The best & worst social media content from 2018
2018 has been a funny old year hasn’t it, it’s been going on for what feels like about 18 months and we’re really not sure what’s going on anymore. But you can always count on the power of the internet for a bit of entertainment, especially when brands are all fighting to create content to grab our attention.
Check out our roundup of the best (and worst) social media content from brands in 2018.
Iceland
Iceland have had a bit of a paradigm shift away from Kerry Katona and prawn rings recently and are focusing on creating a brand purpose to unite their customers behind making the world a better place.
This year was all about palm oil and their apparently banned TV ad. Now, whether it was *actually* banned or not is irrelevant, what matters is that it got us all talking about the campaign. Within a few hours, the internet was in a frenzy about saving the orangutans and what we could do to help, conveniently linking into Iceland’s #NoPalmOilChristmas tag and their range of rainforest-friendly party food.
The ‘banning’ of the advert turned out to be a PRs dream and the results are head and shoulders above what would have been achieved with a TV campaign. Google searches of palm oil rose by 1900% overnight, and searches of Iceland rose by 156%, showing that uniting your audience behind a common goal can be the way to go.
Go Pro
Go Pro have adopted an incredibly successful UGC led marketing campaign, turning their customers into their most powerful asset. Incentivising the sharing of content with cash rewards or exposure, the brand are able to benefit from incredible cost savings on content creation by sending their customers out to capture compelling content for them.
Why send out an expensive film crew to capture content when your customers are more than willing to do it for free? Go Pro have successfully learned from their audience, understanding what motivates their purchasing behaviour and have turned this into a marketing machine — with just under 40 million uses of the Go Pro hashtag on Instagram, there’s no shortage of authentic content at their disposal.
Big budget TV adverts are as much of a Christmas tradition as Greggs’ Festive Bake, and the next campaign links to Christmas’ third biggest celebrity behind Jesus and Santa Claus, John Lewis. The actual man, not the shop.
Every year with the patience of a saint, he sits at home fending off queries from Twitter users with comments about the John Lewis Christmas advert or angry customers tracking down orders — last year he received a staggering 50,000 tweets. This year however, Twitter decided to make him the star of his own social media campaign. Documenting the struggles of being confused with a shop, the video features elements of user generated content from Twitter users. It was incredibly simple but it worked because it put consumers at the heart of the campaign, the UGC featured was incredibly relatable — we can all see a bit of ourselves in the Twitter users getting excited for Christmas.
It’s not all been a success story in 2018 though, how about some casual gender stereotyping from Miele? In a now-deleted Facebook post, the appliance manufacturer posted celebrating International Women’s Day. But instead of a heartwarming or uplifting photo, unknown forces compelled them to go with a shot of four women sat on a washing machine.
The main takeaway from this is to think about what motivates your customers and to learn how you can connect with them on a deeper level, instead of relying on stereotypes.
Another key learning from 2018 is that moderation is key. Snapchat have learned that the hard way in 2018 after a mis-step with Rihanna wiped $1bn off the value of the company.
An advert from a third-party app quickly gathered attention from internet users who rightly pointed out that the content was damaging to victims of domestic violence. In a further blow, Rihanna even posted her thoughts on the situation on Instagram Stories, Snapchat’s biggest rival.
It’s not the first time that brands have fallen foul to poor moderation processes though, who can forget when the National Lottery unwittingly allowed sports stars to hold up offensive messages or when Walkers let Gary Lineker hold up photos of serial killers?
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.
