Successful marketing campaigns that integrate social media have to grab an audience enabling them to engage with the brand but most importantly they need to be unique. Many brands have tried and failed with social media marketing but there have been some very rewarding campaigns which have boosted awareness and revenue.
This post looks at five great examples of top social media marketing covering Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Pinterest and YouTube. Each of these unique campaigns proved a big hit and they show encouraging signs of using various social media platforms to promote their brand.
1. Nike Olympics #Findgreatness Twitter Campaign
Sports giants Nike pulled off one of their most successful marketing strategies during last year's London Olympic Games. Rivals Adidas were one of the official sponsors of the games but that didn't stop Nike from launching their #findgreatness campaign through Twitter. Many giant billboards featuring images of people partaking in sports with the words 'find greatness' were placed around London. Adidas had a similar campaign featuring Team GB Athletes on billboards with the hashtag #takethestage.
Figures from Socialbaker's CheerMeter revealed that between July 27 to August 2 there was over 16,000 tweets associating the keyword Olympic with Nike, while Adidas received 9,295 tweets in the same period. Adidas gained over 80,000 new Facebook fans during the Olympics compared to more than 166,000 for Nike (over double).
2. Burger King Whopper Sacrifice
Burger King put people's friendships to the test when they announced a campaign offering a free whopper burger to anyone who deleted ten friends from Facebook. The wickedness of the scheme was that any friends who were sacrificed were informed that their colleague valued a burger over their friendship. The campaign was launched by Burger King in 2009 and visitors were invited to sign up to the Facebook campaign after visiting whoppersacrifice.com.
After a week of the campaign over 233,000 people had been sacrificed from Facebook for whoppers and the social media site took action by blocking the campaign over breaches of privacy. The whopper sacrifice campaign won numerous marketing awards in 2009 including Gold for Web Applications and the ADC Hybrid award at the Art Directors Annual Awards 2009.
3. Granata Pet Dog Food Check In
German pet food company Granata Pet developed a unique marketing campaign through Foursquare. They set up a range of interactive billboards in Germany with dog food dispensers. When people visited these billboards they received free dog food in the dispensers when they checked in to Foursquare.
The results led to an uptake in sales of Granata pet food and lots of hits on Facebook from people checking in through Foursquare and uploading this information on to their Facebook pages.
4. Uniqlo Dry Mesh Project
Uniqlo, the Japanese clothing company made headlines with their Pinterest Dry Mesh Project campaign last year. A group of around 100 people with Uniqlo accounts hit Pinterest at the same time to simultaneously pin, creating a style similar to that of an old film strip. This led to a large mosaic visual board on Pinterest, which portrayed many of the brands products on one Pinterest board. People responded with positive feedback commenting on the visual impact of the campaign.
5. Tippex Create Your Own Ending
The bright sparks at Tippex used YouTube to put together one of the most interactive forms of social marketing. Tippex made a clip entitled 'hunter shoots a bear' (don't worry it doesn't actually happen) but the hunter changes his mind and grabs a giant tippex to remove the word shoot. He then asks the user to create their own ending. For example you can write hugs or attacks into the space left by the Tippex and a new clip will appear with those actions.
The clip has had over 21 million views since it was posted in August 2010 as well as large scale media coverage.
Social media is a vastly creative tool when it comes to marketing strategies and the examples mentioned above are just a fraction of the hugely successful campaigns that have boosted brands and companies. By keeping your marketing plan unique and interesting there is every chance of wide scale publicity through a range of social media channels.