Eliud Kipchoge brought Kenya and the world together focused on one thing and he did not disappoint as he ran an average of 17 seconds for every 100m metre 422 times. Already a Kenyan sensation and revered by many for his discipline, Eliud lived up to the promise and made a world record by finishing the Ineos 2019 challenge in 1:59:40. In a run to this Safaricom temporarily changed the M-PESA in support of Kenya’s finest Marathoner.
This has turned out to be a genius marketing strategy as the hashtag #Eliud159 with M-PESA logo emoji had more than 11 billion impressions on Twitter, becoming the first-ever Kenyan brand to achieve this milestone. The most Influential Twitter accounts and brands in creating the impressions were Eliud Kipchoge, Safaricom Plc, Manchester City, BBC Sport, Rio Ferdinand, IAAF and many others. In particular, #Eliud159 topped the Worldwide Trends List for about 5hrs straight garnering moe than 11 Billion impressions as at the end of Saturday, 12th October when the Ineo 159 Challenge was held in Vienna Austria. These were generated from about 200,000 tweets.
This was elevated by Safaricom’s thoughtful free YouTube bundle offer for its customers to watch #NoHumanIsLimited inspiration take on one of the world’s biggest sporting challenge in decades. It turns out that Safaricom customers are more than customers and they took the offer in their numbers as over 3m of them redeemed their free YouTube bundle which was accessed through *159# USSD. David Scott, the author of the book The New Rules for Marketing and PR, coined the term Fanocracy as an organization that puts the needs and wishes of its customer ahead of every other priority and essentially turning them into fans and that is exactly what Safaricom did.
On devices – 57% accessed the free Youtube offer iOS, 70% android and 88% via desktop & laptop. This adds to over 100% since some people use multiple devices. Safaricom’s thoughtful idea spread more joy and inspiration to the world at large and shattered the internet records.
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