Social Media Campaigns Take A Turn

These days social media has become the integral part of every marketing campaign and branding effort. Every brand is trying to harness the power of social media and many of them has received incredible results as well. Initially, social media marketing was all about status updates on famous social networking websites and uploading infographics. Now, the trend is shifting towards social media campaigns.

The traditional way of running social media campaigns have become the mantra of success for many brands. However, with the evolution of social media and society, the social media campaign was also bound to evolve. Now, brand managers do not limit their imagination to just offline or online media, they want to create a strong impact in the mind of their customers by combining the power of both

Smartphones have made the work easy for us, no matter what we do. many brand managers have made effective use of these mobiles and organise some out of the box events that not only create widespread awareness of a product but also result into an extravagant responses from the users.

Everybody loves some kind of creativity and innovations during the holiday season. To collect some extra fund for WWF Canada, Telus, a Canadian telecommunications company used the effectiveness of social media campaigns using the power of social media. Telus sponsored a vending machine loaded with pandas, the official logo of WWF. You just tweet #hometweethome with a unique pin displayed on the screen of vending machine to enable the machine. Once you tweet, the machine will give you a Panda (plush toy, not the real one) and Telus donate $1 to WWF Canada. So, you basically get a free panda and the WWF Canada gets a $1. The campaign gained much acceptance in Vancouver, where people got panda, WWF got funds and Telus generated the buzz that would’ve cost it millions otherwise.

A similar kind of campaign was run by Pepsi in 2012 where they installed a vending machine which vended a drink everytime you liked the brand’s page. People could use their smartphones to do that or could also like the page via the touchscreen provided. Social Media coupled with such real life events provide a larger perspective to the users and bind them stronger.

In Sweden Mcdonald’s also did something similar. They used social media to create a game called “Pong” that was constructed on a large-screen billboard. Just by using a smartphone and geo-location information, one’s phone could be directly connected to the billboard game. After 30 seconds of successful playing, players win a free coupon for a McDonalds food item of choice. Consumers were then asked to redeem their prize at the nearest McDonalds location. This simple strategy was able to engage the customer, cheer them up for a meal, promote the brand image of the company while boosting their sales by bringing their customer directly to their restaurant. A simple strategy, free food and a fun game can always be a method to bring in a crowd.

Social Media campaigns have undoubtedly transformed the presence of almost all brands on social media and have helped them evolve a great deal. However, they only way they can ensure future success is to evolve with time.

via SocialAppsHQ Blog http://www.socialappshq.com/blog/2013/12/20/social-media-campaigns-take-a-turn/