Using social to launch products – Facebook is still a platform that brands are using to drive launches. We did it with the Explorer 2 years ago and brands from Burberry (fragrance) to Heinz are now on board. When it comes to using social to create buzz around new products, Heinz and Cadbury are two of the brands to beat. Cadbury now defaults to social for all its product launches, having previously used Google+ and Facebook to build excitement around its new Bitsa Wispa and Dairy Milk Bubbly bars. And Heinz called on its Facebook community to help promote new variations on its Ketchup and soup products . The Heinz Beanz Facebook page has a highly engaged community of 150,000 fans that call themselves the Beaniez, with some even posting photos of their Heinz tattoos. The Five Beanz product was created to reflect the fact that people’s tastes change as they get older, so the campaign was named ‘My Grown Up Beanz’. It launched a Facebook quiz app that told people which of the five beans they had grown up to become in response to a series of questions about their personality traits. Ollerton said the idea was to get people excited about the product but also to tie into above-the-line marketing. To encourage people to take part and share the app, five winners were picked every hour and sent a personalised bean and every user that invited 10 people to take the quiz was given a goodie bag. Heinz also offered Facebook fans a coupon so they could try the product, but to try and prevent people from downloading loads of coupons each voucher was tied to a Facebook ID. This also gave Heinz some data on the shopping habits of its fans. Ollerton said the campaign ran for two weeks and achieved impressive results: 22,143 took the quiz to apply for a personalised bean. More than 10,000 users shared the app. The campaign reached 10.8m people on Facebook. It reached 3m people reached outside of Facebook through Twitter, blogs and news sites. The Heinz Facebook community grew by 30,000 extra Beaniez. It’s not easy for FMCG companies to generate excitement among consumers around product launches, but Heinz and Cadbury are in the fortunate position of having well-established brands with loyal customer bases. Both brands have also taken time to cultivate active communities by engaging and rewarding them through social media. This allows them to then run campaigns such as the Five Beanz launch, which both increased customer loyalty and helped to gain extra publicity for the brand.
Fans are now at the core of everything we do – in fact Lady Gaga is a great example of someone who sees the value of the 1% - the superfans she already has, and using them to activate awareness. Wispa used this to launch their new product, Bitsa Wispa. They worked with their most loyal fan to have her launch their latest product This differentiates it from the traditional product launches consumers are used to seeing, and encourages Wispa fans to share the news with their Facebook friends. The photo of Mead holding the new product has attracted more than 1,500 ‘likes’ and 278 comments, meaning the launch will have also shown up in their friends’ news feeds. Cadbury is a good example of a brand utilising social effectively to generate buzz around its products and give the impression that its fans have some ownership over the brand. This is a cost effective way to leverage the brand's passionate customer base, establishing a market for a new product before it starts to appear in shops.
This idea all focuses around the “ Famebook Fan ” is to use a natural, organic comment on a Facebook page and create a campaign concept from it, usually adding a layer of surreal comedy to it. Bodyform, a sanitary towels company used this to great effect - after Facebook fan Richard Neil posted a tongue-in-cheek accusation to the company for altering the perception of what going through the period really entails, the brand did the unthinkable. They created a parody video featuring their “CEO” who was directly respoding to the fan’s comment. The act of elevating some kind of user input has yielded brands loads of benefits, such as: Portrays the brand in a more human manner, making the brand more approachable and easy to forgive when something slips through the crack. By adding a layer of comedy and a sprinkle of shock, they generate a lot of sharing, buzz online and earned media. Humour is proven to be one of the most powerful sharing triggers online. Bridges the gap between creative planners and strategists, and the audience they are trying to target - opening up a bidirectional conversation. It gives users a reason to be fans and engage with brands. There are many different ways in which you can use the input of your social media audience at the core of your advertising campaign. Being OK with losing some control and understanding the motivation of your audience to contribute with content or actions is key. From there on, it is a rather sweet journey to reach, advocacy, and engagement-lands.
Skittles is a brand that really has placed the fan and real world activation front and center in social media. Mob the Rainbow was a Facebook campaign that was created to activate and engage Skittles’ large social media audience. The program enlisted fans to take action on Facebook to participate in real-life, physical events. The first mob, called 'Valentine the Rainbow', launched in February 2010 and prompted fans to send a Valentine’s Day card to a person who doesn’t get much love the rest of the year—a lonely meter maid. In the week leading up to Valentine’s Day, 43,000 fans joined the cause and sent a loving greeting to our meter maid. The cards were delivered by a guitar-toting, serenading cupid, who arrived in a van clad with Skittles stickers. The entire event was filmed and distributed on Facebook. This particular activation was based around motivating its fans to gather against a fictional caracter, David Phoenix who wanted to take on the rainbow. Fans voted to drown him in Skittles so the brand set up a real world activation and put David inside. The number of skittles covering him increased as the number of likes on FB increased, giving people a reason to share and motivate others. They could also see the Skittles being poured on to David via a 24 hour camera. Some other Skittles examples (if you want them) We quickly followed with 'Poll the Rainbow', asking the mob what should be done next. Fans voted for a Skittles Gifting Tree, and within 24 hours, we outfitted a real tree with hundreds of packs of Skittles. Passersby flocked to enjoy the fruit of the Rainbow. Again, the event was filmed and distributed on Facebook, so fans could witness what they created. For 'Scholarship the Rainbow', fans collected 100,000 Likes to award one lucky student with a scholarship to bowling college. In one week, our bowling scholar was handed a giant rainbow check for $10,000. We ended the year with 'Crash the Rainbow', by crashing an 85-year old grandmother’s birthday party with hundreds of fan comments, photos, and videos. A photo album of the party was uploaded to Facebook and participants were tagged.
