A “Social Media Campaign” is a coordinated marketing effort to reinforce or assist with a business goal using one or more social media platforms. Campaigns differ from everyday social media efforts because of their increased focus, targeting, and measurability – Big Commerce
What brands want to achieve through “Social Media Campaigns”?
- Increased brand/product visibility
- Increased engagement
- Increased sales
- Increase website traffic
- Get real time customer feedback
Successes:
1. Airbnb- Stands Against Racial Discrimination
Platform: Instagram
Campaign name: #WeAccept
Scenario: Airbnb took to Instagram and created a video with people from various racial background to take a stand against racial discrimination. The video was also supported by multiple images being posted back to back, of faces from different races from across the globe. The campaign was in sync with Donald Trump’s ban on refugees and immigrants, mostly from Muslim nations; as a sign of the brand’s acceptance towards people from all over the globe irrespective of who they are, what they eat, how they dress or who they worship to.
Reaction: Marketing on sensitive topics can be a huge risk for brands, because if the campaign fails, it might lead to a huge loss for the company. However, with Airbnb the support was immense. A brand which is internationally acclaimed, made a perfect stand with their strategically planned and beautifully executed video campaign, #WeAccept. The main campaign video on Instagram, has received 1,12,463 views till date.
2. Mr Clean – Super Bowl Ad and Valentine’s campaign
Platform: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
Campaign name: Mr. Clean, Super Bowl Ad
Scenario: Super Bowl being a huge even in America, garners most advertiser’s attention to place their brand ads before, after or between the show’s telecast. Mr. Clean, an American cleaning company, came up with a very creative way of representing a rather boring and unsexy product in a sexy and interesting way. The ad was also released keeping in mind “Valentine’s Day”, which was just around the corner. To increase anticipation around the ad, the brand took to posting mini trailers on Facebook and Twitter. Of course, the campaign was a huge hit!
Reaction: When the complete ad was released, it was an instant success and the ad garnered 11,700 mentions across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram in just one minute. Till date, the ad had received over 17 million views.
3. Eggo – Kellogg’s and Netflix
Platform: Twitter
Campaign name: Eggo
Scenario: Eggo, a frozen waffle introduced by Kellogg’s, was strategically placed in the show “Stranger Things”. The interesting thing was that Stranger Things is said to be the most popular original online series ever. With one of the main characters from the series munching on Eggo waffles, the product became an instant success among the web series fans. To keep the excitement around the product going, Kellogg’s also took to Twitter with interesting posts. One specific post (image below) received more than 9,200 retweets and 20,000 likes, following which Kellogg’s spilled their campaign across other social platforms.
Reaction: One specific post received more than 9,200 retweets and 20,000 likes, following which Kellogg’s spilled their campaign across other social platforms. Eggo’s twitter page followers increased extensively and the page currently has 11.3K followers.
4. Mum’s Day Off – Red Letter Days
Platform: Twitter
Campaign name: #MumsDayOff
Scenario: Increasing awareness around women empowerment has led to increase in popularity of events like Mother’s Day. Banking on the same, Red Letter Days, a gift experience provider, came up with an interesting campaign on twitter “#MumsDayOff” asking people to share why their mother’s deserve a day off, with an award for the winner in the end of the campaign – a lunch at ‘A View From The Shard’
Reaction: The campaign went viral instantly and people shared hundreds of views. The company began trending fast, picked up media interest, and gained hundreds of new followers in the process.
5. Know Your Lemons – Worldwide Breast Cancer
Platform: Facebook
Campaign name: #KnowYourLemons
Scenario: As part of the breast cancer awareness month, Worldwide Breast Cancer, a charity organisation launched the #KnowYourLemons campaign. Creative visual representation of the issue made it easy for educated as well as uneducated women to understand the causes and ways to check for symptoms of breast cancer. The unusual and interesting representation led to an instant interest among the audience. They also created a Facebook page where people could read regular news updates, donate to the cause, and take part in active conversations about the subject.
Reaction: By giving the people a space to understand breast cancer better as well as share their experiences and stories, Worldwide Breast Cancer exceeding their fundraising target by 317% on Just Giving (fund raising portal) alone.
Failures:
1. Dove’s- Beauty Mistake
Platform: Twitter
Campaign name: Real Beauty
Scenario: In support of standing against “body shaming” Dove came up with a limited-edition production of body wash packages, resembling various female body shapes. The campaign backfired when people started complaining about how largely abstract the shapes of the bottles were, and their messaging went completely wrong.
Reaction: People were not just confused about the camping’s representation, but they also laughed at it, causing an instant backlash on their twitter account. A lot of people also raised genuine concern around what the brand was trying to prove with their unthoughtful move.
2. McDonald’s- Hacked Account
Platform: Twitter
Campaign name: McDonalds on Donald Trump
Scenario: If you are a famous fast food joint, trolling the President of one of the strongest nations in the world, might not be a great idea. McDonalds on 16th March however will definitely be remembered for all wrong reasons, for being all vocal about their hatred towards Donald Trump, the President of The United states of America. Although McDonalds got back with an apology tweet and a claim that their account was hacked, the tweet had already become popular!
Reaction: McDonald’s followers instantly picked up the tweet and even before McDonalds could delete the tweet, screenshots of the tweet was taken and it had become the talk of the town. If not anything else, McDonalds had definitely lost Donald Trump from their customers list.
3. Wendy’s- Rude Messages
Platform: Twitter
Campaign name: Fresh, Never Frozen Beef!
Scenario: Brands need to start taking jokes on themselves more positively; this obviously is a known fact. However, Wendy’s, a fast food chain did not let a certain comment pass with a smile. When Wendy’s declared that they use only fresh beef and not the frozen kind, one of their audience joked about it. The scene ended up being nasty when Wendy’s struck back with rude replies.
Reaction: The funny thing about the whole incident is that Wendy’s didn’t stop at being rude to a single complainer. The effect spilled over to many others who were tweeting to Wendy’s at that point of time. This is clearly an example of bad customer service, leading to an affect their sales as many people denied eating at Wendy’s after their nasty behavior.
4. Department of Education- Misspelt Tweets
Platform: Twitter
Campaign name: W.E.B. Du Bois or W.E.B. DeBois.
Scenario: When brands make a mistake in what they do best, it’s a disaster. The US Department of Education, did something of that sorts. They tweeted a quote by late civil rights activist and NAACP co-founder W.E.B. Du Bois and spelt his name incorrectly, “W.E.B. DeBois.”
5. Yahoo Finance – Missed spellcheck
Platform: Twitter
Campaign name: Yahoo Finance’s “B” and “N” confusion
Scenario: The followers of Yahoo finance were surely up for some entertainment when they Yahoo decided to tweet about Donald Trump’s plans on expanding their Navy. With too many accusations around Trump’s racial partiality, Yahoo’s tweet didn’t seem to go down very well. A clear case of spellcheck miss led to something like this:
Reaction: Although an apology did come in from Yahoo, it was already over an hour until it came. The mistake was even picked up by various news and blog sources due to the over thousand retweets the tweet received within a short period of time.