Some of the most successful marketing campaigns rely on website content that people will want to share with their friends via social media. In today’s digital environment, social media is the number one channel to deliver potentially viral content. It’s quick, cheap, and can reach a massive audience. But how do you come up with a campaign that engages existing customers and attracts a wider audience? For inspiration, here are five of the most successful social media campaigns of all time.
1. The Blair Witch Project
In 1998, the Internet was still in its infancy. By using college message boards and open forums, the marketers started a conversation around the film by releasing fake “missing” posters and “evidence” to make it look like three youths had gone missing in the woods looking for the Blair Witch. There was also footage found of them before they went missing. Was this documentary film really true? It soon created a buzz around the Internet. They then released Blairwitch.com, which received around 10 million hits before the film’s release. Keeping the website updated with video content and having a blog writer continually post regarding the missing persons kept readers engaged. It cost just $22,000 to produce the film. When it was released, it made around $29 million in its first week. It went on to make $248 million at the box office.
2. Blendtec: Will it Blend?
Winning several viral video campaign awards, the Blendtec Total Blender videos showed the kitchen appliance destroying everyday items including Nike shoes, a Rubik’s cube, and an Apple iPhone. They then optimized the videos for search engines by tagging them with the names of these items, spreading awareness of the Blendtec videos to fans of the related products. The series of videos has since received over 100,000,000 hits, and after their initial campaign, retail sales of their blenders increased by around 700 percent.
3. Old Spice: Isaiah Mustafa Response Videos
Isaiah Mustafa, the star of the hit Old Spice “Smell like a man, man” commercials returned in a video series in which he responded to fans’ questions via social media. The creative people at Old Spice shot around 180 videos in all, and even answered questions from famous Tweeters like Ryan Seacrest, Perez Hilton, and Ellen DeGeneres. The brand’s Twitter following increased 2700 percent, and web traffic went up 300 percent. After six months, sales were up by 27 percent – proof that creating buzz on social media can directly impact the bottom line.
4. Burger King: “Whopper Sacrifice”
What do you love more, your friends or the Whopper? This was the question Burger King asked Facebook followers in a recent social media campaign. The “Whopper Sacrifice” app gave users a coupon for a free hamburger if they deleted 10 friends from their Facebook list. What made it different was the fact that the “friend” you sacrificed received a notification saying they had been sacrificed for a free Whopper. Facebook shut down the campaign after only a couple of weeks, saying it contradicted their business plan, but it generated massive brand buzz for an “old” product.
5. Oreo: Super Bowl Tweet
Some of the most effective social media campaigns are the result of seizing opportunities and delivering well-timed content. The perfect example is the now-famous Oreo tweet. During the 34-minute power outage of the Super Bowl XLVII, Oreo’s marketing team quickly posted a Tweet: “Power Out? No problem. You can still dunk in the dark,” featuring an attached photo of an Oreo lit by a spotlight. It was retweeted more than 15,000 times over the next hour and gained a lot of media coverage, helping to personalize the brand. This marketing triumph also proves that sometimes simplicity is key, and timing is everything.
The bottom line is that the most successful social media campaigns feature content that is intriguing, surprising, amusing, edgy, and simply ingenious. To stand out, you need to publish unique content that people will want to share. Sometimes, you need to deliver the message at precisely the right time. Social media is going to be around for a while, so why not get creative? There’s nothing stopping any brand from creating the next viral sensation.