SPC turns to Facebook Live for back-to-school push

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Student Price Card (SPC) is rolling out a new campaign over Facebook Live to reward students just in time for back-to-school season.

This is the third year the student discount card has run its give-away campaign, though this year the brand turning to Facebook and Snapchat. It’s also changed its approach from asking students to submit their “Real Student Problems,” in favour of a chance for a “Payday.”

The campaign has members complete challenges in order to win gift cards to various SPC partner brands. There are daily and hourly challenges, which will change based on pop-culturally relevant happenings, says Kevin Hisko, VP of digital and innovation at SPC. The decision to do more hour-by-hour contests, which might include belting out a hot tune that just dropped or taking a photo next to a brand, is based on the changing consumption habits of the target demo (14- to 24-years-old), he says. This is an evolution from past years where students simply had to tweet to the brand sharing their student woes for a chance to win.

The brand also turned to Facebook for the first time following disappointing engagement rates on Twitter over the past few months. While it will stay on Twitter, Hisko says it struggled to get the brands to be a part of the campaign last year because there was a bit of fatigue on the platform. What’s more, while the challenges this year are more involved than simply sending out a tweet or a meme, the engagement rates have been much higher, based on pilots they did earlier in the year.

Facebook Live also allows the brand to tap into its 135,000-strong following, with the end goal to encourage participants to comment on challenges and possibly share with their own network of friends and family.

The brand has also partnered with BMO to target slightly older consumers (age 18 to 24), with a number of BMO-specific challenges (such as snapping a photo in front of BMO).

The competition, which was managed in house, will be promoted through largely unpaid social and owned channels, as well as in-store signage, though Hisko says there will be some paid media on Facebook. It launched Aug. 15 and will run through until the end of September.