A successful social media campaign isn’t easily defined. Usually, high rates of engagement and “going viral” are good indications of an effective social media marketing campaign. However, the most memorable and award-winning social media campaigns are set apart because of their creativity and innovation.
Spotify hopes to change the podcast-advertising game — which has been largely stuck in the static past. The streaming music and audio company announced the launch of Streaming Ad Insertion (S. Spotify puts its vast trove of listener data to playful use in a new global out-of-home ad campaign—its largest OOH effort to date—with executions that playfully highlight some of the more.
10 Best Social Media Campaigns
When executed well, these types of digital marketing campaigns can connect with channel users on a personal level and help drive signficant change! Let’s explore some effective social media campaign examples that pushed boundaries and reinvented the process.
1. Disney #ShareYourEars Campaign
At the end of 2018, Disney wrapped up its third consecutive year partnering with Make-A-Wish for their #ShareYourEars social media campaign. For every photo of a person wearing Mickey Mouse ears with the hashtag #ShareYourEars, Disney pledged to donate $5 per post with a maximum of $1 million matched.
Why It Worked: Back in 1981, the first official Wish was granted to Frank “Bopsy” Salazar and part of his wish was to visit Disneyland. In fact, a third of all Make-A-Wish requests are granted by Disney. This modern campaign reinforces their partnership and is a sweet reference to the roots of their history together.
This successful social marketing campaign was a fun, visual, and easy way to create goodwill. Disney spurred this on by doubling the amount of money donated- bringing it to a total of $3 million raised. Anyone could take a picture and post it to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram easily.
By utilizing people’s desire to raise money for a good cause and giving them a set incentive, participants created a bevy of user-generated content and was a massive success in bringing attention to the campaign.
Disney
2. Taco Bell Jewelry Influencer Campaign
Back in 2013 when influencer marketing wasn’t as ubiquitous as it is now, Taco Bell was ahead of the curve by sending jewelry and handwritten notes to minor models and actresses known for their internet presence. They also included a gift card and an invitation to visit their test kitchens.
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Why It Worked: By using tongue-in-cheek humor and a set of “Instagrammable” objects, Taco Bell spread the word through the influencing power of Internet-famous females. Recipients included Chrissy Teigen, Jessica Lu, Acacia Brinley, Leah Cecil (Miss California 2012), Kristen Storms, and Alexa Losey. The personalized letters to each woman crafted a cheeky persona to Taco Bell’s brand.
Spotify connect mac iphone. The main conversations surrounding this stunt were sparked by the highly coveted gold rings (that spelled out “Taco Bell” in cursive). These rings ended up being so popular Taco Bell began selling them in limited quantities. It’s also birthed countless copycats on sites like Etsy, making this campaign a lasting success.
This is a great example of how to advertise effectively on social media, even if it’s not through paid ads through a popular platform.
3. Always #LikeAGirl Campaign
Always (the feminine hygiene product brand) launched the #LikeAGirl campaign with a video that challenged female stereotypes with the purpose of empowering young girls. The film showcased how the phrase “like a girl” has come to have a negative or weak connotation. They showed confident young girls redefining the phrase into a meaningful and powerful statement instead of an insult.
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Why It Worked: The video encouraged viewers to participate in what it meant to do things like a girl. Social media was flooded with anecdotes, personal achievements, and encouragement to adolescent girls.
The video has amassed over 66 million views on YouTube and has won several awards. According to Design and Art Direction, 76% of viewers stated they no longer saw the phrase with a negative connotation. 2 out of 3 men who watched the short film said “they’d now think twice before using “like a girl” as an insult.
By facilitating such a strong emotional connection with a large base of their consumers and beyond, Always created a viral hashtag that inspired everyone to lift up young women.
4. Spotify Wrapped
In 2017, Spotify unveiled a quirky-looking site that gave personalized statistics garnered from your listening data. Giving a much-needed update to their Year in Music campaign, Spotify used the same visuals as their data-driven billboards.
