Township Rijssen-Holten

Youth activation with guerilla and social marketing

BBTY

This was the mystery that Rijssen-Holten was gripped by for two weeks

Reaching adolescent residents poses a considerable challenge for any municipality. It was time to act… But how? The municipality of Rijssen-Holten created a mysterious guerrilla campaign, combined with a strong social media strategy to ensure the viral effect. The results: 700% more responses than intended, and over 30% of the local adolescents are now involved in thinking about the municipality’s future.

Services

Awards

Dutch Interactive Awards - Category: Activation 2020
European Content Awards - Charity Content Campaign of the Year 2020
European Content Awards - Social Media Content Campaign of the Year 2020
Dutch Search Awards - Best locale campagne 2020
2019 Galjaard Award
Nominated for the 2019 Grand Prix Content Awards 2019

The mayor’s wish

Adolescents’ insight into ways to retain them in the future.

In his New Year’s speech, mayor Arco Hofland expressed a desire to be in contact with adolescent residents of this municipality more. He has observed a decline in the number of adolescents who settle back in the municipality after completing their degree. Why is this group of people avoiding Rijssen-Holten, and how can the municipality fight this trend? As they saw it, their primary task was to create a larger reach amongst the young target audience and get their input on the future of the municipality. Our job was to help them with the online side of things.

Chalk graffiti, Guerrilla & Social campaigns

#BBTY | Bring Back The Youth.

Youth marketing is its own thing entirely. It is important to engage with them and be innovative. To trigger the target audience, mysterious chalk graffiti bearing the hashtag #BBTY showed up all over town. This hashtag enables scores of young people to find the social media channels of the corresponding account. The number of followers rose by the day, and the photos posted by the account got many likes. The mysterious character of the campaign caught on, and questions started pouring in: ‘What is #BBTY?’, ‘Who is behind the mysterious #BBTY?’, and ‘when will the mystery be unravelled?’

When influencers like the police and Farmer Jan (known from his appearance on TV show ‘Expeditie Robinson’) got involved and both local and national media caught wind of what was going on, the amount of attention being generated grew to unparalleled heights. After two weeks, the mystery was finally revealed; the mayor was announced to be the face (literally) of the campaign. The hashtag #BBTY stands for ‘Bring Back The Youth’. The municipality wants to keep its adolescent population and is calling on them, through this campaign, to participate in thinking about the future of the municipality. They can collaborate and make their voices heard via the online surveys that were posted on all online channels after the #BBTY mystery was unravelled.

Results

700% of the target, and still counting.

The results are astounding. After two weeks, the intended target has been passed many times over, by 700%. A third of all adolescent residents in the municipality of Rijssen-Holten has provided their input on the future of their municipality, and over 3,500 surveys have been completed up until now. The reach achieved by the campaign is so wide and representative that it has enabled the municipality to get started with the insights of the adolescents right away. A number of fun initiatives have already been scheduled for 2020 as a result of the #BBTY campaign, and the social media channels that were nurtured for this campaign will continue to play a large part in these initiatives. These excellent results have led to a very satisfied client and a continued partnership.

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#1-3 Digital agency '21 '22 '23