We all have an idea of how social media campaign examples look like. Think Spotify’s #Wrapped or Apple’s #ShotOnIphone. But there are many other campaigns that often go overlooked simply because they are, well, not Spotify or Apple.
Therefore, it’s my pleasure to introduce 10 out-of-this-world social media campaign examples to you. From small businesses to multinational corporations, and from charity to brand promotion, the following examples caught my eye because of their creativity and form of execution.
At this point, having a social media presence is crucial for any company. Of course, you want to attract customers and new talent but also keep current employees engaged. Both METRO and BearingPoint did a great job in this area.
#ownies by METRO
METRO is a professional wholesaler with almost 750 stores in 25 countries worldwide. Consequently, the company’s customer base is largely made up of independent business owners. By engaging business owners in the Own Business Day campaign, METRO aims to drive more business towards its own customers and engage their employees via a two-phase campaign operated and promoted by METRO.
In phase one, METRO engaged its employees in 25 countries. The company encouraged them to post selfies (so-called #ownies) with METRO customers shopping at METRO stores. The main goal was to get independent business owners to join Own Business Day with their businesses. The #ownies were posted on internal channels, and METRO employees could win both rewards and glory for their engagement.
The second phase took the whole campaign public, with business owners being the ones to post selfies with their customers to social media. The posts were collected — via a global and country-specific hashtag, as well as the various METRO Facebook pages — using a social media aggregator. There were incentives for business owners in play as well to further motivate them to post.
10 Days of Caring by BearingPoint
To celebrate ten years of success, the BearingPoint marketing team devised a hashtag campaign focusing on Corporate Social Responsibility, asking employees to show their communities they cared for ten days.
They integrated a Walls.io social wall into their website and promoted that link on social media. So anyone external who wanted to see 10 Days of Caring, could get an update, while respecting the company’s privacy.
With the social media campaigns that they envisaged at the beginning, you would only have gotten a small glimpse into what was happening. But the social wall solution gave viewers a portal into the entire campaign. It became so big, and there was so much user-generated content, and that’s what made it amazing.
People love seeing other regular people review places they are thinking of visiting. That’s why setting up a social media campaign for a destination is imperative. Take notes from Vienna Tourist Board and Saalbach, as they hold consistent campaigns to attract tourists.
#ViennaNow by Vienna Tourist board
The Vienna Tourist Board is using a second social wall on a microsite that is dedicated to Viennese Modernism to engage with visitors and citizens alike. They embedded the social wall displaying content for their official #ViennaNow hashtag. People use it to post happy moments they experience in the city, and the Vienna Tourist Board features them on the microsite.
#Saalbach
Back in 2015, Saalbach’s Tourism Service Center first set up a social media campaign for the Ski World Cup event using the hashtag #WorldCupSaalbach. Fans, athletes and officials were encouraged to use the hashtag when posting their impressions of the event on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
To this day, they keep an ongoing social media campaign powered by the hashtag #Saalbach, which is not only easy to remember as it’s the name of the village, but also intuitive (with 188k tags on Instagram!).
The cherry on the cake is the social media wall accompanying the whole campaign. All the content published on different social media platforms tagged with #Saalbach gets collected on a feed embedded on the official website.
In the organizer’s own words, the benefit of a social wall is that “…guests see first-hand authentic content of other guests “who could be them” on our website.”
Nothing says happy holidays better than a chocolate or a decorated pine tree. The next examples from Cadbury and the city of Philadelphia certainly brought seasonal vibes to their audience.
#CadburyFestive by Cadbury
Cadbury is a British multinational confectionery company, the second-largest one in the world after Mars. During the winter holidays, Cadbury South Africa organised a festive hashtag campaign that involved user-generated content being shown on massive digital signage walls around the country.
Cadbury SA encouraged customers and fans to share a message of appreciation using the hashtag #CadburyFestive. The best posts would be featured on billboards throughout the country every Friday.
The campaign’s main goal was to spread the word about the Cadbury Festive Range of limited edition chocolate bars and other products while encouraging customers to share a message of appreciation.
All social media posts for the #CadburyFestive hashtag were collected on a social media wall powered by Walls.io, and displayed on digital signage screens powered by Primedia Outdoor.
