Arlene powers social filter awareness campaign for Uplifting Athletes
Uplifting Athletes, a non-profit fighting rare diseases, used Arlene’s Social Filters to amplify brand awareness for their 7,000 Mile Challenge virtual race. They enlisted various teams with the collective goal of actively moving 7,000 miles (running, biking, walking, etc.) to support those with rare diseases. The event was a success with 12,000 total miles run, $50,000 raised across 650+ donations, and 375 sign-ups.
Arlene helped with brand awareness and provided two Instagram AR filters for the event: a branded face mask and a gold medal.
“Working with Arlene for our inaugural 7,000 Mile Challenge helped elevate our event through social media. They took our ideas and created filters that went beyond our expectations. The filters generated engagement and awareness for our rare disease cause. We look forward to working alongside Arlene again in the future!” — Levi Norwood, Chapter Success Manager at Uplifting Athletes
Face Mask Filter
The Uplifting Athletes “Face Mask” was run as part of a pre-event social media campaign, using a symbol of the times to drive awareness around an upcoming event. Several event organizers and micro-influencers posted stories using the filters, urging users to register for the event.
The filter generated thousands of organic views with 7.1% user engagement (viewers tapping to try the filter).
Gold Medal Filter
A second filter featuring an AR gold medal was used for post-event drip engagement. Event participants and leaders used the filter as they shared results and encouraged additional donations. This filter received a 13.7% engagement rate.
Conclusions and next steps
AR is engaging but it requires promotion for people to know when to interact. With Uplifting Athletes, views and opens spiked when event influencers promoted the face mask early in the campaign. Organic engagement decreased without sustained promotion. We saw similar behavior with the medal, where engagement spiked on days it was promoted. With a longer promotional cycle, we will see increases in overall visibility, conversion, and engagement.
Simply creating an AR filter will not change a business or drive sales. AR filter campaigns should define KPIs and optimize towards driving specific audience behavior.
For upcoming campaigns, Uplifting Athletes and Arlene will expand brand awareness initiatives and test performance-based AR/3D experiences to drive donations/registrations.
Arlene also plans to boost campaign reach through verified influencer networks, increased frequency of posts, and paid promotion (programmatic and social ads).
