It might be a jungle out there, but the following brands have come prepared to fend off the trolls and get the right people talking. These are the social media campaigns that make fellow marketers green with envy, wondering why they didn't come up with the idea first.
These clever campaigns show that to be a social media success you don’t need a multi-million dollar budget behind you. Even if you are a big brand, a small gesture can make a bigger impact than you think.
Stratos by Red Bull
Energy drink giant Red Bull teamed up with daredevil Felix Baumgartner and social video website YouTube to live stream a record breaking jump from the edge of space. Eight million people tuned into YouTube to watch it, breaking heaps of records and generating millions of dollars in ad revenue for Red Bull.People took to social media in their droves to chat about the jump, making it one of the biggest online events of all time. Although it did cost Red Bull a lot of money to get the project off the ground, the viral nature of it meant that once Felix was in space Red Bull’s marketing team could just kick their feet up and watch with the rest of the world.
Hashtag Killer by WaterIsLife
Charity WaterIsLife laid a massive guilt trip on the entire internet with their famous Hashtag Killer campaign. The campaign used #firstworldproblem tweets to contrast our petty grievances with the serious issues that people in developing countries face every day. |
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Materials included a YouTube video with Haitian people reading out #firstworldproblem tweets, as well as print ads combining photographs of daily life in Haiti with whinyTwitter comments. It’s hard to feel justified about your first world problems when you see someone standing outside their tiny hut, reading a tweet that says “I hate it when my house is so big, I need two wireless routers.”
#socialjet by Aer Lingus
When Irish airline Aer Lingus rented a short lease plane for the summer season of 2013, they did something a little different. Usually short lease planes are left blank, or are adorned with easily removed branded stickers. Changing the appearance of a short lease plane in a quirky way generates a lot of attention from plane spotters: there are still 200,000 image results for the airline’s 2011 “retro jet”.This year the savvy brand added decals to the fuselage advertising their social media profiles. The “flying billboard”, as it’s affectionately known by the company’s communications director, announces “have you liked us yet?” and “have you followed us yet?” complete with the Twitter profile and #socialjet hashtag, encouraging people to talk about their flight.
Mac ‘n’ Jinx by Kraft
Kraft used the childhood game of “Jinx” as inspiration for a fun and extremely clever Twitter campaign last year. They kept an eye out for mentions of mac ‘n’ cheese, and when two unrelated people tweeted about it at the same time, Kraft would tweet them to point out that they were “mac ‘n’ jinxed”.The first of the two people to reply to Kraft’s tweet would win five boxes of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese plus a free t-shirt. Much better than not being allowed to talk until somebody says your name.
What was your favorite social media campaign?
Mark GreenAbout the Author:
Mark Green is a social media community manager working in private sector.