Who says B2C brands have all the fun?! We are constantly seeing creative and fun social media campaigns and promotions from consumer brands, but it’s not everyday that you see it from a B2B company. Webtrends, a digital marketing and intelligence company, knocked it out of the ballpark with its #didyouseethat Hashtag & Shiny Shoes Campaign during SES New York (SESNY).
The campaign was attention-grabbing, creative and fun. It entailed four colorful and shiny sneakers and the hashtag #didyouseethat. SESNY attendees had to find the shoes, tweet a picture of the shoes with the #didyouseethat hashtag and they were entered into a sweepstakes to win a grand prize, which was “a chance to design your own sneakers; a $500 airline gift card; and a free Platinum Pass to an upcoming SES show.”
The beauty of the campaign is that Webtrends did not push any marketing messages or corporate pitches and instead focused on the user’s experience. The campaign was wildly successful.
We-Care.com, a cause marketing platform, launched it’s #MillionDimes Charity Challenge this week. It’s a fun and simple campaign hosted on Twitter. Twitter users simply have to follow @WeCare and send a tweet that includes the twitter handle of their non-profit of choice, @WeCare and the #MillionDimes hashtag. That’s it! Every tweet is a vote toward your favorite charity. However, the charity must first register at http://www.We-Care.com/MillionDimes. As of this writing, there were 635 non-profits registered.
For each qualifying #MillionDimes tweet, We-Care.com will donate ten cents, up to $1,000 per charity. You can tweet up to five times a day. The campaign runs until next Monday, January 14 at 12:00 PM PST.
Non-profits are funded through donations so in these economic times, every dime counts. So start tweeting to help your favorite charity!
The charity with the most ornaments on December 31, 2012 will receive $20,000, while the remaining two organizations will receive $5,000 each. As if helping out your favorite charity wasn’t enough, Grand Marnier is also giving participants of the Grand Giving Tree a chance to win $1,000. There’s one hiccup, fans who are California residents are not eligible for the contest portion due to the State of California laws. However, California fans can still participate in voting for their favorite charity in the Grand Giving Tree.
After you vote and hang your ornament on the Grand Giving Tree for your selected charity, you can also view the ornament count to see which charity currently has the most votes. I won’t spoil it for you by telling you who is in the lead, but I will tell you who I voted for.
As an animal lover, I voted for Best Friends Animal Society. Who will you be voting for?
Brands continue to leverage mommy bloggers and social media influencers to spread the word about products, services and events. The latest example was last Friday when Hasbro’s My Little Pony, the beloved 1980s cartoon, sponsored a Twitter party hosted by lead blogger at Mom Spark, Amy Bellgardt, who is @MomSpark on Twitter. The above image is a sampling of a few tweets during yesterday’s My Little Pony (MLP) Twitter party, which used the hashtag #MLPWedding.
Twitter parties are very popular among moms, and given that moms are the main shoppers in many households, one can see how this is a desirable consumer group for brands to court. For sponsored Twitter parties, most have some sort of giveaway tied to them as an incentive to participate. In the case of last Friday’s My Little Pony Twitter Party, Hasbro gave away, via its host @MomSpark, MLP toys.
The purpose behind it was to not only promote and discuss MLP, but also to promote an encore presentation of the special two-part royal wedding episode of “My Little Pony Friendship is Magic,” which was shown today, Saturday, September 8 at 10:00 AM EDT on the Hub TV network.
Twitter parties are effective in that they bring together a group of consumers who are already passionate about a particular product or topic, provide an opportunity for brands to share product information and features in an authentic manner through the hosts, brand ambassadors and fans, and they offer brands an opportunity to reach new consumers.
Since Twitter parties are held at a specific date and time that’s pre-publicized and usually last for an hour or two, it lends itself to the opportunity to have the Twitter parties’ hashtags trend locally, nationally or worldwide. In the case of Friday’s MLP Twitter party, the #MLPWedding hashtag successfully trended nationally, according to Bellgardt’s tweet, “Thank you for attending our My Little Pony Twitter party today - we trended in the USA! #MLPWedding http://fb.me/27CNdOzIF.”
Before Twitter parties hit the Twittersphere, there were Twitter chats aka “Tweetchats” or “Twitchats,” which still exist today and there are many weekly Tweet chats for all kinds of topics and interests. Twitter parties are an extension of Tweet chats, which are similar in format, but usually Tweet chats are topic based and not brand/product focused and they usually don’t do product giveaways like Twitter parties do.
One doesn’t have to look far to see that Twitter parties are quite successful. In a post by Clickz, it states that “MomSpark has hosted around 100 Twitter Parties over a little more than two years.” Now that’s a lot of Twitter parties!
To promote its Greek Frozen Yogurt, Ben & Jerry’s has introduced a new Facebook app, Wanna Spoon?. It invites you to ‘spoon’ with your Facebook friends. The app’s algorithm finds things you have in common with your Facebook friends, from favorite TV shows and bands to foods and family members. It then finds your perfect spooning partner and let’s you download a coupon and share it with your spooning partner by posting a link on their Facebook Timeline along with a provided message, “Using a fancy algorithm, Ben & Jerry’s decided we’d make great spooning partners.”
