The Social Path

Our coolest Facebook app turns up the heat for McAlister's.

Here at Luckie, we're getting ready to wind down one of our most fun social media promotions to date, so I wanted to invite each of you to check it out before the big finale.

The promotion is The Quest for Tea Town USA, a summer Facebook contest we launched with McAlister's Deli last year and saw great results. This year, we ramped up the promotion in a lot of ways, making it one of the most engaging contests I've seen on Facebook.

Fans seem to agree. We've had more than 150,000 votes in the contest, and the McAlister's fan base has grown by more than 180% in just five weeks. Best of all, the deli chain is seeing great foot traffic being generated by the promotion, and we haven't even reached the exciting conclusion: Free Tea Day on Thursday, July 28.

Here's how the promotion works:

Want some free publicity? And breakfast?

If you'd like to see your business get some exposure in front of a million Facebook users, you might want to check out our Intern Hero promotion with Little Debbie.

Little Debbie is calling on interns across the country to take a picture showing us why they deserve to win a big sampler box of Little Debbie breakfast snacks for their office. Most importantly, the winning photos and businesses will be featured on the Little Debbie Facebook page in front of 1 million fans.

If you need a little inspiration, check out the great entry below from the 2009 interns at Free Association. (You don't have to get that intense with your entry, but feel free to try!) All entries must be received by July 18th; check out InternHero.com for further information on rules and entering and get those interns to work!

 

Kammie Avant is a social media planner for Luckie & Company. You can contact her by e-mail or follow @KammieAvant on Twitter.

This holiday, help Luckie dole out $6,000 to charity.

Just wanted to let you all know about a fun holiday project we've launched here at Luckie & Company. We're letting the masses — including you — vote on how we should divide up our remaining $6,000 in charitable donations.

Just visit Holiday.Luckie.com and vote for your charity case of choice. And please take a moment to share it with your friends, if you'd like.

What's great is that this is only one piece of Luckie's charitable contributions this year. The Luckie family and our Executive Committee deserve a lot of credit for keeping our agency so focused on giving back to our community.

David Griner is a social media strategist for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

 

New work: Tea Town USA Facebook app for McAlister's.

We don't normally plug our client work here on The Social Path (though if you're interested, you can find more of that kind of stuff on Luckie's agency blog, The ReThink Tank). But I wanted you all to get a chance to see our current promotion in real time, since we'll be shutting it down at the end of the month.

Tea Town USA is a Facebook competition among all 236 communities that have a local McAlister's Deli. Each vote for your favorite town is a point, and the town with the most points by the end of July will be crowned Tea Town USA, which comes with $5,000 for new shade trees or park improvements.

The response has been absolutely explosive, with more than 30,000 people casting more than 67,000 votes in the first two weeks. Some communities are really rallying to the cause, as you can see from news coverage in Charlotte, N.C., and Longview, Texas. 

Here's a video update posted today:

Best of all, the McAlister's Deli Tea Freaks Facebook Page has become a bustling hub of activity since the campaign launched, with thousands of fan interactions such as likes, comments and posts.

So if you get a minute to check it out, visit the Tea Town USA Facebook app or TeaTownUSA.com and cast a vote for your favorite McAlister's community. And if you haven't gotten to try McAlister's famous iced tea, you should swing by a location on July 29, Free Tea Day, for a 100% free glass. It's some seriously good stuff.

New work spotlight: InternHero.com

If you've got an intern who's starving for attention — and muffins — then you need to check out Intern Hero, Luckie's newest project for Little Debbie.

The concept is simple: Interns get five free boxes of Little Debbie Muffins just by sending in a photo asking for them. We post the winners' photos daily.

The site just launched last week and has already racked up quite a bit of buzz, not to mention some fantastic photo submissions from interns across the country.

As with all our social media projects, this was a fun group effort involving several departments at Luckie. I specifically want to thank Art Director Miles Wright for the logo design, Design Director David Adams for the site design, social media intern Whitney Sides Mitchell for coordinating the whole giveaway, and the folks at Little Debbie who have been wonderful about handling the logistics of shipping hundreds of boxes fresh from the bakery.