In 2018, Premium users were given the chance to have their personal Wrapped statistics broadcasted on digital billboards at landmarks like Times Square and Piccadilly Circus.
Why It Worked: Having personalized numbers over pleasing graphics made screenshotting these statistics and posting them on social media a no-brainer. By compiling listening data and presenting them to users visually, Spotify started a viral conversation at the end of every year (and kicked off the next with some free advertising). Showing your friends your listening habits is a unique way to show your personality and Spotify recognized that.
5. KFC’s Twitter Herbs and Spices
Sometime before October 2017, KFC unfollowed everyone except 6 people named Herb and the 5 Spice Girls.
After this Easter egg joke about their famous recipe was discovered, the tweet went viral and was shared hundreds of thousands of times. KFC rewarded the man behind the tweet with a custom painting and 52 gift cards.
Why It Worked: KFC’s sneaky gag paid off by sparking an organic conversation through the discovery of their hidden joke. They attempted to continue the viral discussion by commissioning a whimsical painting of Colonel Sanders and the Twitter user behind the revelation. This social strategy was genius in its playfulness and simplicity. KFC came off as a lighthearted brand that likes to have fun with its customers.
@edgette22 on Twitter
6. Apple #ShotOniPhone Campaign
Apple’s #ShotOniPhone campaign is one of the most successful social media campaigns ever. Following a successful billboard campaign featuring photos shot on- you guessed it- iPhones, Apple encouraged social media users to share their own photos with a chance for their work to appear on a billboard. Over the past couple of years, that hashtag has taken off and Apple’s official Instagram is dedicated exclusively to pictures #ShotoniPhone.
Why It Worked: With one of the biggest pools of consumers under their belt, Apple leveraged user-generated content to celebrate their technology in creative and visual ways. Artists tend to use the hashtag to showcase their creative skills without the use of expensive or excessive equipment. In return, Apple gets to show off how easy it is to create high-quality content with their product. The hashtag #ShotoniPhone has over 6.5 million entries on Instagram alone.
People with iPhones could easily submit their pictures on social media, making this a simple and authentic ongoing campaign that shows no signs of slowing down (for as long as iPhones are popular, at least).
7. Airbnb: We Are Here Facebook Live Campaign
When Airbnb first launched “Experiences” on their brand-new Trips platform in 2016, they decided to give users a first-hand look by live-streaming various Experiences over the course of 24 hours. The twist was each experience was filmed on a helmet-mounted camera, making viewers feel more like they were actually there. They showcased Venezuelan cooking in Miami, ocean activism in Cape Town, surfing in Los Angeles, performance art in Paris, street dancing in Seoul, and more.
Why It Worked: Airbnb expertly included consumers in real-time and gave as good as a first-hand experience as they could. Anyone with an internet connection could view the Experiences and imagine themselves being there. The authentic nature of live streaming and on-the-ground Experiences was a natural fit. It was also a newer form of social media interaction, which was an exciting risk for Airbnb that paid off.
This is a great example of why your business needs social media marketing to grow in a meaningful and engaging way!
8. OfficeMax Elf Yourself
OfficeMax launched a website in 2006 called Elf Yourself where people could upload pictures of themselves to generate videos of dancing elves.
When this marketing campaign first launched, Facebook had just opened to the public. The “viral” nature of Elf Yourself spread through email. Now, Elf Yourself has a Facebook AR filter and is shared countless times on various social platforms each year they relaunch the site.
The longevity of this campaign is a testament to how effective the Elf Yourself campaign is and how adaptable OfficeMax has proven themselves.
Why It Worked: People enjoy humor and personalized content, and OfficeMax was pioneering corporate viral content with this idea. Back when it first launched, the website was gaining 200 hits per second with 8 elves created per second. Now, OfficeMax/Office Depot (merged in 2013) is constantly adapting with mobile apps and social media filters that offer easy ways to share your elves with others. Sometimes they offer coupons of up to 25% off after you share a post. This annual holiday delight has no signs of disappearing anytime soon.
