How brands are stepping it up in 2019

We’re just a week into 2019 and we’ve already had more social media drama to last until June, but we’ve also seen brands step it up. Social media is getting increasingly busy and brands are working even harder to get noticed, take a look at our roundup of which brands have seriously impressed us so far this year.

Greggs’ Reactive Strategy

Right, we’ve no idea why people seem to be getting all riled up over a vegan sausage roll, but here we are. Tying in with Veganuary and supported with journalist outreach and a comprehensive social media campaign, Greggs announced the launch of their new vegan sausage roll.

People were delighted, but delighted people don’t generate half as many Twitter impressions as outraged people, do they?

Some of Greggs’ sarcastic, witty and outright sassy comments to online trolls quickly went viral, the beauty of the situation was that the replies weren’t overly scripted or corporate and they felt like a breath of fresh air compared to standard corporate comms. Greggs’ reply to Piers Morgan currently has three times as many engagements as their original sausage roll announcement.

And here’s where it gets interesting, maybe Greggs learned from Iceland’s Christmas campaign and decided that manufactured outrage gets column inches? Both Greggs and Piers Morgan are represented by the same PR company Taylor Herring, and Greggs’ reply came only 7 minutes after Piers’ comments so it’s not too much of a stretch of the imagination to suggest that this could have been pre planned…

We will stop short of insinuating that they had anything to with ensuring the EDL march congregated outside Greggs in Manchester at the weekend though, that one was just an awkward coincidence.

Whether it was planned or not, this just goes to show that having a reactive social media team who have creative license to give trolls as good as they get can work wonders for continuing the conversation.

Netflix Love Memes

Millennials love memes so much that there’s even been talk of adding them to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (not really). But nobody has quite taken to using them so much quite like Netflix.

They literally have millions of hours worth of content at their disposal and they’ve proved that contrary to popular belief, they have no chill when it comes to using it. A quick scroll through any of their social media accounts confirms that memes make up one of their core content pillars, and there’s no denying that it works when it comes to driving engagement.

Out of context, a screenshot from a film can be given a hilarious new lease of life and both Bandersnatch and Bird Box seem to be providing Netflix with a bank of content this week. Neither films are particularly funny the first time round — quite the opposite, but applying a relatable comment about going back to work to a photo of a woman being killed works wonders for creating a viral piece of content.

There has even been the suggestion that Netflix are seeding memes in their audience’s feeds using fake accounts to make their shows appear more popular than they are — accounts with very little previous activity are posting memes about Netflix shows that subsequently go viral. We still need a bit more convincing on this one, but so far there’s no denying the power of a meme as part of a marketing plan.

Pizza Hut Create A Pile On

Piers Morgan still hasn’t calmed down about a sausage roll so Pizza Hut are getting a slice of the action with the launch of their new vegan pizza. Their no-so-subtle attempt at goading Piers into a public reaction worked wonders in generating awareness of their new offering, with many consumers and even other brands jumping in on the conversation to force the news into Piers’ mentions.

The launch of the new vegan pizza had likely been in the works for months, probably with a complex social media plan to support it, but it proves that there’s no harm in last minute changes to a marketing plan when something more exciting and lucrative comes along.

If we’ve piqued your interest and you want to have a chat about content marketing or social media, feel free to get in touch; sam@wearecommit.com.