Index
Adv and social media campaigns are the fuel for your marketing: a concentrated burst of energy that translates into reputation, awareness or sales of your brand.
Are you looking for inspiration for your next social media campaign? The big themes of recent years are revolving around sustainability, inclusion and the creation of valuable relationships. We have put together a selection of the (in our opinion) top 5 social media campaigns from which you can take inspiration for your 2023 campaigns.
1. Airbnb
2022 was the year that saw the beginning of the war between Russia and Ukraine.
To provide its support for refugees, Airbnb offered free, short-term accommodation for refugees fleeing Ukraine. The fund used for this gesture was the Airbnb.org Refugee Fund.I risultati?
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100,000 refugees found temporary accommodation
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48,000 hosts from 160 countries offered to host Ukrainians
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offers were made from 95 countries
Why are we talking about all this? Because what started as a sign of solidarity among Ukrainian travel vloggers who were hosting Ukrainians has also spread like wildfire on social media. The hosts earned $1.9 million and the platform received more than 61,400 bookings in 48 hours.
Supporting this cause has not only concretely helped people in need but has also won the trust of consumers and strengthened the brand image.
2. Corona Beer
One of the world's leading beverage brands, Corona Extra announced a net zero plastic footprint in 2021. The brand then tackled the problem of polluting the world's oceans with plastic waste with a beautiful campaign using an open letter approach to launch the brand's sustainability.
Set in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, the production features a 'letter' encouraging the public to recycle plastic products and keep them removed from beaches and other bodies of water. Volunteers dug the sand to form the words, then filled the space with waste collected from the beach: bottles, bottle caps and other textile or rubber materials.
The six-sentence appeal was followed by these lines: 'These words are written in the plastic of the ocean. They could go on forever. But words solve nothing'. At the bottom of the letter is the company logo and the protectparadise.com website, a link directing Internet users to the Corona beer page dedicated to sustainability.
The video ends with the message that people collected 494 kilograms of plastic waste for the 'letter' and that it was subsequently recycled. Links to Corona's Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts appear in the production uploaded to YouTube.
The brand invested in the Mexico Recicla recycling plant. In 2019, the brewery launched the Pay With Plastic programme. Corona used its social channels to invite customers to exchange plastic waste for beer in bars and retailers in selected countries.
3. Dove Detox
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF3iRZtkyAQ
Dove is a brand that has always focused on social causes in its social media campaigns. These focus particularly on female empowerment, inclusion, diversity and breaking beauty stereotypes. Women are their main target audience, which is why Dove's marketing campaigns are primarily aimed at women.
Within the context of its latest project on self-esteem, Dove has produced a new short film, 'Toxic Influence', in which mothers and their daughters confront toxic beauty advice on social media and how it has become normal for many girls around the world and ended up influencing their beliefs about beauty and identity. The film and campaign were promoted with the hashtag #DetoxYourFeed and tied to a 4-step guide to help them, encouraging mothers to promote their daughters' self-esteem through open communication and healthy social media habits.
To emphasise the heart of the campaign, the company invited mother-daughter pairs to view beauty-related content from social media feeds, before showing a clip in which the invited mother advocates for questionable beauty advice, such as botox for children. Dove used deepfake technology to show mothers how social media advice can powerfully convince young followers on how they should look or solve alleged appearance-related problems.
4. Decathlon
This year, Decathlon, in addition to launching the new 'What do you want to do now' ad and the claim 'if you do sport, you've already won', launched a very peculiar campaign in Belgium for a month because it is a reverse shopping campaign.
Customers were therefore able to return old or unused items in addition to buying new ones: Reverse shopping is what the retailer calls the principle. Decathlon repairs the equipment and resells it used with a guarantee. The offer started at the beginning of the year with a test phase in which 26,000 used items were returned to Decathlon. The company then wanted to push its offer with a marketing campaign by changing its name to 'Nolhtaced' (Decathlon spelled backwards) for a month. The name Nolhtaced appeared not only in the logo on the website and social media, but also on the shop fronts in Evere, Namur and Ghent.
With this campaign, Decathlon wanted to make as many consumers as possible aware of reverse shopping by also accepting sporting goods from other manufacturers and retailers. Those who returned old items received vouchers in return. During the test phase, the vouchers issued had a total value of EUR 593,220. By recycling, Decathlon not only wants to extend the life cycle of its products, but also to make sporting goods accessible to everyone. According to a study by the research company Indiville, 30% of 1,000 Belgians said they were putting off buying new sportswear and equipment. The reason is the rising cost of living. Classic consumer behaviour is changing due to inflation; Decathlon wants to counteract the new demands with reverse shopping.
5. Twitter
2022 was a year that saw Twitter in the spotlight mainly due to its acquisition by Elon Musk and the various events that followed. However, the platform mid-year wanted to launch a very special omnichannel brand awareness campaign: the "If You Can Dream It, Tweet It" campaign.
With the campaign Twitter published a series of posters with the tweets of numerous stars before they became famous. The campaign was very well received and closes the list of campaigns we have chosen for a very specific reason: emotional marketing. It is at the heart of this campaign for several reasons. Firstly, this type of campaign lends itself to being received by a wider audience and not just Twitter users. Another reason is that emotional advertising drives awareness which, in turn, reinforces interest; the Twitter campaign went viral in a short time with mass media coverage and shares on all social platforms. Finally, it is important to remember one thing: emotions are how people make (most of) their decisions, especially if emotional marketing is aimed at people who do not yet use a certain service or product.
Conclusion
As we have seen, the selected campages bring with them themes that brands wishing to continue to rank high among consumers must be able to embrace: brand activism, sustainability, inclusiveness and the creation of valuable relationships. Themes that not only tie in with the social media trends predicted for 2023, but also with those predicted for the e-commerce sector, which we discussed in the article 'E-commerce trends 2023'. Still not feeling sufficiently inspired? Take a look at "5 social campaigns that will amaze you".
Would you like to advertise online but don't know how or where to start? We have been involved in creating online advertising campaigns for several years and know all the best practices. Take a look at our service and contact us for a free consultation.
