Humanitarian

USAA
"#HonorTheFallen,"
Merkle (Local)

The USAA had an objective, to stand out from the crowd on a busy holiday and raise brand awareness with both active military members and veterans while also generating brand goodwill on a day that perfectly aligned with the brand mission and identity. Their strategy was to harness the relevancy, immediacy of the Twitter platform to promote brand messaging, up engagement and generate advocacy surrounding USAA’s “Honor The Fallen” initiative. They didn’t have to create the conversation, they could join it. Utilizing Twitter’s new keyword targeting within the timeline proved extremely successful for the USAA because they were able to align with the conversation that was already happening around Memorial Day. They were able to find and participate in emotionally engaging conversations about the holiday that complemented brand objectives using keyword targeting based on what people were already saying such as “#memorialday” or “Memorial Day”. They knew that @USAA members would be talking about Memorial Day, so they used promoted Tweets to join existing conversations and drive real-time engagement. Interest and keyword targeting helped them to connect our emotional #HonorTheFallen messages with the audience most likely being receptive. With over 60% of USAA engagement occurring on mobile devices, the #HonorTheFallen campaign topped all engagement metrics @USAA had seen from previous Twitter activity. Promoted Tweets with rich media and keyword targeting performed 57 times better than the brand’s previous promoted tweet engagement rate average. The USAA also experienced over 2,500 retweets in 24 hours of campaign launch. Twitter Ads also proved significantly more cost effective than other online advertising. Their simple Fallen Soldier Flag image proved to be extremely powerful because the image spoke volumes to followers. The simple call to retweet the image with the hashtag #HonorTheFallen created an opportunity for people to publicly support fallen soldiers. Even @WhiteHouse joined the conversation using the USAA’s #HonorTheFallen hashtag.