Mcdonalds hosts online social media discussion around the myths and connectes with its customers directly -- around McDonalds http://www.fastcocreate.com/1681832/would-you-like-to-see-how-we-make-our-fries-with-that-behind-mcdonalds-big-transparency-play Since the campaign began, McDonald’s Canada has fielded more than 14,000 questions and responded with text on the website, photos, and the YouTube videos, which have earned millions of views. There are currently 7,100 questions and answers live on the site. This has shown the company to be open, honest and transparent, even answering difficult questions in social spaces.
Felix Baumgartner’s Oct. 14 jump from the middle of the earth’s stratosphere, sponsored by Red Bull, made social media and space history. The almost 23-mile free fall jump set records, stunning and amazing people around the world, who reacted on social media. This represents a very specific content marketing strategy for RedBull – remarkable content gets people talking and is shared, but is not about the brand or company itself. Rather it is attached to the brand’s pillars. In this case, Red Bull has now become synonymous with dare-devil adrenaline based sports (rarely see it talking about the product itself) and the jump is a prime example of how to use content around a moment in time.
Ben & Jerry’s is jumping on Instagram-mania with a promotion that challenges fans to take photos that capture “euphoria.” The winning photos will be featured in B&J ads in that person’s neighborhood. To enter, fans have to tag #captureeuphoria to their Instagram photos. The subject of the photos is vaguely defined and has to somehow hew to the theme. About 20 photos will be chosen between now and January. The winning pics will be featured in local print, bus station and billboard ads near the fan’s home. (More info about the program can be found here.) With more than 100 million users and Facebook’s imprimatur, Instagram is an attractive media juggernaut for marketers looking to woo a young demographic. B&J has 123,000 followers on Instagram, a respectable figure though far behind others like Starbucks, Burberry and Nike.
Pinterest drives more traffic than Twitter for Sony Back in June Sony gave us an insight into its Pinterest strategy, which began with research into what brand content was already being shared.By knowing what fans wanted, this allowed the Sony team to plan its potential boards and analyse the assets they already had in its Flickr community, in house and in its archives. At launch, Sony utilised other channels to promote its Pinterest account. The team also increased pin frequency to four pins a day and created additional boards as needed to keep momentum going. By June it had more than 2,300 brand followers, 1,200 likes on Sony pins and more than 2,500 pins from the Sony website. More importantly, Sony’s Pinterest boards have driven: an 800% increase in traffic from Pinterest to the Sony store website. 2.5 times the traffic driven by Twitter (which has 80,000 followers) to the website. 10 times more clicks of the Pin-it button than the Tweet This one. BUT it is not for all brands. It is very obvious this is a good use case for Sony. For some brands, like We-Vibe, there is not a clear use case. This could very easily veer off into the wrong types of conversation.
This approach to memes is something that is becoming an increasingly popular social tactic among large brands, capturing the popularity of sites like memecreator and challenge of the New Yorker’s comic caption contests in a fun and brand-relevant way. This video jumps on the popularity of Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe and features the A&F guys singing her song, shirtless around the world. Instantly becoming a shareable relevant piece of content that is scrappy to produce and easy to share
With a large community of more than 40 million blogs on the social networking site, Tumblr is another medium in which brands can distribute their content and generate a larger following. Tumbleloggers can follow different brands and interact with them by clicking the “like” heart icon, posting a reply or reblogging the post — a great way for brands to get their name tossed around the site. Tumblr blogs are dominated by visual content. Fora publishing brand, like the Los Angeles Times, being able to focus on posting eye-catching images on their Tumblr— as opposed to lengthy written content, which can be found on their actual website — can help attract more visitors, looking for fast information to browse through.
Trend #7Pinterest is a good traffic driver but not for all brands
Trend #8Memes enable responsive marketing
Trend #9Tumblr is a lifestyle-oriented magazine opportunity
Connect with meGemma CravenEVP, NY Group Head | Social@OgilvyEmail: gemma.craven@ogilvy.comTwitter: @gemsieLinkedin: linkedin.com/gemsiecravenSocial for brands site:Social.ogilvy.com 12
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