Musical Chairs
- Brand
- Blu Dot
- Year
- 2012
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Retail
- Mechanic
- Music & Rhythm
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- Mono
Objective
Blu Dot wanted to launch its new Hot Mesh outdoor chair to a design-obsessed crowd and grow the brand's presence on Twitter, turning followers into active participants rather than passive viewers. The campaign timed its debut to Design Miami week, giving fans who couldn't attend the fair in person a way to take part from anywhere.
Solution
Players followed a schedule posted on @bludot and showed up for a set start time, logging in with Twitter to take one of ten seats at a virtual table. The screen showed an illustrated circle of Hot Mesh chairs around a live band, Doppio, who killed time between rounds doing yoga, mini-golf, or push-ups until the music kicked in. When the song cut out, a secret phrase popped up, and players had to type it from scratch — no pasting — and fire it off as a tweet before their rivals; typos or delays meant elimination, while the quick were shown seated at the table for the next round. A game ran four rounds over roughly seven to ten minutes, and the last player left standing won an actual Hot Mesh chair.
Results
The site drew 10,697 visits over the ten-day run, 59% of them unique, with an average visit of 4 minutes 32 seconds — about the length of one full game. Across 100 games of ten players each, Blu Dot gave away 100 Hot Mesh chairs to round winners, and the campaign generated an estimated 1,488,960 impressions within Blu Dot's own Twitter network and 3,281,493 total social impressions.
- 1
Players follow @bludot on Twitter to catch match announcements, then visit musicalchairs.bludot.com at the scheduled time to find an illustrated scene of chairs arranged around a trio of musicians, along with the game's rules and the time of the next match.
- 2
Between matches, a looping video plays in the scene showing the musicians killing time with yoga, mini-golf, reading, push-ups, and typing on a typewriter.
- 3
To join, a player logs in with Twitter; that account becomes the player's game piece, with its avatar appearing beside a chair in the circle.
- 4
Each match seats 10 players and runs about 7 to 10 minutes start to finish.
- 5
The trio performs a song via video clip while players simply watch and wait, until the track cuts off abruptly at a random point; each of six songs is split into five such breaks, and every break reveals one of fifty short, tweet-length secret phrases on screen.
- 6
Players must type the phrase from scratch, matching its spelling and punctuation exactly, and post it as a tweet; whoever tweets it correctly and fastest claims an open chair and advances, while the rest are eliminated.
- 7
The song resumes and the play–cut–phrase–race cycle repeats with fewer chairs each time, across four rounds per match.
- 8
The lone survivor of all four rounds wins a real Hot Mesh chair (retail $99), shipped to the winner.
- 9
A player who is eliminated can return for the next scheduled match; over the campaign's run from December 3 to 12, 2012, 100 matches were played and 100 chairs were given away.