9. Lonely Whale Foundation #StopSucking Campaign
The Lonely Whale Foundation launched a social media campaign challenging people to #StopSucking and cease their use of single-use plastic straws. Straws are one of the biggest polluters of oceans and other waterways. After this campaign launched, it quickly became viral thanks to celebrities like Adrian Grenier (the co-founder), Ellen Pompeo, Russell Wilson, and Emmanuelle Chiriqui. Because of these efforts, Seattle has banned plastic straws and the state of California has banned restaurants from automatically giving patrons plastic straws. Starbucks has officially banned single-use plastic straws partially due to direct efforts from the Lonely Whale Foundation.
Why It Worked: The playful humor behind the hashtag #StopSucking made a serious issue eye-catching and shareable. Lonely Whale harnessed star power and the desire to do good in order to build a conversation and draw attention to the cause with a challenge.
They offered instructions on two ways to complete the challenge, which encouraged people to participate and bring others in. Before you posted, you could generate a Challenge Code URL to track your challenge post’s influence.
Even by using purely organic content, this campaign reached over 74 million people across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram- far beyond the non-profit bubble.
10. #StraightOuttaCompton Movie Campaign
In 2015, Beats by Dr. Dre and Universal Pictures created a website called StraightOuttaSomewhere.com to promote the biographical drama Straight Outta Compton (based on rap group N.W.A.). Visitors could create their own #StraightOutta memes and input any place and picture. This quickly made the hashtag go viral as people shared their creative and personal posts with the website soon reaping over 10.8 million visits.
Why It Worked: #StraightOuttaCompton became the number one topic on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram within 24 hours due to its highly customizable and shareable format. Several celebrities wanting to curate content for social media joined in, including Serena Williams, Bette Midler, Ryan Reynolds, LeBron James, Ava DuVernay, and Jennifer Lopez. This helped boost the meme’s popularity even further. Even Oxford University joined in on the fun.
Spotify and hulu for students. https://tfqzdc.weebly.com/blog/spotify-app-ads-not-playing. Posts ranged from clever to hilarious to personal, and there was something new yet recognizable in each one through utilizing N.W.A.’s iconic logo. By using user-generated content, the organic reach for this film reached heights that would have been unachievable without this effective social media campaign.
Contact MARION for Help Building Innovative Social Media Campaigns Today!
You’re interested in building an innovative and effective social media marketing campaign for your brand, but where do you start?
MARION is a Houston-based marketing agency that offers social media marketing in Houston and Austin. Our experts can build creative campaigns that engage your audience and drive results.
Stop paying for “marketing” and start paying for results! Contact MARION today to schedule a consultation!
About Tiffany Wang
Tiffany Wang is a social media marketing intern at MARION with a background in digital journalism and PR, and a strong global perspective from working in China, Hong Kong, and the UK. She enjoys the blend of creativity and business through her work managing social accounts and curating content for MARION's clients.
Spotify has won the hearts — and marketing dollars — of digital agencies.
On Thursday, Spotify updated its desktop app. The company added song lyrics, a revamped friend feed and daily viral charts to the music-streaming service — improvements welcomed by marketers who have embraced the service as an effective advertising platform.
Spotify has grown to more than 60 million monthly active users, 15 million of whom are paying subscribers, according to the company. That leaves 45 million free users who consume music on the platform each month. But they’re also listening to, seeing or even watching ads from the world’s top brands, often because digital agencies advised those companies to advertise on Spotify.
“We’ve become very bullish on Spotify, especially in the last 6 to 12 months,” said John Tuchtenhagen, svp of media at Digitas. “They’ve made huge strides in the competitive space, mostly on scale, but also on better backend technology, products and targeting.”
Spotify, like Pandora before it, now integrates with traditional radio-buying software. If Taco Bell, which has run several campaigns on Spotify through Digitas, wants to reach an audience aged 18 to 34, Spotify can guarantee that, the same way any radio station could. “If your audience is 18 to 34, every buyer puts Pandora and now Spotify on recommendations,” said Tuchtenhagen.
