The Mashies & Award Winning Strategies

Did you know the average attention span is 8 seconds, which is less than a goldfish? That makes the world of marketing a tough place to be in! Mashable’s award show celebrates the best digital advertising and marketing on social, capable of capturing our attention long enough to create meaningful conversations.

The rise of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others have lead to an extremely competitive space where brands are vying for the attention of consumers through creative advertising in bite-sized pieces. Heck, Vine videos are just 6 and a half seconds long! Check out Zach King for some inspiration.

Leading marketers deserve props for crafting the most successful, innovative and creative social campaigns through the use of real-time marketing, videos, and social networks. So hats off to Mashable for making the Mashies and showing us marketers what to do right. I analyzed the social media performance of two finalists, and first place winner of The Mashies, to find the formula of their success.

Adidas & The Brazuca (@brazuca)

They didn’t make #1, but this campaign was pure genius — truly one of the most cleverly designed and executed campaigns ever; a process that started in 2012. First Adidas crowdsourced names for the ball through a vote on Facebook with 1 million Brazilians; 70% of voters chose the name “Brazuca”, which refers to the Brazilian way of life. It created a ton of interactions and an engaging Twitter feed with more than 2.5 million Followers (and growing).

Then Brazuca kicked off, gained momentum and achieved celebrity status on Twitter with 3.43 million Followers — more than FIFA’s official Twitter account (@FIFAWorldCup).

Date Range: May 1, 2014 — August 29, 2014

Success Factors:

• @brazuca gained 3.2M followers over the period of World Cup (almost 0.5M on the first day).
• Adidas brilliantly repurposed their World Cup-specific hashtag #allin as #ballin, redefined the meaning of their brand message, determined their subject (the ball in #ballin), and utilized a double-meaning with American slang for “cool” (ballin!).
• They got influencers such as athletes and celebrities involved like Pharrell, Zinedine Zidane, and Justin Bieber.
• Posted relevant content by live-tweeting exciting moments during the games.

All Things Hair UK on YouTube:

Creative content comes in all forms. When it comes to beauty products, videos seem to dominate. Unilever has embraced this idea and launched a YouTube channel entitled “All Things Hair” to give tutorials with their brands Toni & Guy, TRESemmé, Dove, and VO5. Their content strategy cleverly incorporates influencers such as well-known bloggers from Canada and UK like Zoella, Tanya Burr, Willow B, and Essie Button. They also cater to these specific audiences by making the tutorials in English and French. All Things Hair have experimented with different video tactics and lengths.

Their UK profile was chosen as a finalist for The Mashies.

Based on Socialbakers data of the 30,000 brand videos posted in June, beauty accounted for over 1,500. The Beauty vertical on YouTube only shares 5% of videos but they garner 10% of all views on the platform. Their UK profile has over 135,000 subscribers. Since the launch of their UK profile in January, they garnered roughly 12,000,000 views.

Date Range: January 1, 2014 — October 28, 2014

Success Factors:

• They were able to connect with their target audience, languages, and capture new audiences through the influencers’ following.
• It’s not all about making videos to gain intereractions. Showing how to use the products are just as important.

Burger King’s “Motel King”

Date Range: January 1, 2014 — November 6, 2014

This campaign demonstrates the power of local brands and how they too can think BIG. Burger King introduced a new product — the TenderCrisp Chicken Burgers, but we all know that the most popular burger is The Whopper. Burger King New Zealand wanted to encourage customers to put their loyalty aside and prove that they don’t only make awesome beef burgers and targeted chicken lovers. Most people associate motels with infidelity, so they created Motel Burger King to be the place for people to cheat on The Whopper. They took an already existing motel and completely rebranded it with everything from toiletries to towels; even the beds in each room were replaced with booths!

Celebrities were then invited to try the new TenderCrisp Chicken Burgers, their brand ambassador was secretly filmed and the video was leaked on social media. The next day it was open to the public, and fans could book the room for four friends by tagging three of them in a comment thread, and after confirmation was made, they were sent a Motel Burger King Keycard. When the guests arrived, they had to check-in to a motel via Facebook or through Instagram and a Tinder profile for TenderCrisp Chicken. They had 20 minutes to indulge in the burgers and encouraged to share about their stay on social media with the hashtag #motelBK.

According to Socialbakers Analytics data, this created a +35% engagement on Motel related posts.

Success Factors:

• Cleverly designed a campaign and exclusive experience for customers.
• Leveraged social media to get customers talking about the brand from confirmation, check-in to hashtags; as well as incentivised to share the experience with their friends on social media.
• Successfully used product placement via branded images.
• Used celebrities to convey the idea of a cheating scandal and create a buzz around the campaign.

The Takeaway

Obviously, social media has changed the way we communicate with brands and how they interact with us. This seismic shift in digital communication has redefined marketing altogether, offering multiple platforms with different purposes. They have become additional outlets for publishing compelling stories that evoke emotions, gain the attention of consumers and hopefully make them loyal customers. That’s why it’s important to recognize the brands that are leading the way which can help to inspire all whose job description includes the words “social media”.

• All opinions are my own and not the views of my employer