Seven inspiring retail Facebook campaigns
Players in the retail world are well aware of how competitive the industry can be – particularly when it comes to earning, and maintaining the attention of your most valuable audiences. Social media has emerged as one of the best ways to interact with, and engage an increasingly collaborative audience. And with more than 1bn monthly active users, Facebook is becoming more alluring than ever to marketers.
ReFUEL4 selects its favourite Facebook campaigns of the year.
Unfortunately, despite the success of Facebook, and social media advertising, many companies are still struggling when it comes to figuring out exactly how they can use the platform to their advantage. With that in mind, we’ve gathered some of the most awesome retail ad campaigns around, designed to inspire you into creating truly remarkable social media marketing experiences.
P&G – #LikeAGirl
The award-winning campaign #LikeAGirl went viral, drawing in huge crowds of fans for the P&G brand “Always”. The company confronted traditional gender norms with its exciting and emotional campaign by changing perceptions of what the phrase “Like A Girl” should mean. The videos spread across social media in a storm, thanks to its positive approach to gender identity.
Not only did the campaign lead to an emotional connection increase of 3%, but ad recall rose to 47%, and brand linkage grew to 59%. The campaign video became the most-watched P&G advertisement in history, with more than 76m views.
Lays – Do Us a Flavor
It wasn't the first time that Lays chose to run a crowdsource campaign, but the “Do Us a Flavor” solution was perhaps their most popular campaign. Taking the idea to America, Lays invited users to suggest and vote on new flavors, selecting three ingredients, a name, and writing a short description to make their own marketing efforts. When the “cheesy garlic bread” option was deemed the victor, the winner walked away with one million dollars for their prize.
While all companies might not have a million dollars to give away, the idea of asking customers for input on the way a business should grow, or the new products it should introduce is a great way to take advantage of the high interactivity that Facebook offers.
The Ikea Facebook Showroom
In an effort to promote the opening of a new Ikea store in 2009, the Swedish company chose to create a simple Facebook ad campaign based on photo tagging. By creating a profile for the manager of the store, and posting twelve different images of showrooms over the course of a few weeks, Ikea encouraged Facebook fans to tag items with their names in an effort to win them.
This simple approach to Facebook marketing might not be as exciting as some of the other solutions that have been crafted in recent years – but it certainly sent a ripple across Ikea’s social networks – leading to a much more engaged consumer network.
Under Armour – I Will What I Want
Under Armour, a well-known sportswear brand, wanted to broaden its appeal among women using a Facebook campaign starring famous female personalities including supermodel Gisele Bundchen. The brand encouraged users to comment on videos featuring these personalities, and took those comments to use as messages throughout the entire campaign.
The response was incredible, leading to 5 billion media impressions, and a 42% boost in traffic to the Under Armour website. On top of that, the women’s sales for Under Armour also increased by 28%.
Heinz – My Grown Up Beanz
When Heinz decided to introduce their new 5 Beanz product, they also took the opportunity to learn as much as they could about their existing fans through Facebook advertising. By creating a fun and engaging personality quiz, Heinz allowed followers to find out which of 5 bean personalities they have grown up to become in the 'My Grown Up Beanz' campaign.
The Facebook users who took part got enjoyed some simple fun that they could share with friends, as well as earning the chance to win a personalized bean with their engraved name. The campaign reached 10.8m people on Facebook and grew the community by 30,000 in two weeks.
Cadbury – Giant Thumb Up
While approaching one million likes on Facebook, Cadbury decided to celebrate in a unique manner using a campaign that boosted engagement and showed off their personality in one fell swoop. The company built a giant thumbs up icon using one million pieces of chocolate.
The company received 40,000 new fans and had over 350,000 fans talking about their brand over two days as a result of the campaign.
Dove – Real Beauty Sketches
Dove was successful in creating perhaps one of the most inspiring viral videos when they came up with the “Real Beauty Sketches” Facebook campaign. The idea behind the impressive marketing effort was to share a video where an artist would sketch an image of a woman based on how she described herself, then draw another picture of the same women by listening to a stranger describe the sketch.
The campaign created amazing insights into the truth behind natural beauty, female confidence, and pride, and resulted in a huge emotional impact across the brand’s followers.
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