Concrete Playground does Dunedin thanks to Telecom Treats

Telecom New Zealand kindly hosted Concrete Playground and Social Media NZ for the All Black's versus South Africa match in Dunedin on Saturday, September 15 2012. What we witnessed was not only a great game between two of the world's greatest rugby nations, but also a fine customer reward display by one of the country's most well known brands, who are adopting an exciting new approach called Telecom Treats.

Having spent some time in Dunedin as a student, it was a great opportunity to get back to the old haunt, while also showing John Lai from Social Media NZ, a taste of the scarfie life.

That aside, the reason we were there was to witness what Telecom were doing as part of the Telecom Treats campaign. We were asked to download the Telecom Treat's app, a web based application for smartphone, that would not only hold our ticket, but also offered much more features which we will get to soon. But first of all, why were Telecom doing this?

From what we saw, Telecom are taking the 'giving back' philosophy to new levels, and doing this via new channels, with the communications brand taking to twitter to reward its 17,000 (and growing) followers with their new sub-campaign Telecom #Tweets4treats. Telecom have been inviting their fans to get engaged with the telco by tweeting for a treat. Having only just been launched, we have seen a number of prizes ranging from free minutes, data, through to rugby tickets (which we got involved with in Dunedin via a fun twitter hunt).

Telecom has invested in technology which saw us (along with other Telecom customers who had either won or been rewarded with tickets) using our Smartphones to access the Telecom Treats app for a pretty unique at-game experience. After entering our code, the web-based app gave us access to our ticket (which was scanned at our very own Telecom entrance), let us pre-order our food, as well as enabled us to tap in to live commentary of the game while receiving other offers such as discounted drinks and merchandise. We were also given our very own Wifi access which enabled us to share the experience quickly.

What we saw was over 300, very happy Telecom customers. It was great to see a brand invest heavily in the experience that gave something back to it's customers, as opposed to forking out on annoying flash billboards which arguably achieve little in terms of talk-ability and pride in your service provider. Well done Telecom.

Concrete Playground will be getting involved a little bit more over the coming weeks with Telecom, providing some opportunities for our own readers to enjoy some treats. In the meantime, get involved with the conversation, and who knows, may just find yourself winning some fun CP endorsed goodies.

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