To excite and create urgency for those who had not attended FCD just yet, we eventized every element of the day in real-time, to generate FOMO (fear of missing out) on the entire process… even the long queues.

Our socially led, real-time digital & OOH Free Cone Day experience was broadcast to 100,000s of nearby ice cream lovers before they chose to attend.

To create this social experience, we partnered with Australia’s biggest digital youth publisher, Pedestrian.TV. Three of their most popular hosts broadcast to Facebook for one hour, from FCD queues across the country.

Beta technologies including Facebook-live accelerator, and a (market first) live-stream of the experience to DOOH within universities helped us motivate 100,000s of consumers to attend the day and avoid missing out on the fun.

To bring the whole experience to those not at FCD yet, we formed a three-way partnership.

1. Content: Partnering with three of Pedestrian.TV’s most hilarious hosts at the 3 biggest B&J stores in Australia. Their role was to entertain the crowd, showing off the fun of FCD.

2. Contextual Amplification: In a market first, we overtook university screens positioned in bars, libraries and cafeterias with our live stream, driving FOMO in groups of friends.

3. Social Amplification: Facebook Live Accelerator, a beta product, allowed us to broadcast to over 600k ice cream lovers in the area within 60min. It rapidly reached those in the area regularly checking Facebook. So, basically every single young person.

On an idle Tuesday afternoon in April, our live broadcast sparked a whole new way of seeing Free Cone Day.

We were unmissable and completely irresistible.

Despite a major store closing in Melbourne in 2017, we broke the Australian record for the most cones given out on FCD, at a whopping 106,580 scoops (compared to 103,000 scoops in 2016).

We smashed our live broadcast projection by more than 50%, reaching 600,000 consumers via our live post alone.

We successfully ignited the FOMO feeling among more ice cream lovers than we could have imagined, which was confirmed when our Ben & Jerry’s Live Streams trended on Facebook. Thousands of people were mentioning and talking about the day online.

The original Ben & Jerry once said, “If it’s not fun, why do it?”

We think they’d be proud.