Holidays have always been an important time for brands to engage customers and promote new products. Social media has given companies the opportunity to get creative with their ideas and interact with fans in new ways. Holiday-themed storytelling is a great way of building and cultivating a growing and engaged audience.
Let’s look at 5 creative campaigns that make the most of some of the great features that social media offers to brands happy to experiment and get creative.
1. Use Vine to show the fun side of your brand
Marketers have been quick to adopt Twitter’s 6-second video looping app because of its ability to show a lighter and more creative side to their brand. Vines show up in Twitter’s main feed so they are eye-catching and are easy to share across Twitter and Facebook.
Home improvement store Lowe’s used everyday household tools to wish their followers a happy 4th of July by animating them to look like bursting fireworks. It looks simple but it’s a clever way of drawing attention to their brand and celebrating the holiday.
Tip: use stop-motion to bring your products to life in a quirky animation.
2. Create a dedicated microsite
Microsites are a great idea if you want to set up a central hub for a competition or event but want to keep it separate from your main site. You can easily close it down or remove links once it is done with, and then reinstate it later with minimal hassle.
Cosmetics and beauty brand Sephora’s Twitter and Facebook-based Sephora Claus campaign has proved hugely successful. Fans were asked which Sephora beauty products they would wish for the holidays by entering @Sephora and their wish into the website, and one wish was granted each day for 30 days. All the wishes are collected together in the form of clickable gift tags, which look really stylish and give a fun visual twist to the page. Using the @ symbol meant that the ‘wishes’ were visible across social media, which boosted engagement – a staggering 50,000 tweets were sent overall.
Tip: Use creative visuals to make your microsite stand out – and ensure your campaign is easily sharable on social media.
3. Add games to your annual campaigns for maximum interaction
One of the challenges on social media is to encourage engagement to make your campaign visible to a larger number of people than just your fans. Adding a game to a campaign is a sure-fire way of bringing it to people’s attention and spreading your message to wider networks.
Every year, Cadbury’s Crème Eggs are sold for a limited time (January 1 until Easter Sunday) in the run up to Easter, and every year Cadbury’s comes up with a fun campaign to boost sales in this limited timeframe. The Crème Eggs are so popular they even have their own Facebook page with an incredible 2.6 million Likes, which shows how successful Cadbury have been at increasing online engagement.
In 2012, Cadbury used their status as one of the London Olympic Games sponsors to introduce the ‘Goo Games’ as part of their annual Crème Egg marketing. Based on real Olympic events, fans could choose from several games including ‘Pole Yolk’, ‘Goodles’ and ‘Triple Bump’, and were rewarded with virtual medals and real-world prizes. Visitors to the Cadbury site and Facebook page could also participate by sending in a photo of themselves “getting the goo out” of their eggs by splattering them in original and funny ways. Participants in any of the ‘Goo Games’ had to Like the Facebook page before playing, which helped to widen the campaign’s reach and is behind the huge levels of sustained engagement on the page.
Tip: combine user-generated marketing with a high-engagement activity like an online game for maximum effect.
4. Personalize your campaign
Your customers are bombarded with marketing through the year, so how are you going to make sure your campaign gets noticed above all the others? One great way to do this is to personalize your campaign to your customers.
Luxury jewelers Tiffany & Co are masters of engaging content; just take a look at their popular and touching What Makes Love True site to see how the company uses stories, images and customer interaction to bring their brand to life.
Knowing that partners could often use a little help when it comes to buying Valentine’s Day gifts, Tiffany & Co introduced the ‘Drop a Hint’ button in the top right hand corner of their product information page.
The button takes you to a page where you fill in your partner’s name and email address, along with your name, and they will be emailed with a personalized postcard that includes a link to the desired item. Of course, it won’t guarantee you’ll be lucky enough to receive it, but it’s a very clever way to get their attention and create buzz around the brand for a special occasion!
(Image: Sprout Content)
Tip: Once you’ve created a campaign like this you can customize it for different holidays, such as New Year, 4th of July or Christmas.
5. Get the most out of image sharing
Although brands are still producing their more traditional TV and print ads, some of the biggest brands are putting their most creative input into their digital content. Image sharing sites like Pinterest are becoming the focus of some exciting new targeted campaigns, and are driving engagement as well as website traffic and online sales.
This Thanksgiving, Target turned its attention to Pinterest, the go-to site for holiday inspiration. Target teamed up with one of the most sought-after event producers in the world, David Stark, to offer guests a first-of-its-kind party planning resource on Pinterest called “Best.Party.Ever.”
The Pinterest page features David Stark’s “secrets to creating the perfect holiday party, from DIYs to recipes to unique decorating ideas”, as well as Rich Pins that make shopping easy and videos with tips and ideas.
When Target partnered with Pinterest last Spring to pilot Rich Pins – pins that work like a catalogue with prices and other product information – it resulted in a 70% increase in visits to Target.com from Pinterest.
Tip: Move your current holiday-themed boards to the top of your Pinterest profile to increase engagement at key times of the year. You can build up a Secret Board through the year and then unveil it by making it public in the lead up to a holiday.
Forward-looking brands are putting social media marketing at the center of their holiday marketing campaigns and are taking advantage of themed campaigns to build up long-term loyalty. Brands that make the most of frequent, relevant campaigns can benefit from increased engagement and a growing audience – that all translate into a greater online presence, increased sales and website traffic into the future.
Originally posted in Social Media Examiner