We remembered Czech heroes over a glass of Heffron rum

We Czechs have only been living in a free country for the past 30 years. Our parents experienced communist totalitarianism, our grandparents and great grandparents Nazi murder and the horrors of the world wars. Over time, we have gradually forgotten the heroes who gave their lives for their country and for our freedom. And for this reason, we have joined the Heffron brand of rum and created a two-part content campaign aimed at reminding the Czech nation of our long road to freedom. 

Powerful stories require Seznam Native

In the first of two Natives , we focused on the long-forgotten journey of the heroes of the First World War. The ship named Heffron conveyed the last Czechoslovak legionnaires whose stories we told in the content. We supplemented the article with video and audio samples from journals as well as letters that some of the legionaries had sent home. We’re doing this to introduce life back then as faithfully as possible, and to revive the stories of those whom the Nazis, followed by the Communists, had tried to erase from history. 

In the second part of the series entitled The Turbulent History of our Country, we recalled the heroes of our country who sacrificed their lives for the freedom of our nation. We reminded ourselves of the fateful years of the 20th century, which for our country meant either a step towards freedom or towards oppression and suffering. We augmented the content with period photographs, audio and interactive quizzes so that readers could put themselves in the shoes of some of these heroes.

How did we measure success?

In both campaigns, we tracked the time spent with content as an indicator of the given content’s attractiveness to its audience. Other key metrics were the number of unique readers and the number of click-throughs on the client’s website. In the A Long-forgotten Road to Freedom campaign, we also trackedthe number of video views that are part of Native.

How did we get Native articles out among the people?

We placed articles on Seznam Zprávy [Seznam News] and other websites under the Seznam heading. We created dozens of combinations of teasers that we distributed across Seznam, and then optimized them to meet the campaign goals.

What were the results of the campaign?

• We managed to surpass the three-minute limit that we had set for the average time spent on the article. With the article The Turbulent History of our Country, the average time climbed to 5.5 minutes, while with the Native article A Long-forgotten Road to Freedom, readers spent an average of 11 minutes.
• The articles The Turbulent History of our Country and A Long-forgotten Road to Freedom havebeen read by over 200,000 unique readers, surpassing our pre-determined guarantee of 90,000.
• The strong connection between the content of Native and the client was also reflected in the direct click-throughs on the client’s website and e-shop. We counted a total of over 15,500 click-throughs. Thanks in part to the content campaigns, we succeeded in quickly selling out a limited edition of rum bottles whose labels featured stories of Czech heroes.
• In the campaign A Long-forgotten Road to Freedom, we then tracked nearly 66,000 video views.