Collecting ‘likes’, watching your ‘followers’ skyrocket, and rubbing your hands together with glee as your ‘views’ continue to climb is all well and good. But are you really leveraging your social media activity? Is your ground-breaking social media campaign having a real impact on your bottom-line?
If your answer is no, then it’s time to make a change. It’s time to get your fans off Facebook and onto your website, into your boardroom. You need to monetise your social media campaigns – like all the companies featured below managed to do. Perhaps our top seven most effective social media campaigns of all time (in no particular order) will be something of a catalyst, an inspiration for your next (or even existing) social media campaign.
Blendtec: Will it Blend?
Very American, the Will it Blend campaign from Blendtec uses YouTube videos very effectively. Operated by an uber-cool grandfatherly figure (who has a blend off against himself), the powerful kitchen accessory easily rips through multiple iPhones in one sitting. The YouTube videos very cleverly direct viewers to the BlendTec Facebook page (which has over 50K fans), encouraging entries in an online competition. According to Blendtec’s Marketing Director, Jeff Robe, the YouTube videos have done increased sales by 700% since November 2006 (Source: Forbes). Right there. That’s what we call effective use of social media.
Take a look for yourself:
Cadbury: Gorilla-Man
Who knew? Take a man in a gorilla suit, cue Phil Collin’s classic hit In the Air Tonight, have gorilla-man go nuts on a drum kit. End result: chocolate sales go through the roof. Created in 2007, this 90 second video has had over 7 million views on YouTube. Most importantly though, Cadbury’s sales jumped by more than 7% following the advert’s airing (Source: Forbes). Quite a tidy profit that the gorilla-man was able to generate.
Watch gorilla-man belt it out below
Cadbury: Thanks A Million
While we’re on the subject of Cadbury, another of their more recent social media campaigns has made our list: a 2012 campaign run to celebrate their one millionth Facebook fan. Despite having so many fans, only 16% of their Facebook audience ever saw Cadbury’s Facebook posts. Cadbury implemented this campaign to increase engagement and grow their fan base. The whole campaign revolved around the construction (which was streamed live over 48 hours) of a giant Facebook ‘thumbs-up’ using more than three tonnes chocolate. Cadbury wanted to ‘like’ their fans back. As a result of the campaign, Facebook gained an extra 40,000 fans and engaged over 350,000 people (Source: eConsultancy). Today, the Cadbury Facebook page has 8.9 million fans.
You can get your thumbs-up here:
http://youtu.be/uHtDRw4ujYw
Evian: Roller Babies
This 2009 YouTube video was huge. It was a mega-hit. It featured breakdancing, back-flipping, giggling babies on roller-skates. With the tagline, let’s observe the effect of Evian on your body, it leads us to believe that, by drinking Evian, we too can hold off Father Time. With 74 million views, The Guinness Book of World Records has confirmed that this video is the most viewed online ad ever.
Giggle along with the computer generated toddlers below:
http://youtu.be/XQcVllWpwGs
Ikea: Facebook Showroom
Back in 2009, Ikea was opening a new store in Malmo, Sweden. To promote the opening, Ikea ran a competition. The store manager posted pictures of the new showrooms on Facebook, with the first person to tag an item in the photo winning that item. The campaign was highly effective. It engaged Facebook fans, not only with the brand, but with specific products and merchandise. The campaign even won a Gold Cyber Lion at Cannes in 2010.
Starbucks: Tweet-A-Coffee
Last year, Starbucks managed to take e-gifts to a whole new level. You can now buy a coffee for a friend or loved one from Starbuck via Twitter. All you have to do is connect your Starbucks account to your Twitter account, tweet @tweetcoffee alongside your loved one’s Twitter handle. It really is that simple. Your loved one can then adds that coffee to their Starbucks account (or print out a voucher). The program is still fairly new, so the results aren’t huge (yet!). So far, it has generated $180,000 worth of sales and linked approximately 54,000 users’ Twitter IDs to phone numbers and Starbucks Customer IDs (Source: iMediaConnection). Not a bad little data collection process! Unfortunately, the campaign is only available in the US at the moment.
This clip explains it all below:
http://youtu.be/AxPZj9x_Dsk
Burger King: Subservient Chicken
This is another American classic. Burger King created this campaign ten years ago, with the help of a man in a chicken suit, dubbed the subservient chicken. The whole objective of the campaign was to promote Burger King’s new TenderCrisp Burger. The campaign revolved around a website where users could type in a command, and then watch the chicken obey. The chicken was programmed to respond to over 300 commands, from moonwalk and shake your booty to hide behind the sofa and go to sleep. The website received over 15 million hits within five days. Unfortunately, the website is no longer active. Don’t bother trying to find it – we already tried!
http://vimeo.com/16742192
If you’ve been enjoying (and learning from) our little expose on effective social media campaigns, it’s highly likely that you will enjoy our wrap up of 2013’s Best Marketing Campaigns.
Sally has worked in marketing, communications, and PR for over 15 years. She is the Chief Wordsmith at Wordly: a copywriting and content marketing agency that works predominantly with WordPress powered websites.
