Brand: Bounty // Celebrations
Project: Bountygate
Project: Social Activation
Agency Partner: AMV BBDO
My Role: Client Design & Creative Lead
BOUNTYGATE
Turning two Bountys into a 16-million-person conversation.
OVERVIEW
Activation Overview
When Celebrations fans opened the first door of their 2018 advent calendar and found a Bounty, social media erupted.
So the following Christmas, we gave them something else to complain about.
Two Bountys.
Bountygate deliberately reignited Britain’s love-hate relationship with one of Celebrations’ most divisive chocolates, putting Bounty behind both the first and second doors of the advent calendar.
Then, rather than managing the backlash, we joined it.
Across two days of live social, a dedicated creative and community team turned people’s complaints into bespoke illustrated responses, giving Bounty a personality of its own and transforming consumer outrage into entertainment.
The result: 16M+ earned reach, widespread national media coverage and 32% follower growth.
The Challenge
How do you make an advent calendar become part of the Christmas conversation?
The opportunity came from something we hadn’t planned.
In 2018, people opened the first door of the Celebrations advent calendar to discover a Bounty.
They weren’t happy.
The reaction spilled onto social media, with consumers publicly sharing their disappointment at receiving one of Celebrations’ most divisive chocolates on December 1st.
Rather than seeing the negativity as something to avoid, we saw a behaviour worth building on.
People didn’t just have preferences within Celebrations. They had strong opinions about them.
And Bounty gave us the perfect antagonist.
What if, instead of fixing the problem, we deliberately made it worse?
Creative Summary
They hated one. So we gave them two.
The following Christmas, Bounty returned behind door number one.
But this time there was another waiting behind door number two.
The product itself became the provocation.
As people discovered what we’d done and began complaining online, Celebrations responded in real time with bespoke illustrations that gave Bounty a mischievous personality of its own.
Instead of trying to shut down negative sentiment, we amplified it.
They trolled Bounty.
Bounty trolled back.
The Concept
YOU HATED ONE BOUNTY.
SO WE GAVE YOU TWO.
Bountygate was built around a simple reversal of traditional community management.
Brands are normally expected to resolve consumer complaints.
We created one.
By deliberately repeating the thing people had complained about the previous Christmas, we gave consumers a reason to restart a conversation they already cared about.
Then we made their reactions part of the creative.
Every complaint, joke and angry tweet became potential material for Bounty to respond to, turning the audience from passive recipients into participants in the campaign.
The negativity wasn’t something we needed to overcome.
It was the idea.
The Execution
2 BOUNTYS.
2 DAYS.
ONE VERY LIVE CAMPAIGN.
The advent calendar started the conversation. From there, the campaign was designed to react.
For two days, a small dedicated team worked in real time:
2
Bountys
2
Days of live tweeting
2
Community managers
1
Creative team
1
Illustrator
As consumer reactions came in, the team identified opportunities and turned them into bespoke illustrated responses.
This wasn’t a bank of pre-produced social assets waiting to be posted. The work was shaped by what people were actually saying.
Bounty became a character within the conversation: provocative, self-aware and happy to antagonise the people who wanted it gone.
Community management and creative effectively became the same thing.
And the more people complained, the more material the campaign had to work with.
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Impact
2 BOUNTYS.
2 DAYS.
16M+ EARNED REACH.
A tiny product intervention became a much bigger cultural conversation.
The campaign generated:
16M+
EARNED REACH
28
ONLINE PRESS FEATURES
2
RADIO FEATURES
1
TV FEATURE
+32%
FOLLOWER GROWTH
Bountygate moved beyond Celebrations’ own channels into national, regional and digital media.
Coverage included The Independent, Daily Mirror, Daily Express, The Sun, Metro, HuffPost, Yahoo!, LADbible, Daily Star, Liverpool Echo, Manchester Evening News, Birmingham Mail, Hull Daily Mail, Bristol Post, Devon Live, Gloucestershire Live and The Poke.
As well as coverage from LADbible, HuffPost, The Independent, Metro and The Sun, with the campaign reaching television through ITV’s This Morning.
32% Increase in Celebrations audience share.
Rather than spending our way into the Christmas conversation, we gave people something worth arguing about.
Recognition / Earned Attention
BOUNTYGATE BECAME THE STORY.
The campaign moved from social outrage into mainstream conversation, earning attention across online press, radio and television.
The breadth of coverage was part of the idea’s effectiveness: what began with people complaining about the contents of an advent calendar became a story that publications around the country wanted to participate in.
It demonstrated the value of treating social conversation not simply as a distribution channel, but as a creative medium in its own right.
