Stuzo Social Landscape Review: Q4 2013

We’re in the final days of 2013, which means it’s time for our annual wrap up of the best campaigns and biggest shifts in the social marketing space. Highlights from October, November, and December came from big brands including Dunkin Donuts, Comcast, and Michael Kors, and from the great country of Ukraine, which is going through a political upheaval as the world watches on social media.

October

•  Dunkin Donuts #mydunkin: Dunkin Donuts, an innovator in the social and mobile space, launched the #mydunkin campaign in October, which involved native social ads and calls-to-action to share #mydunkin moments, and winners would be featured in high-profile TV spots. A first-of-its-kind campaign, and a beautiful 360-degree integration of the organic user-generated content and the highly polished brand creative.
•  New Honda Odyssey Creates a Stir on Twitter: One way to drive awareness as a big brand is to get into it, so to speak, with other big brands on the various public social platforms. Getting other brands to mention you creates instant and dramatic impressions, and that’s exactly what Honda was able to create around its new feature, the Odyssey HondaVac – an in-car vacuum. Snack brands are social and naturally generate great engagement on social channels – and they’re also what generally gets vacuumed out of the back seat – so calling out the likes of Wonka Candy, Skittles, and Taco Bell and creating instant, relevant micro-content created a huge real-time marketing win for Honda in October.
•  Comcast, NBC Universal, and Twitter Launch See It: Twitter has been creating deep partnerships with media and publishers for years at this point, and this is potentially the most important one to date. In an effort to connect the dots between the first and second screens, Twitter is embedding functionality within the tweets of Comcast and NBC publishers to enable users to click to watch from certain tweets. Once tap access directly to relevant shows and content without having to leave your Twitter experience.
•  Taco Bell Trailblazing on Snapchat: Earlier in the year, Snapchat released a Stories feature allowing users to send messages that last for 24 hours, not just 5 or 10 seconds, giving the platform some legs for big brands looking to engage fans. Taco Bell was one of the trailblazers on the Snapchat platform because of the audience and demographic, so it’s natural that they would be experimenting with new campaign types using the latest features – so far though, the jury is out on whether or not these Snapchat experiences are successful at driving advocacy (as you can’t tell how many fans your account has) or conversion. Ah yes, and Snapchat also turned down $3 Billion from Facebook.

November

•  Michael Kors Launches First Instagram Ad: Much to the chagrin of the Instagram world, Michael Kors debuted the first Instagram ad in November, and to some excellent results. With the ad, the Michael Kors account gained 34,000 new followers within 18 hours of the initial post; 16x more than their average posts without media dollars gained them before. Look for fashion, retailers, travel, and many other verticals to get involved in Instagram ads in 2014.
•  JP Morgan Flubs on Twitter: If you’re a bank partially responsible for one of the largest economic catastrophes in history, it’s probably not a smart idea to publicly solicit feedback on the brand through social channels, and especially on Twitter, which at times has the reputation of being a rather nasty place to begin with. But alas, JP Morgan decided to go that route on the very public Twitter platform and was quickly hashtag hijacked. Needless to say, the campaign was shut down quickly.
•  Macy’s and Apple Stores Test iBeacons: Apple and Macy’s jumped into the microlocation game in November and December – Macy’s with a trial of Shopkick’s ShopBeacon, and Apple in all US stores. Stuzo is very bullish on the possibilities of iBeacon, and not only for retailers. There are huge opportunities for health care, entertainment, and industrial businesses, and with 250 million iBeacon enabled devices potentially in-market by 2014, we’re seeing only the tip of the iceberg for microlocation technology.
•  Kohl’s and J-Lo Storytelling with Fans: A nice example of collaborative storytelling here, Kohl’s and Jennifer Lopez created a series of ads and let fans decide the storyline through live hashtag polling. The public Twitter platform has seen an array of media partnerships and case studies over the past 18 months, and while the numbers aren’t staggering for this example, the creative execution is unique. Expect more brands to employ similar tactics, especially as Twitter engages more of the public psyche over the next year or so. Also, Twitter had their IPO at the beginning of November, and all signs are positive, as the stock has doubled halfway through December.
•  Redbull Revolutions in Sound and YouTube: As one of their hundreds of advocacy events during the calendar, Redbull Revolutions in Sound took over the London Eye in November, featuring the top 30 clubs in the city with 100 DJs spinning in each of the cars of the Eye, all live streamed through YouTube. Not everyone can be Redbull, with their massive and rabid fan base, but brands can absolutely take notes on strategic execution as it relates to key personas and emotionally connecting with the target audience; all around excellent advocacy campaign.

December

•  Budweiser’s Knitbot and Coke Zero’s Sweaters: Budweiser is showing some love for the designated driver this holiday season with their Knitbot, which knits fun sweaters when people include the hashtag #jumpersfordes (UK for “sweaters for designated drivers). An excellent message, but Coke Zero wins for funniest sweaters. Check out some of the top voted user-generated sweaters through the Coke Zero Sweater Creator here.
•  #DiGiorNOYOUDIDN’T and The Sound of Pizza:  DiGiorno Pizza live tweeted the entire Sound of Music event in December with Carrie Underwood, and it was hilarious. An excellent example of real-time marketing at work; but for every great RTM case, there are a dozen AT&Ts.
•  Ukraine and #Euromaidan: If you haven’t been following the protests in Ukraine, there have been hundreds of thousands of people in Independence Square, and the outpouring across social channels has generated the hashtag #Euromaidan, or “European Square.” There have been nearly 1,000,000 tweets that use any of the #Euromaidan translations, which is a huge number considering that Twitter is not hugely popular in Ukraine. It has just caught on through this political controversy and much of the population has just signed up within the past several weeks to follow the news.
•  Facebook Year in Review: Finally, we have the Facebook Year in Review. This is the annual big data look at trends around the world, from most common life events in 2013, to most popular checkin sites, and the most talked about topics on Facebook globally. An interesting sociological look at the zeitgeist of 2013, as we prepare for another year of shifts in the social and mobile space.

That’s all for the Stuzo Social Landscape Review in 2013. Check out the Reviews from Q1, Q2, and Q3, enjoy the holidays and get off your phones.