With the Behind The Social Media Campaign Series, supported by Oneupweb, Mashable took an in-depth look at the makings of eight innovative social media campaigns from Ford, Mattel, Internships.com, Old Spice, Toy Story 3, Edge Shaving Gel, The Voice and Buffalo Wild Wings.
Using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Foursquare and SCVNGR, among other social tools, these brands executed successful and engaging social media campaigns worth applauding.
This roundup is dedicated to outlining each campaign. If you find a particular campaign interesting, click through to the article to read the full story.
1. Twitter + Random Acts of Kindness = A Successful Social Campaign
In its first three months, @EdgeShaveZone gathered about 1,500 followers, the #soirritating hashtag was used about 6,800 times, and attention from numerous media outlets contributed to mounting buzz -- all of which likely contributed to Edge's decision to continue the campaign throughout 2011. Mashable recently spoke with the team at Edelman Digital that runs the campaign, about the factors that have contributed to its success.
2. How Social Media Helped Toy Story 3 Win at the Box Office
Months before that, Disney and Pixar embarked in a wide-scale marketing blitz that covered television, print and social media. Using Facebook and YouTube to help promote the film, the studio raised awareness and successfully targeted demographics that don't traditionally flock to Disney animated feature films.
3. Lessons Learned From The Old Spice Campaign & Its Imitators
The campaign launched just over a year ago -- centered around the theme “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" -- and captured the imagination of the public. Case in point: The original ad has garnered more than 30 million views to date on YouTube.
Its success also earned Old Spice a legion of students, as it were -- folks who cribbed ideas from the ads and applied them to their own marketing efforts. Mashable chatted with a few of these businesses -- who have all enjoyed success from following the Old Spice model -- about what aspects of the campaign worked for them.
4. Was the Charlie Sheen Tweet a Win for Internships.com?
The latter is based on the belief that any publicity is good publicity. If you get your name out there, the rest will fall into place. A good example of this philosophy is GoldenPalace.com, which recently bought Justin Bieber’s hair, and in the past has purchased William Shatner’s kidney stone for the free publicity.
At the moment, Internships.com fits the latter category as well. If you’ve heard of the brand, it’s most likely due to a single effective marketing campaign: An endorsement by Charlie Sheen via Twitter.
5. How Barbie & Ken Were Reunited by Social Media
We spoke with Lauren Bruksch, director of Barbie marketing at Mattel, to get the inside scoop on the success of the campaign's social media components.
6. Sock Puppets & Social Media: Inside Ford’s Risky Marketing Campaign
At the center of the campaign is Doug, an irreverent and absurd tweeting, Facebook updating and YouTube uploading sock puppet serving as the spokesperson for the new car.
Mashable spoke with Kelly extensively to get a behind-the-scenes look at the campaign and a progress report on how it's going.
7. How SCVNGR's First National Brand Partnership Scored Big During March Madness
In January 2011, SCVNGR partnered with Buffalo Wild Wings (BWW) -- at all 730 of its locations -- for a 12-week campaign leading up to March Madness. The competitive game layer of SCVNGR worked well with the BWW patrons, who thrive on competition, community and games. SCVNGR's SVP of Marketing Chris Mahl says that what differentiates SCVNGR from other location-based services is that it's "not a checkin-based service, [but something] that goes further into brand goals [and] consumer goals." The success of the campaign indicates that may be true. BWW was the first national SCVNGR promotion, and in the first three weeks, the game accrued nearly 30,000 players. By the end, the campaign had 184,000 players at 730 BWW locations.
8. The Voice: How a TV Show Became a 24/7 Social Media Conversation
Mashable spoke with Nicolle Yaron, the show's supervising producer, Andrew Adashek, the social media consultant, and Alison Haislip, the social media correspondent, about the show's social media integration and why it's effective.
Your Favorite Social Media Campaigns
If we didn't mention your favorite social media campaigns in this roundup, let us know about them in the comments below. We're always looking to learn from innovative marketing campaigns.
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