If merchants integrate Braintree’s code once, they'll be able to accept almost any form of payment on the planet. If new ones come out in the future, they'll be able to accept that as well.
This can make a developer’s life much easier. However, they are a tough group to reach – and convince – through advertising. We aimed to win their hearts through their stomachs.
Audience
The primary audience for this project was made up of developers, entrepreneurs, and business decision makers. A subset was company founders.
Approach
Braintree hosted a mobile event called the #AcceptAnything Food Truck. We rolled into London, Sydney, and San Francisco for a few days to a week, depending on the activation. We parked near specific offices, offering free food to those offices’ employees.
The catch is that customers could pay with "anything," reflecting Braintree's support for a variety of currencies: a light saber battle, fist pump, and much more. People were having so much fun that they came up with others ways to pay and, of course, we accepted them all.
In each city, we partnered with local startup workspaces (e.g., Google Campus, WeWork, Huckletree, Central Working), and conducted organic and paid social media outreach.
Marketing Challenge
The first city iterations generated many positive responses on social media. We leveraged existing assets and created new ones to provoke an even larger response from existing and targeted social audiences. There was an opportunity to engage people who were not aware of Braintree, leading them to learn more about our full range of products and services.
Behavioral Challenge
Our communications for each activation were intended to help developers, entrepreneurs, and business decision makers understand Braintree’s innovative approach – provoking them to visit our website and learn more. Social content should make a connection between accepting "anything" at the event, and our range of flexible solutions. Content should also include a compelling call to action.
OrganicSocial Media
Social media content was published across platforms before, during, and after each activation
The #AcceptAnything hashtag helped tie all organic and paid content together
Each local activation had a relatively low paid media budget: typically less than $5K, so it had to be efficient and effective
Social media content tagged the activation locations and relevant handles (e.g., partners for that activation)
Facebook Events drove some additional reach, but due to the real-time nature of these activations and our own optimizations, the majority of buzz occurred on Twitter and Instagram
Paid Social Media
Paid media was tested on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn
Targeted developers, founders, similar roles, and those who worked at relevant workspaces near our activations (primarily a combination of geotargeting, company name, company size, job title, and job function)
We also tested social promotions that directed users to a Facebook Event listing, and used zip code targeting as well, but found that Twitter and Instagram were better suited to this creative concept
Results
8K+ views of local activation video recaps
Each local activation successfully achieved awareness (reach, impressions) and engagement (event attendance, website traffic, sandbox sign-ups) objectives
London example
900 visitors over 3 days
103 social media mentions by 72 unique users, potentially reaching over 110K social media users
75 tweets and 27 Instagram mentions
Lessons
In each city, there was much exploration around the placement of our food trucks. We researched pedestrian traffic and other factors but ultimately found a balance of proximity to relevant businesses (especially tech hubs).
From start to finish, we thought about how our limited paid media budget could scale. If we applied more budget, would more people come to a local activation? Would repeated media exposures convince them? We learned that anecdotally, both were true. However, we ultimately did not align on a complete measurement model to connect online activity to offline attendance. The activations were a great example of balancing art and science in marketing, to try new things see what resonates.
For future activations, we realized there could be an opportunity to place the #AcceptAnything truck at events where many food trucks gather. For example, there are sometimes events solely for food trucks. Other examples would be music and arts festivals.
As with other campaigns, there would always be an opportunity to improve creative elements (e.g., ad formats like Lead, Carousel, and Canvas) and paid social targeting.
Both onsite and digital coordination were crucial. As with other local events, some attendees were confused about the purpose of our presence, or received the wrong information from event staff. We replied online or in-person when appropriate, but in certain cases had to address criticisms more delicately. For example, some people missed the events but were really interested in what we were trying to convey: we shared Braintree swag and invited them to check out our office or next event.
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