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Qantas Frequent Flyer members can now earn points on most Optus personal and small to medium business services. A campaign incorporating flying Optus animals promotes the new partnership delivering Optus Rewards.

Facebook Game

The Optus Elephant Air Race game allows competitors to name and customise their own flying elephant. Once competitors have chosen patterns and particular birds to carry limbs of the elephant (or selected ‘randomise’ to automatically design their elephant), they are prompted to invite friends to participate and grant the app access to post updates to their Facebook wall.

A total of 10 races occur from midday to 10:00pm each day for the duration of the competition (4 – 13 October 2011). Notices of each race commencing are posted to competitors’ Facebook walls.

Competitors are invited to promote their elephant through Facebook and Twitter, requesting votes for their elephants. Tweets are automatically given the hashtag #optusairrace. A balloon floating just beyond the competitors elephant totes a sign ‘Invite a Friend’.

Racing

Once the race is open, competitors can improve the speed of their elephant by entering code words attained through Facebook, Twitter, Hot Hits and Nova Drive Radio programs. Votes for elephants by Facebook friends also increase air speeds for the elephants. Already discussion on the Optus page regarding sharing code words and requesting reciprocal votes is being self-regulated by the community, with some members insisting code words shared on radio shouldn’t be posted in comments on the page.

Confusion

Considering competitors entered and decorated their elephant before the races opened, initial confusion arose around what happened next, which were addressed by Facebook moderators. Interaction with the game, including votes by friends, is only open during races (from midday to 10:00pm daily) requiring competitors and voters to be available and willing to visit the page during races.

Check in chucked out

Whilst check-ins at Optus stores were initially incentivised with extra points in the competition, this approach was abandoned as it was perceived to be unfair to competitors who weren’t able to get to an Optus store.

Prizes

Prizes for daily races include Blackberry 9300 and Huawei X1 pre-paid handsets. The competitor with the fastest elephant over the course of the 10 races will win a $10,000 Qantas holiday voucher.

Campaign

The campaign was created by M&C Saatchi and produced in-house by digital producers MAKE.

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Twitter role:

Featured: Optus: @Optus, M&C Saatchi: @mcsaatchi

Article by: Lou Pardi: @loupardi, SMK: @SMKAPAC