The best social media campaigns of 2012

With more than 1 billion active Facebook users, 175 million tweets per day and four billionSocial Media hours of video watched on YouTube every month, it would be safe to say that social media has just about taken over the world.

One of the many reasons why these platforms have been enjoying such success is because companies all over the world have realised the potential they present when it comes to engaging with existing and potential customers. Below is a rundown of some of the best and most successful social media campaigns of 2012.

Grey Poupon –

Grey Poupon is a brand of mustard sold predominantly in the USA. They wanted to attract a highly relevant and qualified audience on Facebook. They achieved this by requiring people to apply for ‘membership’ if they wanted to become a fan of the Grey Poupon Facebook page. The Society of Good Taste application process used an app to scan users’ Facebook profiles to learn more about their interests and friends. Once this was done, users were assigned a score which determined whether or not they had good enough taste to be a fan of the Grey Poupon page.

This was a cheeky and unique campaign that proved to be very clever because the company could ensure their fans really were there for the brand.

British Midland International (BMI) –

BMI set up a Pinterest account and wanted to attract fans and raise awareness of this. They achieved this by setting up a number of destination boards, all of which had a unique number on them (1-9). Each week, a number would be chosen at random and everyone who had re-pinned the image that corresponded to the number was entered into a prize draw to win a round-trip to any BMI destination. With an incentive for users to re-pin, the airline capitalised on these actions and reached the target audience of both BMI and Pinterest.

Honda –

Honda PinterestAnother hugely successful Pinterest campaign was created by car giant, Honda. As well as trying to raise awareness about the newly created account, the company also wanted to encourage their followers to listen to their brand messaging and “get out and live life to the fullest”. To achieve this, Honda sent out personalised messages to the most active pinners inviting them to take a ‘pintermission’ from the social media website for 24 hours. Each person who accepted this task was presented with a $500 reward if they went out and did what they have been pinning about and then shared the photos on Pinterest after the 24 hour break was completed.

This hugely creative and innovative campaign not only corresponded with Honda’s messaging to “get out and live life” but also generated a lot of interest by building a campaign on a platform and then encouraging users to take a break from that platform.

Heineken –

In a bid to increase its market share in Brazil, Heineken offered to blow up one green balloon in its office for every new ‘like’ they got on their Brazilian fan page. Going one step further, the beer manufacturers even personalised the campaign by writing the names of the people who liked their campaign and read them out on YouTube. Despite being stuck with an office full of balloons, this fun and interactive campaign earned Heineken thousands of new fans and did indeed improve brand awareness in an emerging market.

Nike –

Who was the official sponsor of the Olympics? You wouldn’t be blamed for thinking it was Nike. However, it was in fact Adidas who paid tens of millions of pounds for this privilege only to be outshone by major competitors, Nike. Adidas ran a campaign featuring Team GB athletes and the hashtag #takethestage on Twitter whilst Nike avoided the usual celebrity endorsements and instead chose to use everyday athletes and the hashtag #findgreatness.

Adopting a more ‘real’ approach certainly paid off for Nike as there were more than 16,000 tweets associating Nike with the word ‘Olympic’ between the 27th July and 2nd August compared to 9,295 for Adidas. Furthermore, Nike attracted 166,718 new Facebook fans during the games versus 80,761 for Adidas.

Have you come across any social media campaigns that have really captured your attention? Share your stories with us below.

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