Pandora towers over the its younger competitor on scale, with 81.5 million monthly listeners at the end of 2014, according to Pandora’s fourth quarter earnings report. But the service is a lean-back experience — the whole value proposition is, set it and forget it — whereas Spotify is a more active experience. Spotify enables users to build playlists, see what their friends are listening to and look up song lyrics, among other features.
Because of that hands-on experience, “we’re seeing Spotify as a main opportunity to get into the music arena for a variety of digital assets, not just audio ads,” said Scott Symonds, managing director of media at AKQA. The digital agency has run Spotify campaigns for Gap, Old Navy and Fiat, among others. AKQA also regularly buys ads on Pandora, which has delivered “very positive results” for the agency, said Symonds.
Compared to other music-streaming services, Spotify users spend a lot of time looking at and engaging with their devices. That’s attractive to agencies, which can now buy video ads through Spotify.
“We love their video product,” said Tuchtenhagen. “There’s not nearly enough supply to meet the advertiser demand for video online, and we need more dogs in that hunt — especially one with young, tech-savvy audiences like Spotify.”
Digital Marketing Free Download As Incentive To Listen On Spotify Playlists
Spotify CPMs hover between $5 and $30, depending on the ad unit and targeting blend. That’s roughly comparable to Pandora, said Tuchtenhagen, though obviously video-heavy advertisers will pay a higher ad rate. Viewability on Spotify isn’t a big concern for advertisers, several agency executives agreed, because the platform has tech to ensure most ads are heard: It pauses ads if users mute their device volume and, on desktop, pauses videos if users minimize the player. But even if video ads run while people are listening but not watching, that’s not necessarily a loss for advertisers.
“Like advertising on TV, you don’t have to necessarily see the ad to be impacted by the content,” said Bernard Gershon, president of digital advisory firm Gershon Media.
From Spotify’s perspective, ads serve a dual purpose: They generate a pivotal revenue stream for the company, but they also prompt users to pay for Spotify Premium, which costs $10 a month. More than 80 percent of Spotify subscribers started as free users, noted Spotify CEO Daniel Ek in a November blog post.
Spotify’s free tier “is not as flexible or uninterrupted as premium,” wrote Ek. “If you’ve ever used Spotify’s free service on mobile, you know what I mean — just like radio, you can pick the kind of music you want to hear but can’t control the specific song that’s being played, or what gets played next, and you have to listen to ads. We believed that as fans invested in Spotify with time … they would eventually want the full freedom offered by our premium tier, and they’d be willing to pay for it.”
The data Spotify collects on users’ listening habits, geographic location and social circles (through Facebook connections) is also appealing to advertisers, even if it pales in comparison to data Google and Facebook have on their users.
“Data is huge, and for [Spotify] to have sign-in data and multiplatform data — to see you on desktop and mobile — is really strong,” said Symonds. “We’re still at the tip of the iceberg there, but that’s what everyone wants in the marketing world right now.”
Digital Marketing Free Download As Incentive To Listen On Spotify Account
The Spotify brand itself is attractive to agencies and their clients: For a long time, it has been the hippest place to advertise in the music-streaming space. But that is beginning to change as music-streaming site SoundCloud grows in popularity as a place to discover new music and connect directly with artists.
Digital Marketing Free Download As Incentive To Listen On Spotify Playlist
“Spotify is sexy, and it is a place to be, especially to get millennials, but it’s not as sexy as SoundCloud, which is still developing its ad capability,” said Louisa Ferguson, a strategist at Huge and a writer at music blog Indie Shuffle.
“SoundCloud is the new cool kid,” added Tuchtenhagen. “Spotify on a recommendation isn’t sizzly any more. That’s why it makes sense they’re trying to scale so hard right now, because the shine is off the apple.”
Digital Marketing Free Download As Incentive To Listen On Spotify Subscription
Main image courtesy Spotify (modified by Eric Blattberg / Digiday)
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