Who doesn’t love ‘spooning’? Reconnect with old friends and spoon together with some Ben & Jerry’s Greek Frozen Yogurt. Now that’s an app that’s deliciously fun!
June is Pride month for the Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Transgender (LGBT) community and yesterday Oreo celebrated it with a Facebook page post and tweet. Both posts included a festive and fun picture of a rainbow Oreo cookie. For the Facebook post, the status update on the post read, “Proudly support love!” and the tweet read, “Celebrate your pride for love! #dailytwist http://pic.twitter.com/ryqS3HyK.”
The Pride image is part of a bigger campaign to celebrate Oreo’s 100th birthday. An Oreo representative provided a statement about the campaign to Mashable, which Mashabale included today in its post about Oreo’s Pride post:
In celebration of the 100th birthday of Oreo cookies, the brand is creating a series of daily ads reflecting current events in a fun way using images of Oreo cookies and milk. These ads are in the same style of the print advertising campaign for Oreo’s 100th Birthday that launched earlier this year. The new campaign will bring to life trending topics, pop culture news, milestones or celebrations using images of the iconic cookie and milk. In recognition of Pride Month, Oreo created an ad depicting the Rainbow flag with different colors of Oreo crème. We are excited to illustrate what is making history today in a fun and playful way. You can follow Oreo on Facebook to see the daily ads.
As a company, Kraft Foods has a proud history of celebrating diversity and inclusiveness. We feel the OREO ad is a fun reflection of our values.
As of this writing the Pride tweet has garnered 1,338 retweets and 440 favorites and the Facebook post has garnered 173,403 likes, 51,219 shares and 23,863 comments. The Pride post’s engagement is higher than the average engagement on Oreo’s other posts and it will certainly help Oreo’s EdgeRank, as well as its reach.
The public may be divided on some LGBT issues, such as the right to marry, but despite the politics around such controversial issues, many consumers support the LGBT community and will rally around initiatives such as the Oreo Pride post or the recent Gay Father’s Day ad by JCPenney. Plus, the LGBT community may only make up a small percentage of the population, but they’re organized and vocal and can garner a lot of support. And let’s not forget that many LGBT consumers have lots of disposable income, something very desirable to brands.
Of course there will always be those consumers who take offense and call for a boycott, so brands do risk losing some customers. However, in many cases, companies gain new customers due to the attention a campaign receives and brands also gain stronger brand support from existing customers.
I think it’s smart for companies/brands to support the LGBT community and find creative and fun ways to celebrate Pride, such as Oreo did. Sure, there will always be some haters who disagree, but most people rally around companies/brands who take a stand in support of the LGBT community. Hats off to Oreo for it’s Pride posts and support of the LGBT community!
Gold Peak Tea, a Coca-Cola brand, has launched a new campaign on Facebook entitled “Take The Year Off” where it offers fans a chance to win $100,000 to pursue their dream. That dream could be to simply take a year off and relax or it could be to start a new business venture or pursue a creative endeavor such as making a film, writing a book or making an album and getting it sold on iTunes or Amazon. Whatever the dream, people have until July 13th at 11:59pm EDT to enter.
The mechanics of the “Take The Year Off” Facebook campaign require entrants to “like” the page, complete the registration form, which includes providing a valid email. After that each entrant has to then answer two short questions (140 characters each), write a brief essay (1,500 characters) explaining what they would do if they were given the opportunity to take a year off with a $100,000 salary, and submit a recent and “recognizable photo” of themselves. The brand will select the top entries.
The top candidates selected become the semi-finalists and move into the next phase of the campaign. Each semi-finalist will be required to submit a 30-60 second video that fits the campaign’s theme of “Enjoying the Comforts of Home.” The videos are then judged on the following criteria: 1) Compelling Quality of Submission (33%); 2) Creativity/Originality of Submission (33%); and 3) Fit to Promotion Theme of Enjoying the Comforts of Home (34%). Based on that criteria the brand picks the top finalists.
The last phase of the campaign is public voting, where the public gets to vote on their favorite video and finalist submission. The finalist with the most valid votes will become the grand prize winner and will get to take the year off with a salary of $100,000. In addition, the campaign also includes a sweepstakes for the fans who vote. The sweepstakes prize is four tickets to a Live Nation concert, which includes roundtrip air travel for four and three nights’ hotel accommodations. The voting and sweepstakes phase of the campaign runs from August 6-24, 2012.
The campaign platform/provider is ePrize, a leader in interactive promotions and loyalty programs.
In general, video contests tend to garnish the lowest amount of entries compared to other contests and sweepstakes where there’s a lower point of entry, such as entering a name and email only. However, given the attractiveness of the prize and the fact that the video portion is only one component of many, I suspect that Gold Peak Tea’s “Take The Year Off” campaign will do quite well. They were smart to add the sweepstakes component, which will increase the total number of votes and overall participation in the campaign.
What would you do if you could take a year off with a salary of $100,000?
