Case Study
Developing BlaBlaCar's global social media content strategy
BlaBlaCar is the leading carpooling service in Europe, now boasting 70M members. I joined BlaBlaCar in 2014 during its startup era, to be a part of the 4-person launch team to open the UK market.
In 2016 I moved into the central Brand & Design team as Global Brand Content Manager. My first mission: address BlaBlaCar's brand consistency across its 22 markets. My second mission: develop BlaBlaCar’s social media storytelling.
This case study will focus on my work as Global Brand Content Manager. Let's take a look.
Brand Consistency
Global synergy across 22 markets
BlaBlaCar was growing at an exponential rate: new markets, new teams, many social media accounts, many content requests. This was putting a strain on the design team to not only keep up with demand, but to keep an eye on how the brand was being used across BlaBlaCar's 22 markets.
I joined the team to address these two challenges.
Understanding The Topic at Hand
To begin the task of addressing global brand consistency, I conducted 1:1 interviews and a SWOT review to better understand the blockers and potentials for success.
The following slides walk you through my process and demonstrate how I came to a final solution.
Next Steps
I now had a new process in place to proactively deliver social media content to marketing teams on a monthly basis, to ease demand on the design team and allow the time to be brand guardians.
Now I was ready for my next task: take BlaBlaCar's social media content to the next level.
Telling Stories
Bringing the audience into the car
BlaBlaCar is all about stories. Human connections are made every time you share a ride.
This is an element I wanted to tap into further with BlaBlaCar's social media communications, to help audiences identify more with the content they were seeing online.
Let's see how I did that.
The Rise of the Selfie
In 2015 the selfie format was moving more and more into mainstream media. It was no longer a niche seen predominantly on Snapchat, but was an area Instagram was also expanding with the launch of their Stories feature.
What did this mean for brands? That the perfect gram was no longer the exclusive way of talking to your audience. This imperfect, in-real-time format allowed for companies to play with different styles of content, where perfection was not expected.
We were moving away from mostly 3rd person narrative, to 1st person narrative. We were moving away from square-only, to landscape and vertical.
This movement was what I wanted to tap into with BlaBlaCar's social media content. So I took an iPhone to our photoshoots and started playing.
Complimenting The Clean Shots
Here are some examples of the main assets used by BlaBlaCar. They are what I'd describe in this context as the perfect gram, the images I wanted to compliment with a 1st person layer.
The following photography was captured by Amy Marie Philips.
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Human Connections
Taken with a smartphone
My goal was to show carpooling from the point of view of a carpooler. During a carpool you laugh, you sing-a-long to music, you read, you admire the view. These are the moments I wanted to highlight by using the tool we always use to capture them: a smartphone.
I gave the models directions, the smartphone, and let them play to get shots as you can see below. This is a process I began to do on all of BlaBlaCar's photoshoots, to keep nourishing the image bank with this style of content.
The following images, videos and boomerangs were used for paid and organic social media and were a part of my monthly content packages for central and local teams. They were also used for the website, blog posts and CRM.
Best-Performing 2.0
My next task: take BlaBlaCar's best-performing static assets to a new creative level. I tested new formats such as video, carousel and vertical, whilst nourishing these assets with my smartphone capture.
I worked with in-house designers to produce these assets, which were then used by local Marketing Managers for paid Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Instagram Stories and GDN.
I also worked closely with Regional Marketing Managers to decide upon content A/B testing, with the goal to best communicate BlaBlaCar's USPs while maintaining high-performing CAC and CTR.
Savings
The two best-performers
Two static educational asset-types were out-performing: maps and cost-splitting.
Maps are symbolic and strongly relate to road travel, which makes it highly contextual for drivers.
Cost-splitting educates drivers on how sharing their ride can cover their petrol costs.
You can find content examples below designed by Mathieu Micheneau.
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Savings 2.0
Merging the two best-performers
I wanted to merge the visual impact of the map, while adding the educational message of cost-splitting. By using the split-screen concept in a video format, I was able to bring these messages together in a dynamic way.
The following examples are templates I produced with internal designer Ilya Kozhukhov, which were sent to marketing teams for them to edit to their needs, from city destinations to cost examples. Easy to adapt, easy to A/B test, easy for audiences to understand.
This content was pushed on paid Facebook and Twitter, with successful CAC and CTR results.
Campaign Support
Having seen success with my social media work so far, I joined the team working on a new brand campaign to develop a social media content strategy.
I performed two tasks for this campaign: captured smartphone content during the shoots to expand the characters' stories and adapted the Hero assets to different social media formats to push the campaign messages further.
Hero Assets
This campaign had two messages for our driver and passenger audiences.
Drivers, treat yourself by spending your BlaBlaCar savings on what you really love.
Passengers, you sometimes need a ride to get to where you need to be.
You can find the Hero assets below.
Director: James Bedford
Creatives: Stephen Michetti & Lisanne Creutzburg
Art Direction: Tara Cauchi, Lisanne Creutzburg & Monika Holod
Social Media: Laura Cordrey
Project Management: Maya Gallego Spiers & Gabriel Virata
Post Production: Stephen Michetti & Pascual Diaz
Smartphone Assets
Expanding the character narrative
With this campaign having such strong characters, I wanted to play further with their stories with fun smartphone capture. As with previous shoots, I directed the actors to capture themselves in a selfie format, or captured content myself to develop their unique personalities even further.
These images, video and boomerangs nourished the global image bank and were used in the monthly paid marketing content packages I delivered to marketing teams.
Instagram Stories
Testing a new format
I produced the following assets with internal videographer Pascual Diaz, which were the first Instagram Stories test for BlaBlaCar. Able to play with the format and campaign stories, these assets saw great results.
Additional Formats
Providing more content to marketing teams
To be able to test the campaign messages further, I adapted the Hero content to highlight key axis for BlaBlaCar travel, also using the smartphone assets I captured on the shoots.
Here you can find examples of paid Facebook, Instagram and GDN that were delivered to marketing teams. They were fully adaptable for each respective market.
Following in the same theme, I also used the smartphone content I captured to produce paid Facebook carousels. These carousels were fully adaptable for marketing teams to efficiently target their markets.
Community Content
As well as supporting marketing teams with paid content, I also produced organic assets for community teams with internal designers Lisanne Creutzburg & Natalia Kalaska and videographer Gabriel Virata.
Here you can find examples of organic Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, with the objective to help community teams engage their audiences with seasonal and carpooling messages.
All of these examples were fully adaptable for each market.
Conclusion
What was achieved
Objective
A reminder
I joined BlaBlaCar's central Brand & Design team with the following objectives:
Address and improve global brand consistency
Develop a social media storytelling strategy
Produce best-in-class marketing content for 22 markets
Key Achievements
Improved Team Efficiency
The new process I introduced to pro-actively deliver social media content to central and local teams, reduced JIRA requests for such assets by 90%. It allowed the design team to focus more on creative development, and improved brand-consistency across the globe.
Smartphone Storytelling
For the first time, BlaBlaCar was visually communicating in 1st person narrative. By attending shoots to capture content with a smartphone, I was able to bring a human element to what is a human experience, every time you share a ride.
Successful KPIs
I was able to bring a new creative direction to BlaBlaCar's social media content while maintaining high-performance KPIs. With more A/B testing done than ever before, key learnings and insights were gained for central teams.