Company: AAA
Company background: Founded in 1902, AAA is a not-for-profit federation of clubs serving more than 60 million members in the United States and Canada. As North America's largest motoring and leisure travel organization, AAA provides its members a full range of travel, insurance, financial and automotive-related services through its website and a network of more than 1,000 branch offices. Since its founding, AAA has been a leader and advocate for the motorist and traveler, continually lobbying for driver and passenger rights, fair laws and safer vehicles and roads. Through affiliations with motoring clubs around the world, AAA provides benefits to members traveling in 130 countries on six continents. Today, one out of every four households has at least one AAA member.
Contact: Mary Devine
Title: Director, Brand Services
Related URLs: National Office Account: https://www.facebook.com/AAAFanPage/
Examples of Club accounts: https://www.facebook.com/AAAFlorida/
https://www.facebook.com/NorCalNevadaUtah/
https://www.facebook.com/AAASoCal/
https://www.facebook.com/AAAWCNY/
https://www.instagram.com/aaa_national/
https://www.instagram.com/aaa_traveler/
https://www.instagram.com/aaahudsonvalley/
Kudos Category: Best-in-Class: Marketing
1. Tell us about your unique marketing campaign and/or promotion as well as your goal and key strategies.
AAA started 2020 with a full social media calendar, including 15 national campaigns. In March, COVID-19 came along and, like a cat, knocked everything we had planned off the table. A majority of the planned campaigns focused on travel and automotive-related topics, however, no one was traveling and no one was driving. AAA had to pivot and start developing content focused on our members’ needs in their rapidly changing environment. Our goal was to be there for our members in new ways and ensure content was sensitive and aligned with members’ needs.
2. Share your plan with the target audience and how your digital technology (e.g. social media management platform) helped drive success for the campaign.
AAA used a variety of approaches including using the Khoros Marketing Content Center as the hub for sharing content. We knew more people were online but also understood they were looking for news and entertainment, not direct sales pitches for our services. One of our AAA clubs used Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as a guide to develop content, gearing it toward the lower levels of the hierarchy – physiological and safety needs (e.g., free roadside service for healthcare workers and first responders, curb-to-curb car repair, identity theft protection, discounts on delivery services for food).
Other AAA clubs used social media to provide members with pertinent information about branch office operations, roadside assistance availability, driving school closures and other affected products. They hosted virtual events on student lending and travel destinations. They used paid campaigns to highlight membership offers for healthcare workers and first responders. They demonstrated how AAA associates were continuing to serve and bring value to members and the community.
At the national level, the team developed content around how to take care of a car that’s sitting idle for long periods and easy, DIY car fixes that could be done at home. We focused on content to inspire members when we’re all able to travel again. Particular attention was paid to the dream and inspire phases of travel, sharing virtual tours, travel podcasts, articles and videos to give members a chance to go places and see things they might not have experienced before.
3. What were the results? Tell us how it helped you serve customers, protect your brand and/or grow your business (increased subscribers, engagement increase, increased awareness).
As a whole, AAA recognized that our content should focus on how our organization will continue to be there for members, even as the world is rapidly changing, just as we have for more than 115 years.
We shared information about our key products and services that members would find most valuable and content to entertain them as they were spending more time at home. When branch offices started to open up, clubs provided members information about what to expect when visiting their local branches and how services had changed (e.g., appointments for DMV services). And through it all, our social channels were open and available as a way for members to contact us.
For the first half of this year, across the Association, we saw the following increases in our key metrics over the same period in 2019.
- Reach: 113% increase over half first 2019
- Impressions: 140% increase over half first 2019
- Engagement: 164% increase over half first 2019
- Followers – 80,000 across the Association across all channels in the first six months
https://.facebook.com/watch/?v=732781360800631
https://facebook.com/watch/?v=1402990529871134
https://facebook.com/watch/?v=1205129656499679
https://facebook.com/AAAFanPage/videos/525878848081937/
<Supporting visuals: Please include any supporting visuals/graphics into your above answers. Insert them into your text copy, so we’re clear on desired positioning of the graphics. We will accept videos for this entry. All videos must be submitted as publicly viewable links on YouTube or Vimeo.>
