Social media can make or break a brand. Do it right and you have an engagement winner. Do it wrong and you have a potential disaster. These are some of the best social media campaigns and comebacks of 2015, so sit back, enjoy, and take notes.
Hefty
So, garbage bags, plastic cups, and zipper bags aren’t cool or fun, right? Wrong. Hefty had a couple of campaigns on their YouTube channel this year that blasted that theory right out of the water. Their “Ultimate Cups” campaign features moms who, at first glance, look like your average, every day, soccer mom, complete with cardigans and “mom clothes.” But when they open their mouths, it’s a whole different story. These are the coolest moms ever. You have to see the ads to fully appreciate them – and while you’re at it, check out the #SaidNoSchoolEver videos.
Groupon
What do you do when you are tasked with selling a product that is, well, awkward? If you are Groupon, you just roll with it and approach it fully prepared to reply to each snarky comment with an equally clever, snarky response. When they featured the Banana Bunker on their site, they also posted it on their Facebook page and were ready to roll – and roll they did.
Lowes
Social media newcomer, Vine, gives you six seconds to tell your story. Some manage to tell a compelling tale in the short timeframe, but others don’t fare so well. Lowes knocked it out of the park with their campaign that shows a series of quick and clever home and yard improvements, from using a lit candle to find air leaks in your windows, to burying a banana peel near your rose bushes to deter pests. Each mini-lesson is done in an engaging, entertaining way.
NASA
NASA definitely makes this list because their social media campaigns (on almost 500 accounts across various platforms) absolutely rock! They don’t try to take one campaign and make it fit into each platform; they tailor the campaign to fit. So a Twitter campaign may look quite different from an Instagram campaign – but the result is amazing. Their Twitter account for NASA rover Mars Curiosity has more than 2 million followers. They don’t just tweet updates, though, Mars Curiosity does the tweeting in a first person voice that talks like a real person, not an astrophysicist. Each campaign is like that, speaking to the regular folk, the ones who don’t know all the fancy scientific terms – and in doing so, they bridge the gap between all us little people and the whole universe.
AT&T
AT&T definitely gets a mention here with their, “It Can Wait” campaign. Through a series of YouTube videos the company addresses the danger of texting and driving. They went a step further though, and created #X, a simple text shorthand that pauses the conversation and can be used to let others know you are about to drive and can’t reply. They win simply because they identified a serious, growing issue, addressed it in an engaging, impactful manner, AND they offered a viable solution. Well done.
