The Hashtag Campaign

What?

This hashtag campaign is part of a Fourth of July promotion to drive traffic and awareness to the System76 site and unleash a HUGE holiday sale.

How?

For this launch, we gamified the website.

For every Tweet that used the hashtag #revolutionist76, visitors could see the prices of our products lower on the website in real time.

Additionally, tweets were curated to appear on our homepage and visitors would go to our website to see if their hashtag showed up.

We asked followers to use the hashtag to tweet about what a computer meant to them, as well as the importance of open source technology (which was apart of System76’s brand ethos).

When?

Followers had two weeks to tweet the hashtag as much as they could in order to get the lowest possible price by the Fourth of July. The urgency to engage was driven by countdown clocks.

Results:

This massively grew System76’s Twitter following and engagement.

To encourage tweeting, without being repetitive in asking followers to "keep those tweets going" we created mini videos. As the videos released a new part of our mascot’s story would reveal.

2015

After the concept was pitched, we only had three days to turn the campaign around.

Due to its success, variations of this campaign ran for multiple years

Years 2015 & 2016

Gamified Homepage

Six sparklers started unlit on the homepage. As the tweets came in and tweet goals were reached, a new sparkler would ignite.
Landing Page Countdown

As each sparkler lit, the next video of the mini-series would release.
A countdown displays showing how many more tweets was needed.
The Reveal

The full video reveal and the sale, along with the most inspired tweets.

Tux, the penguin is the mascot of the Linux operating system. The video is a bit of an inside joke to this niche group.

video Reveal

4th July, 2017

Hero Images

We went a little darker, serious, and more passionate this year. Starting an open source revolution.
Introducing Guy Tux

While Tux was a goofy action hero in previous years, he meant business this year. In retrospect, not sure this campaign aged well. It’s quite political now but wasn’t pre-pandemic.
Landing Page Mockup

Landing page with Manifesto, tweets from the community, and the locked episodic series.
Press Kit

Press received 3D printed Guy Tux masks with red stickers, and a wax-stamped letter. Inside was a link to the landing page and the embargoed press release.
Tweet Giveaways

Twitter participants could receive their own 3D printed Tux mask. The 3D print file was available for free as well.
Revolutionist Tweets

Open source inspirational tweets #1
Tweets #2

The power of open source tech pours in…
#revolutionist76 Tweets

Why is open source technology important to you?