You must have noticed #AlexFromTarget or #IceBucketChallenge being the runaway success of 2014 on social media, both originating in America. India also has its share of viral trends as brands and non profits spent ever increasing portion of their resources on social media to gain eyeballs and engage with their customers.
Every day people on Facebook, Twitter and other social media channels are bombarded with new hashtags, contests and other campaigns to hook them up to brand and social causes. While some campaigns stand out as trending content or on other form of social media metric, many sink without a trace.
Here we present Our Choice of 5 Top Social Media Campaigns of 2014. While these have top of the chart social media metrics to boast, we have limited ourselves to the uniqueness of campaign and engagement it brought with targeted audience.
Nat Geo Cover Shot
National Geographic India launched “My Nat Geo Covershot” on Facebook and amplified the contest on other platforms to gives fans a chance to use their photography skills and get featured on cover of National Geographic. Fans had to upload the photos with suitable caption and also had the chance to win travel packages. The campaign was followed up with daily updates, status and prompt winner announcements. In this period the FB page of National Geographic received millions of likes and generated buzz for the channel.
The USP of the Campaign: Using strength of Facebook as photo showcase platform.
Happy New Year Movie
Shah Rukh Khan's ‘Happy New Year' released its trailer on social media including Whatsapp. The fans on Twitter and Facebook also interacted with SRK, Deepika Padukone, Abhishek Bachchan, Boman Irani, Sonu Sood, Vivaan Shah and Farah Khan including receiving digigraph posters from Film's official twitter handle. The film hogged the trending topics for many days with hashtags #HNYTrailer, #HNY, #Indiawale #HNYTeamRocksHouston and other related pieces of campaigns. While the star cast was a guaranteed viral generator for the film but the execution team worked well to bring everything under one cohesive plan and generating a heightened buzz before the release. It was reported that the film grossed more than Rs 200 crore during its run.
The USP of the Campaign: Execution of mega launch with coverage across channels and geographies.
Pond's Selfie Ready
Folks at Hindustan Lever commissioned this campaign to go with latest craze – Selfie. The insight was spot on that while clicking selfies, people are most conscious of their skin. Campaign planners then executed this well by having a microsite as well as using twitter, instagram, youtube and facebook. They gave out skin care tips and kept the interest growing by having a selfie song. The campaign ran for more than a month and remained one of the best remembered social media initiative by a brand this year.
The USP of the Campaign: Deep Brand Insight and using that to build a cohesive campaign.
Rice Bucket Challenge
Close on the heels of Ice Bucket Challenge, The ‘rice bucket challenge' was the innovative idea of Hyderabad-based Manju Latha Kalanidhi who posted the challenge and asked friends to cook or buy one bucketful of rice and feed the poor in the locality. It was later known that she is a journalist and reports on rice market. "I personally think the [Ice Bucket Challenge] is ideal for the American demographic, but in India, we have loads of other causes to promote", she elaborated to online news outlet NPR. A facebook page dedicated to the challenge gained nearly 50,000 fans within 10 days besides scores of people from all walks of life donated to the cause and joined the campaign. It was widely covered by print & TV news outlets generating unprecedented buzz for this user generated initiative.
The USP of the Campaign: Simple message and social Good.
Gillette #MyRoleModel
This year father's day belonged to P&G as it launched Gillette #MyRoleModel campaign targeting Men of 15-45 year age group. The campaign was well executed and had a 360 degree approach with Hashtag embedded TVC, Blogger outreach, Contests and giveaways. The highlight was innovativeness of the selfie campaign where Father-Son duo can put shaving foam and share the picture to win prizes. It was well supported with offline activities where cricketers interacted with fans and chatted about their father being the role models. What helped the brand is that the lead endorser of the campaign Rahul Dravid is himself a role model and a campaign like this around him was sure to generate buzz across channels.
The USP of the Campaign: 360 degree approach.
While now you have a list of top 5 social Media Campaigns of 2014, we can't resist mentioning one of our in house campaigns that generated similar buzz and engagement for one of our Client.
Tangerine's #TangerineColorsOfLife
Tangerine, the newest buzz in the Home Fashion Industry, decided to change its positioning to "Colors of Life" in March 2014. Across a 3 month period – April-June, tangerine organised various activities, right from videos regarding some celebs talking about "What Colors Mean to them" to a 12 week long contest asking people what Colors mean to them. The campaign received a huge buzz on social media with more than 22000 entries across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp and Phone. #TangerineColorOfLife hashtag also trended on Twitter for two continuous days. The campaign helped the brand in setting its new positioning correct in the minds of their target customers and also engaged the customers to a great level.
The USP of the campaign: Simplicity and outreach through different channels of Social Media.
(These are purely personal views of teampumpkin.com co-founder Swati Nathani and indiantelevision.com does not necessarily subscribe to these views.)
