Barclays, YouTube and McDonald’s nominated for the Social Media Buzz awards
As social is becoming a much noisier place it’s harder to get heard but brands and agencies like Barclays, YouTube and McDonald’s are cutting through, scooping nominations for this year’s Social Media Buzz awards to highlight their prowess in a maturing medium.
Every advertiser gets social media is key. Many build their strategy around it. But only a few are truly empowering fans to become advocates of their brands. And that’s what all the contenders of this year’s awards – sponsored by cloud company iomart - were deemed to have done, innovating with big strategic investments in social networks or testing alternative ways to reach fans organically.
Barclays was one such brand, bagging a nomination for the best socially responsible initiative of the year, which is emblematic of what the judges said was a high number of activations this year that focused on doing good rather than pushing a product. Elsewhere, YouTube and its agency We Are Social are up for the best use of video, competing with brands like McDonald’s for its FryFutbol series as well as Asos Menswear for its “How To…..” content.
This year the judging panel, chaired by Twitter’s head of brand strategy Will Scougal, noted how the work of the nominations were highly reflective of the opportunities and challenges of a social media space rapidly changing on established and emerging platforms.
“The social buzz awards is a great health check for brands and agencies on where the industry is going but also whether the performance is actually delivering results,” said Sean Meehan, Social Media Marketing Manager at Boots UK.
It’s a thought not lost on Dave Coplin, chief envisioning officer at Microsoft.
"It’s really easy now to spend lots of money and get some traction but it just becomes another form of advertising at that point,” he continued. “Social should be more than that. I think that’s what we have to push for and why I think these awards are so important. They give a platform for best practice but then also highlight the innovation that’s happening whether that’s from established agencies or brands or from smaller organisations stumbling into these ideas.
“I’ve loved that some of the entries have been really old school; it’s not about a big media spend, it’s about a really simple idea, nice execution and they’re really trying to light up individuals again to empower them to take the story to their network.”
Much laughter @iftweeter: Champaign breakfast to celebrate THREE nominations for the @TheDrum #SMBuzzAwards pic.twitter.com/f44KTx3OVT
— Katy Howell (@katyhowell) October 1, 2015
Our team is delighted to be nominated for Best Social Customer Service Strategy @Buzz_Awards #SMBuzzAwards pic.twitter.com/UgktrVBR7X — British Gas (@BritishGas) September 30, 2015Delighted with our @Buzz_Awards nomination for 'Best Socially Responsive' Initiative with @BarclaysUK for @YourLifeSkills #SMBuzzAwards
— Livity (@LivityUK) September 30, 2015
The awards will be held at the Marriott Hotel Grosvenor Square on the 25th November. Click here to see the list of full nominations.