Some brands really manage to capture a particular situation and turn it to their advantage. Highlighted below are three of my favourite examples over the past couple of years.
Oreo's Dark Dunking
One of the best examples of capitalising on a social media opportunity was Oreo's clever response to the power going out during the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens superbowl game last year.Within ten minutes of the lights going out, Oreo's marketeers seized their opportunity by designing and tweeting this brilliant ad:
According to Ives and Parekh (2013) Oreo's tweet recieved 10,000 retweets within the first hour. Millions is spent on advertising for every Superbowl and Oreo's brilliant tweet, which was arguably one of the most memorable adverts that came out of the event, was completely free. All it required was some quick thinking from Oreo's marketing team to take advantage of the situation. This truly shows the power that social media can have when used in the right way.
Bodyform's Rant Reply
According to Stampler (2012) after receiving a long rant on their Facebook wall that complained about the fact that many maxipad adverts created a false world of a happy period, Bodyform responded with this witty, tongue in cheek response, which is one of the best pieces of corporate produced satire I've come across:
Source: Youtube, BodyformChannel
At the time of writing their video had over 5.5 million views. This is a great example of how a relatively mundane, functional product can be brought forward to the spotlight in a very different angle to the usual advertising methods, which really grabs people's attention.
Smart Car's Cr*p Response
Another great example of a company responding to a complaint in a witty, attention grabbing manner is Smart Car's response to Clayton Hove's tweet. Clayton's tweet had lightly mocked the humble Smart Car, implying that it couldn't withstand the force of a bird defecating on it. According to Sam Gibbs from Gizmodo, someone at Smart did the maths and worked out that it would take roughly 4.5 million pigeons to discharge on a Smart Car to crush it. This was communicated back to Clayton using the below infographic.
Source: Wrenn (2012)
This is a great example of how you can bring humour into your Twitter communications, humanising the process of social media marketing and increasing the likelihood of consumers engaging with your brand and feeling positive towards it.
Conclusion
One point that I want to highlight from this post is how beneficial it can be to your brand to try and humanise your social media communication. Many companies simply schedule vast multitudes of tweets to be sent at regular intervals which is effective to a point, but it is important to supplement this with topical and where possible light hearted and humorous communications. Attempting to do something out of the ordinary, if done well, can have a large impact on the social media spectrum and will be poignant in the memories of many, as are the examples highlighted above.
Works Cited
Gibbs, S. (2012) "Smart Shows You Precisely How to Deal With Twitter Trolls Using Poop". Gizmodo (Online) Available at <http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2012/06/smart-shows-you-precisely-how-to-deal-with-twitter-trolls-using-bird-poop/>
Ives, N. & Parekh, R. (2013) "Marketers Jump on Super Bowl Blackout With Real-Time Twitter Campaigns" Advertising Age (Online) Available at <http://adage.com/article/special-report-super-bowl/marketers-jump-super-bowl-blackout-twitter/239575/>
Stampler, L. (2012) "The 7 Best On-The-Fly Corporate Social Media Comebacks Of The Year". Business Insider (Online) Available at <http://www.businessinsider.com/the-best-social-media-responses-of-the-year-2012-12?op=1>
Wrenn, E. (2012) "Twitter user jokes how 'a bird cr*pped on a Smart Car and totalled it'... so firm proves him wrong with maths (and wins legions of fans for their efforts). Daily Mail (Online) Available at <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2162701/Twitter-user-jokes-bird-cr-pped-Smart-Car-totalled--firm-proves-wrong-maths-wins-legions-fans-efforts.html>
No comments:
Post a Comment