Social media is an incredibly powerful tool and as its influence grows year on year, it is essential for brands to engage with the social sphere in order to achieve success and become a part of the conversation. From environmental awareness to brands trolling their competitors, social media has seen some sensational and inspirational social campaigns in 2018. Here are some of our Leeds agency’s top picks:
Spotify
Spotify’s harbouring of obscure data from its users created the quirky, tongue-in-cheek ‘2018 Goals’ campaign to kick off the year. The company’s in-house team scoured the search and playlist data of their users weird and wonderful streaming habits to develop a branded ad experience, showcased across billboards globally. The campaign has been described as ‘hyperlocal’, bringing the brand to the streets and giving the digital brand a physical presence within communities to bridge the gap between the online streaming service and the public.
Why was this effective? Despite largely being an offline campaign, the billboards were widely shared across social media by the masses, and even by the artists themselves. The very nature of the campaign also embodied the essence of social media’s original function, to create connections between its users, who could all bond over the shared humour of unique listening habits.
KFC
KFC proved that all publicity is good publicity by using their negative feedback to create a bizarre yet highly successful social campaign. Taking to Twitter, the brand addressed the numerous tweets they received expressing the dissatisfaction over their chips after a scathing 2014 tweet resurfaced, promoted by the brand itself! Using this opportunity, the brand addressed the social conversation by responding to a tweet to announce that they were changing the recipe of their chips. This ploy went down a storm with customers who rejoiced that not only were better chips coming but also that KFC actually listened to their consumers. Well played, KFC.
Lidl
Let’s be honest, we all love a bit of friendly rivalry and trolling between top brands and that is exactly the gift we received this Christmas courtesy of Lidl. They provided the perfect example of reactive social media marketing with their quick response to John Lewis’ much-awaited Christmas advert. Cheekily commenting on the price differences between their brands, Lidl took to Twitter to post a picture of one of their £89.99 keyboards captioned “It’s a Lidl bit funny’ and tweeting “Just because you don’t have £872 to spend on a piano, doesn’t mean you can’t be the next Elton.” Bravo Lidl.
Iceland
Gone are the days when banned advertisements meant they just disappeared, censored away from the public eye, today this just makes a campaign all the more interesting to consumers because everyone loves a bit of forbidden fruit. The banning of Iceland’s TV Christmas advert for their ‘A Christmas Without Palm Oil’ campaign caused a huge social stir and uproar, which ironically probably did much more to boost the brand’s agenda than an approved, expensive TV ad would have done. The power of social media shone through as people rallied around to share Iceland’s campaign and spread the word of the perils of Palm Oil and the brand’s newfound social conscience. An online petition to release the banned ad on TV reached over 850,000 signatures as the campaign went viral. Thank god for social media saving the day (and the orang-utans)!
We don’t know about you, but our Leeds Digital Agency can’t wait to see what gems 2019 brings!
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