Bully Boy Distillers recently used location and social media to its advantage on a mobile campaign that encouraged users to learn more about the brand by unlocking clues around Boston for a chance at finding an invitation to an event.

The campaign ran from April to June and included mobile-enabled collateral at Boston bars and restaurants that users could interact with as part of a brand-building campaign. Bully Bully Boy worked with Hill Holliday on this initiative.

?Our strategy was to build awareness of Bully Boy by encouraging people to interact with the campaign elements in innovative and non-traditional ways to unlock a unique reward ? access to the speakeasy anniversary party,? said Craig Johnson, creative director at Hill Holliday, Boston.

?This was a great way for people to have some fun with the brand, for Bully Boy to increase its social footprint and do something a little different creatively with a limited production budget,? he said.

Hill Holliday is a full-service agency with clients such as Bank of America, Dunkin' Donuts and Liberty Mutual.

Digital speak
For the Bully Boy campaign, Hill Holliday posted clues on Twitter about the upcoming Bully Boy event and which bars they could visit to unlock content. Pinterest, Flickr and YouTube were also used in the campaign.

The company then enabled 5,000 coasters, 520 stickers and 416 stickers in 19 restaurants and bars with mobile bar codes that users with Bully Boy drinks could scan. Additionally, larger QR codes were placed on Bully Boy characters around the restaurants and bars.

When users scanned the mobile bar codes, they could view the details of the event via Facebook and Twitter to access a password via the campaign?s microsite ? http://www.spkez.co/.

Additionally, users could watch a video on the mobile site.

Consumers who accessed the party invite via Facebook, for instance, could listen to an audio clip that revealed the password for the party.

Here's a closer look at the content that users unlocked

Mocial marketing
Social media and mobile go hand-in-hand with each other with consumers accessing their social sites consistently while on the go.

In the Bully Boy example, the company was able to use an incentive ? a party invite ? that was unlocked by using both channels.

Not only are consumers more willing to interact with a marketing campaign when there is a reward, the Bully Boy campaign was set up in a way that lead consumers to interact with both channels and played off of the history behind the event.

?In the Prohibition era, speakeasy invitees were told a secret password, called a special phone number, or had underground connections to a speakeasy proprietor,? Mr. Johnson said.

?With our twenty-first century approach, consumers used the mobile experience by either scanning QR code or following clues from Twitter, Pinterest, Flickr, and YouTube to register through Facebook and get their password,? he said.
 
?This was a great way for people to have some fun with the brand, for Bully Boy to increase its social footprint, and do something a little different creatively with a limited production budget.?

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York