5 Best Social Media Campaigns 2012

2012 was a big year for social media. There was a large number of social media driven campaigns launched by businesses. Here are the 5 best social media campaigns 2012.

1.      Cadbury

The chocolate manufacturer has always been one of first companies to embrace social media. Their way of celebrating reaching one million fans on Facebook was no exception. However, when the company realised that only 16% of their fans saw the content, they posted on Facebook they wanted to increase the level of engagement among their fans. As a test to see what their fans would engage with, the company built a giant Facebook “like” thumb out of Diary Milk chocolate. As part of the campaign they also made use of teaser ads to build up to the event. As a result of the campaign, Cadbury gained 40,000 new Facebook friends. Around 150,000 individual users interacted with the campaign. Read more about Cadburys social media campaign.

2.      Nike at the Olympics

The London Olympics was heavily documented throughout the world. Due to this, the overwhelming majority of people knew that the official sponsor for the event was Adidas. This, however, didn’t faze Nike. The company placed massive billboards throughout London. Due to this, their #makeItCount campaign went viral. The campaign documented 11 athletes from 3 countries, showing how they “make it count” by pushing their boundaries physically in various ways.

Not only did Nike launch the #MakeItCount campaign. The company also launched the #findgreatness hashtag in order to combat the millions of pounds Adidas spent on the hashtag #takethestage. Reports from the event showed that there were over 16,000 tweets associated with Nike and the Olympics. In comparison, Adidas only gained 9,295. Overall, Nike attracted 166,718 new Facebook fans, whereas Adidas only gained 80,761.

3.      The Heinz Facebook Quiz

As a brand, Heinz has always been quick to utilise social media to build hype around new products. To celebrate the launch of the Heinz Five Beans Variety, the company created a Facebook quiz app. The answers dictated what bean the user had grown up to become. To encourage users to share the quiz, Heinz picked five winners each hour who were then sent a personalised bean. The company also provided each user, who invited ten friends to undertake the questionnaire, with a free goody bag. Facebook users were also provided with a free coupon so they could sample the new product for free.

The campaign ran for over two weeks. During this time over 22,000 individuals took part in the questionnaire. Furthermore, more than 10,000 people shared the app on Facebook. The campaign reached a total of 10.8 million people on Facebook. Whilst outside of Facebook and Twitter the campaign reached 3 million people. Finally, the two week campaign helped Heinz grow their Facebook following by over 30,000 fans.

4.      Prometheus #areyouseeingthis

Prior to the launch of the Twentieth Century Fox film Prometheus, there ran a successful social media campaign. The campaign was helped by adverts on both Channel 4 and Zeebox. A 3 minute trailer was launched simultaneously on both of the formats, where viewers were invited to use the hashtag #areyouseeingthis.

Following this, Channel 4 then released a forty second capture of viewer’s tweets. Reports have shown that this resulted in a spike of interaction around the campaign. The spike resulted in 4000 individual tweets using the #areyouseeingthis campaign. All in all, reports have shown that the campaign potentially reached over 15million users. The only downfall to the campaign was the film itself.

 

5.      #BullyMovie

A documentary was created in 2012 called “bully”. The documentary showed childhood bullying at its worst. The goal of this campaign was to increase awareness and also to build an online community against bullying. The campaign organisers set themselves the goal of making it a trending topic in one day. This meant that they required one million tweets containing the #BullyMovie hashtag.

The core message of the movie was that 13 million children were being bullied in America. The campaign also revealed a further 3 million children were avoiding school for fear of being bullied. The campaign was an overwhelming success. 17 year old student Katy Butler put her face on the campaign. With her help, her community grew to over 500,000 and the #BullyMovie gained over one million tweets.