#6abcHolidaysAtHome by the city of Philadelphia
Philadelphians initiated 2020’s holiday festivities with a virtual-only tree lighting ceremony at the beginning of December. The ceremony was even broadcast live on 6ABC, one of Philadelphia’s local TV stations, allowing viewers to participate in their seasonal tradition from the comfort of their homes.
Along with the seasonal event, the city of Philadelphia created a dedicated microsite. There, anyone could see a live video from the tree 24/7. Right underneath the video, they embedded a social wall with different photos, videos and announcements sourcing from the hashtag #6abcHolidaysAtHome.
Social media campaigns are not only for promotional means. They can also bring awareness to a cause, precisely like UNEP and Viral Facts Africa did.
#GenerationRestoration by UNEP
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, often shortened to just “UN Decade on Restoration”, it’s an ambitious 10-year project (2021–2030) led by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Its main goals are to halt the climate crisis and reverse its devastating effects by creating awareness, educating the public, raising political ambitions and generally getting everyone to do their part and take action.
The initiative involves a wide range of target groups, projects, people and, consequently, content. UNEP — who is leading communications for the UN Decade — uses Walls.io and the hashtag #GenerationRestoration to pull all that content together in one place. The social wall is embedded on a separate page on the UN Decade on Restoration website and prominently linked to above the fold on the main landing page.
We’ve all seen the dangerous fake claims about COVID-19 cures. Drinking bleach or Ivermectin, a pet dewormer, can cure Covid or that the vaccine is some grand ploy to get us all injected with some chip to track us.
The thing is, though, how do you even check if a viral health claim is true?
That’s where Viral Facts Africa comes in, a fantastic social media campaign targeting health misinformation on the African continent.
The idea behind Viral Facts Africa is to check claims and then debunk myths and disseminate the correct information. Part of that is done via articles written by fact-checkers. But one of the main ways to share more easily digestible information is via social media content: videos, images, etc., that have the same chance of spreading as the myths they’re helping debunk.
They used a Walls.io social to gather their official content, as one risk of this kind of work is that people can take their logo and use it to make their own Viral Facts video. So if someone isn’t sure a video is genuine, the social wall is the place to go if you want to see what Viral Facts have actually produced. It’s like an anthology.
A good way to promote your business is by educating your audience. NatureFress Farms and IAU did an amazing job at educating their customers and followers.
#KidsIntheKitchen by Nature Farms
To encourage children across Canada and the United States to eat more vegetables, NatureFresh™ Farms launched the #KidsInTheKitchen challenge to get them involved in the kitchen. They used this hashtag to bring awareness to the fact that many children aren’t getting enough vital nutrients from vegetables and how easy it is to get them involved.
The #KidsInTheKitchen campaign is also connected to a guide for parents to help them make vegetables more interesting to their kids. Notably, the guide is based on the user-generated content collected during the run of the hashtag campaign. Released as an eBook on the NatureFresh™ Farms website, it features advice, tips and recipes contributed by users during the campaign.
The UGC collected from the campaign was added to a Walls.io hashtag wall, embedded on a landing page, which encouraged viewers to participate in the social media campaign.
#MoonLanding50 by IAU
For it’s centenary, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) organized a year-long celebration under the central theme “Under One Sky”. Its purpose was to increase awareness of astronomical discoveries and promote the use of astronomy as a tool for education, development and diplomacy. One part of the celebrations was the anniversary of the 1969 moon landing in July.
The Moon Landing 50 project comprises the largest coordinated Moon landing anniversary action worldwide, with over 1 million people attending events in 128 countries.
The event welcomed the registration of any moon-related activities and events of all kinds that collaboratively all celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the moon landing in and around July 2019. The public could also follow along on social media using #MoonLanding50 and #IAU100.
Various prizes were announced, including a children’s art contest, a social media prize draw, a global telescope competition, and prizes for special events.
To gather all the incoming social content, a dedicated page on the Moon Landing 50 website hosted a social media wall. There, everyone could see contributions from around the world and in many languages, which created a feeling of togetherness while apart.
As illustrated by these 10 examples, social media campaigns are multifarious. Hopefully, you found some inspiration to start your campaign, and if not, we have many more examples on the blog.
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