BELL CANADA

The game of hockey is filled with rituals and superstitions: lucky shirt, favourite stick, winning breakfast plate, etc. But no superstition matches the popularity and the ubiquity of the playoffs beard. It’s a special one because fans can grow theirs, too. In essence, the playoffs beard ritual triggers a tribal affiliation amongst fans.

As an official sponsor of the Montreal Canadiens and Ottawa Senators, as well as partial owner of the Habs, it made sense for Bell to show support for its teams. Given the participatory nature of hockey and its playoffs beard ritual, seeding it to social media communities made sense.

A Facebook application was created that let fans grow a 14-day beard in just 14 seconds. On the microsite, fans were asked to upload their picture, select a beard from a variety of styles, lengths and colours and then pick their team – Canadiens or Senators. The application quickly gained in popularity through blog feeds, online and traditional PR, and strategic social media seeding. The phenomenon was ignited by 40 key influencers, including artists, journalists, hockey fans and social connectors.

Bell further engaged fans on the application’s Facebook fan page, a hub where they could share their passion (and facial hair) with peers.

Spurred on by Lg2’s community management team, fans were posting daily comments on all things hockey. The interaction went far beyond Bell’s expectations: during Game 7 of the first-round series between Montreal and Washington, the number of comments posted on the Playoffs Beard Facebook page exceeded the number of comments posted on the Montreal Canadiens official website, one of the most visited in the NHL.

In less than 20 days, 152,664 beards were created, and 237,701 fans interacted with the app and fan page, writing thousands of posts daily. The program generated 59% in brand attribution according to a post-playoff survey, a tremendous result given the overly cluttered social media space.