A great social media campaign has the potential to boost your brand awareness and engage a large number of people. With so many of us with online profiles, you don’t want to miss out on this ever-growing market. Need some inspiration? Here are the 10 most impactful digital marketing campaigns that have lit up the Internet in recent years.
1. Mr Clean
When you think of amazing marketing you can never go past the American Super Bowl. With a viewership of over 100 million people each year, marketers pay exorbitant amounts to air their ads, with many people tuning in for what has become just as important to the day as the game itself.
In the weeks leading up to the 2017 Super Bowl, American cleaning company, Mr Clean, launched a series of daily teaser trailers on Facebook and Twitter. Through creating hype on social media before the actual event, the business was able to engage a huge number of people and earn a total of 11,700 mentions over social media in only one minute when the video finally aired on game day.
2. Eggo
Though not a familiar product in Australia, Eggos, a frozen waffle product by Kellogs, are huge in the US, particularly off the back of their successful social media campaign and link to the Netflix show, Stranger Things. Eggos gained worldwide exposure during season one of the hit show, through recurring product placement.
To increase engagement, Kellogs teamed up with Netflix in the lead up to season two and used Twitter to capitalise on the exposure. The Eggos Twitter page now has over 11,000 followers. The success of this campaign shows the importance of keeping up to date with current trends and the power of cross-promotion.
3. Denny’s
Speaking of trends, remember when zooming in on memes on Facebook to reveal hidden messages was popular? Well US restaurant chain, Denny’s, took full advantage of this funny moment in social media history by posting an image of pancakes on Twitter, with text encouraging viewers to ‘zoom in on the syrup’, only for people to find no text. The success of this campaign comes down to Denny’s taking a risk and capitalising on relevant humour that social media users can’t get enough of. The campaign was Denny’s most shared and most-liked post of all time.
4. Airbnb
Brands are increasingly getting involved in social issues. Take for example, Airbnb and the business’s #weaccept campaign following President Trump’s ban on refugees and immigrants from Muslim nations. The rental property business took a stance against the President, encouraging acceptance among society with an advertisement aired during Super Bowl, and promoted across social media using the hashtag.
5. Salt Bae
If you haven’t heard of salt bae you must’ve been living under a rock for the whole of 2017. Early last year, the owner of a chain of Turkish steakhouses, Chef Nusret Gokce, launched the Salt Bae campaign on Instagram. The video and accompanying hashtag was then shared across all of his social media channels and quickly went viral. By using a visual social channel like Instagram, Gokce was able to capture attention easily and prove that a good marketing campaign doesn’t have to be expensive.
6. KFC
This is one of our favourite social media campaigns. In September last year, KFC’s Twitter account started following 11 people on Twitter: the five Spice Girls and six people named ‘Herb’. It took a whole month for Twitter users to realise what was happening – it represented the 11 secret herbs and spices KFC are famous for. The first person to notice and Tweet about it generated hundreds and thousands of likes and retweets, which drastically increased activity on KFC’s twitter feed.
This campaign definitely highlights the power of patience in marketing, with the creative director behind the campaign stating ‘Sometimes you just have to put stuff out into the universe and cross your fingers and hope that the internet will work its magic’.
7. Women’s March
Another political protest fueled by President Trump, the #womensmarch movement started out as a hashtag on social media and soon gained worldwide attention. Not only did it result in women and men marching the streets in Washington DC, many sister protests occurred all around the United States and right here in Australia too.
8. Worldwide Breast Cancer
Another hashtag movement – #KnowYourLemons – was started by Worldwide Breast Cancer. The social media campaign used the catchy hashtag to inform women all around the world how to spot the less well known warning signs of breast cancer and to share their stories with the community. The success of this campaign was due to its ability to reach all types of women.
Using an image, rather than text, any woman, from any language background can learn how to check their breasts. It only took three Facebook posts for the message to reach 7.3 million people, and led to an increase in donations for the company. This is also a great example of using light-heartedness for a serious issue.
9. Mum’s Day Off
Holidays provide a great opportunity for marketers, and Mother’s Day is no different. Gift experience business, Dragon’s Den, was able to use social media to cut through all the Mother’s Day clutter by launching the campaign, #MumsDayOff.
The campaign featured a chance to win lunch for posting on Facebook or Twitter about why your Mum deserves a day off. Playing on emotion and offering people a prize is an effective use of social media and resulted in the company gaining hundreds of new followers.
10. Heineken
Another great example of marketers using social issues to promote their product is Heineken’s #OpenYourWorld campaign. Using a real life social experiment of bringing people with differing social beliefs together and having them partake in team building activities, participants then talked out their differing social views over a cold beer (a Heineken beer of course). Facebook was the key platform for this video and received around 3 million views in its first week.
What will you do?
There are so many creative ideas out there and it just takes one great digital or direct marketing campaign to explode your brand into the spotlight. Take these examples as some inspiration and if you need any help getting started marketing your business, fill in the form below.