Australian airline Qantas (@QantasAirways) conducted a Twitter campaign where it asked followers to show their support for Australia’s rugby team the Wallabies who were playing against New Zealand’s All Blacks in the Bledisloe Cup last weekend. The prize was tickets to the rugby match.
The uproar from fans/followers came when Qantas “awarded free tickets to a man who pledged to dress as Fijian-born player, Radike Samo,” according to B&T. Qantas apologized and deleted the tweet containing the winner’s photo of him and a friend pictured wearing afro-style wigs and painted in black face posing with ruby player Samo. Samo stood by Qantas and felt the campaign and winning tweet/photo was all in good fun, but many others were angry and offended and tweeted the airline as such.
In the B&T article, it points out that if it was Virgin this may not have caused quite a commotion since Virgin is known to be “cheeky and naughty.” Brands that are edgy can get away with a bit more, but it’s because that’s what their communities want and expect of them. In the case of Qantas where it’s image and voice is not racy, raw and edgy but rather more corporate and of the highest standards so it needs to be more careful. However, Qantas handled the matter well. They removed the offending content and apologized.
This backlash could have been avoided had they picked a winner with a more neutral tweet/photo. And it’s certainly a lesson to all in that you never know how your community will react to a campaign or a simple tweet. Even the brands who really understand and know their community, there will always be part of the community who may think a particular piece of content is all in good fun, but that same content could be offensive to others in the community so it’s a delicate balance and brands always need to navigate the waters carefully and learn along the way what their fans and followers want and don’t want.
MINI and Vice Magazine have joined forces on a new campaign and travel series named “ALL THE WЯONG PLACES” where they’re looking for “co-pilots” to travel the world on five “unwise” adventures. The ALL THE WЯONG PLACES series will star the MINI, mission leader and MINI pilot Elliott Bambrough, and five winning adventurer co-pilots.
The campaign is being promoted on MINI’s Facebook Page where interested adventurers can apply to be selected as one of five co-pilots. The first co-pilot will embark on a mission in Japan. The remaining missions will take place in South Africa, Peru, Sweden, and the final destination is a yet-to-be announced “secret mission” location.
Also along for the ride will be VICE documentary filmmakers who will be documenting the “unwise” adventures, according to Mediabistro’s AgencySpy.
Those who are interested in submitting to become a MINI co-pilot and those who want to view the series will have to “like” MINI’s Facebook Page to gain access. There’s 14 days left to submit for the first mission to Japan. The video series will be shown on MINI’s Facebook Page starting in November.
This month Levi’s launched its Go Forth global brand marketing campaign on Facebook and has seen its Levi’s Facebook Page grow by over a million new fans (aka “likes”) taking it from 6.2+ million fans on August 10th to 7.2+ million fans by August 28th. According to Stylophane, an online marketing company focused on the fashion and apparel industry, Levi’s leads with the most “likes” among denim brands and its Facebook fan growth is “more than five times the number-two denim brand (Guess, with 1.2 million) and identical to the sum of the 90 other denim brands monitored,” as reported by WWD. However, Facebook is just one of many avenues for the Go Forth campaign.
Levi’s is an iconic brand and in its 138-year history, the Go Forth marketing campaign, surprisingly, is the first time Levi’s has launched a single campaign globally. The Go Forth campaign is being rolled out in 24 countries and in 19 languages. In addition to Facebook, the campaign will also include other media components — digital, in-store, print, outdoor, cinema, television and other social networking sites including twitter (campaign’s hashtag is #GoForth) — that are tailored to each market.
The campaign’s central message is inspired by people, especially young people, who not only have an optimistic outlook on how to change the world for the better but who are active in creating positive change. With so much access to tools, such as social networking sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, people are better able to communicate with each other “their hopes, desires and actions,” said Becca Van Dyck, global chief marketing officer of Levi Strauss & Co., in a recent interview with Forbes (see video below).
“We’re tapping into that and celebrating what we call the pioneering spirit because that’s close to our heart; but that’s also a value that’s important to young people today, this pioneering spirit of being able to actively participate in positive change,” Van Dyck added.
Van Dyck is at the helm of this global initiative. She joined the company in April and brings with her extensive experience working with two other iconic brands, both of which were also born in the U.S.A. — Apple and Nike. She most recently came from Apple where she was the senior director of worldwide marketing communications and advertising, and prior to Apple, Van Dyck was the global account director for Nike at Wieden & Kennedy.
Wieden & Kennedy was tapped to produced Levi’s first global advertising spot, Legacy, which appeared on YouTube on July 20, 2011 and already has 1.4+ million views on YouTube and it’s also embedded on Levi’s Go Forth landing page on Facebook. However, YouTube is just one media outlet where the Legacy spot has been viewed. According to Van Dyck, the Legacy spot in one day reached 325 million people around the world. Levis is already a global brand but Van Dyck says her role is to bring the brand into focus and give it consistency on a global scale.
As a huge fan of Levi’s, I really hope the Go Forth campaign brings voice to the brand in a new and inspiring way that helps turn around its sluggish sales by reaching a whole new generation that also becomes fans and customers of the iconic brand and in the process embarks on positive change locally and globally.
