The #ShareThePain campaign by Zippo aimed to highlight the strong emotional bond between Zippo lighter owners and their lighters. Zippo found that owners vented online about losing their lighters and developed Jax McFlame, a character who comforted owners. Jax responded to owners posting about lost lighters on social media and a microsite with personalized video messages over 3 days, gaining over 27,000 views. The campaign generated over 14 million social media impressions and over 1,000 global news stories, increasing Zippo's social media fans by over 8,500.

1. Zippo- #SharethePain
Campaign
Case Study

2. Objective:
#ShareThePain aimed to elevate the
awareness of the strong emotional bond that
exists between a Zippo lighter and its proud
owner.
Insight:
Zippo’s “social mining” proved that
consumers go online to rant about losing
their precious, much loved Zippo lighters.
To engage Zippo fans around the world,
Zippo rolled out a global integrated
campaign designed to reach its target
audience in a unique and compelling way.
The campaign offered consumers a network
of support to comfort them over the sadness
of losing a precious Zippo lighter.
To further support this insight we carried out
a global survey on the most commonly lost
objects and gathered interesting conclusions.

3. Execution:
When consumers shared the pain of their lost
Zippo lighters on social media, responding on
behalf of Zippo was the toughest guy in the
world - Jax ‘No Pain’ McFlame. Jax is tough
enough to endure any physical pain, but the
emotional pain of losing a Zippo lighter breaks
him.
Jax was on hand throughout the campaign to
commiserate and counsel consumers and
influencers who #ShareThePain of their lost
Zippo lighters. Personalized responses and words
of wisdom helped consumers through their
tough time. In doing so, Zippo drew attention to
just how precious and personal a Zippo lighter is
to its owner.
Jax’s humor, wit, and tough love, intended to
comfort consumers in their time of grief. Jax and
the #ShareThePain campaign were introduced to
consumers via a hilarious short film seeded out
across key video sharing sites, traditional media
relations activity, and social media. The
campaign launch was supported with research
from our lost survey which detailed the most
commonly lost items around the world and
which country spent the most time looking for

4. The campaign crescendo saw Jax McFlame
sending out almost instantaneous personalised
video responses to consumers who posted about
their lost Zippo lighter. All the campaign content
was housed within the #ShareThePain micro-
site, a hub for consumers to visit to see the trailer
and also tell Jax about the latest item they have
lost, which sparked an automated video response
from Jax McFlame himself.
Over a 3 day period, a team of creatives, digital
strategists, developers and producers filmed over
51 personalized video responses around the
clock, responding to fans in real time about the
pain and sadness of losing their Zippo lighter.
All markets supported the social elements of the
campaign via traditional media, securing nearly
1,000 pieces of global coverage. Interesting
stories of lost and found Zippo lighters from
across the brand’s 82 year history were featured
in leading publications around the world
including GQ, Rolling Stone and ABC news
channel to name a few.

5. Results:
Stats:
1. Total Coverage (India) : 284 clips
2. Total Media Reach (India) : 104.6 million
3. Organic increase of over 8,500 fans on Zippo Facebook and Twitter
4. Total Coverage (Global) : 1,000 clips
5. The microsite received over 27,247 organic views during the 5 week campaign
6. The campaign reached over 3,401,898 individual consumer accounts on
Facebook and Twitter
7. The campaign generated over 14,898,024 million impressions on Facebook
and Twitter worldwide