The Drum Awards for Social Media: how Aldi, Adidas and more are innovating on social

One of the most contested categories is the Most Innovative Use of Social, which attracted entries from brands and agencies around the world and which were judged on innovation, creativity, clear strategic thinking, effectiveness and tangible results.

Here, we take a closer look at all the nominated campaigns that made it on to the shortlist, including work from the likes of Adidas, Aldi, Twitter and Netflix.

Propel and Oliver Agency for Swoop

Canadian discount airline Swoop needed help promoting a sale on flights to Mexico, so Propel and Oliver Agency needed to do something to stand out in an incredibly competitive market and increase the number of bookings from previous sales.

With sales and limited-time offers commonplace in the airline industry, the agencies reinvented the ’limited-time sale’ by creating a giant coupon in the sand on a beach in Mazatlán at low tide. As the tide came in, the waves slowly erased the coupon until it was gone, ending the sale.

Using a beach that Swoop was promoting travel to as the vehicle to promote this sale created a sense of urgency to book while simultaneously showing how relaxing a vacation in Mexico with the airline is. In addition to reaching Swoop’s 140,000+ Facebook followers, social and display ads were used to drive people to watch the video and take advantage of the offer.

The Beach Coupon produced significant results with an 80% increase in bookings over the duration of the sale when compared to a regular sale with a comparable offer/destination/timeframe in the market. There was also a 17% increase in shares on social media vs. a traditional sale/offer.

McCann Manchester for Aldi UK

Every bank holiday you’ll see offers, promotions and named brands in every corner of the internet. And with Aldi’s customers often trading up for the occasion, it knew it would be hard to be heard in the conversation.

Changing the record while everyone was talking about the big brands, Aldi got the big brands to talk about it by using its well-loved and followed Twitter account to put out a call for anyone and everyone to take over for the day.

And the community pulled through, with over 40 powerhouse brands getting involved. From household names like Polo, Heinz and Dominos to Twitter giants Specsavers, KFC and Innocent, social admins everywhere wanted a bit of the action.

Ending the week with 5.1m impressions, 140,000 engagements and nine crowd-sourced Bank Holiday Monday tweets, this campaign didn’t even spend a penny and Aldi’s social team got to take the bank holiday off while successfully getting everyone to talk about the supermarket.

Movement Strategy for Netflix

In recent years, the true crime genre has exploded in popularity and Netflix wanted a social campaign to reinforce its premium position in this genre.

Netflix Home of True Crime was conceived as a place of exploration – a social reflection of the essential appeal of watching true crime: in a social-exclusive place of discovery and journey. Brought to life by a VMA-winning director, the physical Home of True Crime was designed and included clue islands with hidden easter eggs providing clues to upcoming titles. Its sleek style, witty tone and lush design combined to reinforce that the Home of True Crime is a premium destination.

This new place was teased through social stories, exploring clues, discovering new intrigues, providing a place to engage, comment and share.

Over the duration of the campaign’s 13 owned posts, the Home of True Crime gained 5.7m views across four platforms and a total of 300,000 engagements. Seven targeted TikTok true crime influencers were involved, adding an additional 301,000 views and 41,000 engagements.

Big Village for HBO/HBO Max

Ahead of the release of The Many Saints of Newark, HBO and HBO Max partnered with global advertising, technology and data company Big Village to launch Bada Binge, a multi-platform campaign featuring new Sopranos content across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Tiktok.

The campaign consisted of phases, starting with #BadaBinge, which called out fans in a challenge to rewatch six seasons of The Sopranos in six weeks with weekly check-ins on social media. At the same time, fresh content like The Best of The Sopranos and The Sopranos Mafia Commandments were added to YouTube by Big Village, with short-form content added to Tiktok to engage with younger audiences.

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Big Village later hosted a call-and-response stunt on Twitter called The 6 Degrees of Sopranos where it challenged fans to name an HBO actor declaring it could connect them back to The Sopranos in six degrees of past roles or less. Finally, on the eve of The Many Saints of Newark premiere, Big Village transformed the HBO Twitter handle into the official account of Satriale’s, the beloved pork store frequented by Tony and company in The Sopranos.

As a result of the campaign, HBO Max streams of The Sopranos increased by over 200% when compared with average monthly views in 2021.

Twitter Next for Netflix UK

Netflix was launching its Christmas movie Robin Robin and tasked Twitter Next to come up with an innovative concept that would help it cut through the clutter at the busiest time of the year.

Seeing a huge increase in tweets around birdwatching as a result of the pandemic, the idea was to have ’real’ robins tweet to launch the new movie on the app. In partnership with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Nestflix was born: a soothing and interactive live stream featuring birds flying and feeding through the Christmassy atmosphere of Robin Robin, live on Twitter. By creating a moment of pause in people’s timelines for some much-needed bird talk, Netflix got parents and children tweeting about the magic of Robin Robin.

Nestflix reached 1.4m views of the live stream, 519,000 minutes watched (an average of 45 seconds per viewer) and 22,000 mentions of #RobinRobin in 12 days. And Netflix UK also reached an unexpected audience, with the surprise finding of dozens of cats, mesmerized by the birds.

Adidas and Twitter Next

Adidas wanted to drive hype around its new X Speedflow football boots by positioning itself as the fastest footballing footwear on the planet. To get football fans to truly understand that X Speedflow represented speed, Twitter Next had to produce an idea that would go beyond passive consumption and give football fans something unique.

XSpeedflow was created, a custom-built first of its kind Twitter account only the fastest could follow. Players kept an eye on a live stream that acted as a starter gun, signaling the moment @XSpeedflow was open and kicking off a Europe-wide race between nine million players to hit the ’follow’ button and prove they were worthy to wear the world’s fastest boots.

Once the live stream announced @XSpeedflow was open, the race was on to be the fastest to follow and gain VIP access to the content inside. Only one person a day could follow the account before it was automatically locked again with #FastestFollower instantly celebrated in the promoted live stream.

The campaign saw nine million players following the live stream across UK, France and Spain, eagerly awaiting their chance to pounce on the follow button with an @XSpeedflow follow request, on average, every 60 seconds.