One of my first assignments at my new gig was to develop a social media plan to support activations at SXSW. My challenge was that I didn’t want to send a bunch of SXSW Tweets to an entire audience, when maybe 1% of the total followers would be attending. Plus, I wanted to reach people who were potential followers at SXSW. So in addition to some paid Twitter campaigns, I put together the concept for a “surprise and delight” campaign on Twitter.

This would allow us to get our brand in front of people in an authentic way that was relevant to the event they were attending. Here’s the campaign, how we did it, and the results it generated.

If you’ve run a surprise and delight campaign, I’d love to hear from you on your learnings!

PS: These are my personal reflections on a campaign run for my employer, meant to help others in the social space. No confidential information is shared, and the views are my own.