targeted email, soft-launched the campaign on Friday evening to a selection of VFF’s most loyal members and content has already started to be generated with the hashtag #earnbassador. So far, over 500 pieces of content have been created.

Credits:

Agency: CHE Proximity

Chief Creative Officer: Ant White

Group Creative Directors: Brian Jefferson & Hamish Stewart

Associate Creative Directors: Ashley Wildling & Daniel Davison

Senior Copywriter: Zac Pritchard

Senior Art Director: Nico Smith

Senior Designers: Trent Michael & Vanessa Saporito

Head of Strategic Production: Holly Alexander

Production Assistant: Katena Valestro

Managing Director and Chief Strategic Officer: David Halter

Head of Media: Calvin Cain

Experience Strategists:  Lucy Bowers, Hannah Garcia & Will McClure

Director, Data Science: James Greaney

Account Management: Renee Hyde, Sam McGown, George Robertson & Caitlin Adler

Technical Director Product & Comms: Matthew Rose

Digital Products Director: Anthony Harca

Production Manager: Natalie Hort

Senior Editor: King Yong

Production Company: FINCH

Executive Producer & Founder:  Rob Galluzzo

Executive Producer: Corey Esse

Director: Toby Pike

Producer: Marge McInnes

DOP:  Dan Freene

Editing: Arc

Motion Design Director: Mike Tosetto

Lead Motion Designer: Phil Tibballs

Client: Velocity Frequent Flyer

Chief Marketing Officer: Dean Chadwick

Head of Customer Marketing: Steve Baird

Leader, Customer Growth: Tara Nair-Stuber

Marketing Specialist: Lyndall Gannon

Lead Content & Creative: Gemma Myhill

Performance Marketing Manager: Rino Do

Digital Product Manager – Websites and Content: Belle Landry