While this isn’t exactly the typical case study you’d find here (yet), it’s timely and holds a good lesson for anyone managing a brand online.
Over this past weekend (March 23rd and 24th) a creative agency in India mocked up some ads featuring risque content and using Ford branding. The “rogue group” were attempting to have some fun and show off their creative talents. What they didn’t expect was the backlash. By using unauthorized Ford branding and putting these three ads online, the ad agency was opening themselves up to a full-on Global response from Ford. The ads went viral and began to spread across the web and controversy exploded.
Scott Monty, Ford’s Global Head of Social Media, saw the article on Business Week right before boarding a plane in Europe. Their Asia-Pacific office was tasked with handling the fallout and subsequent buyer comments.
Monty credits a well-integrated team and a globally coordinated effort paired with an excellent social media monitoring system for successfully staying in front of this potential crisis. For smaller companies, the lesson is to monitor your social media carefully and make sure you have a competent social media team involved before anything happens so you’re ready to handle it.
For more information about how this crisis was handled, check out PR Daily, Business Insider or the thousands of news articles that have appeared globally since Monday on Google.
London’s Summer 2012 Olympics embraced social media more so than any other Games before it (even Vancouver’s Winter Olympics which was where the social media movement surrounding the Olympic Games began). That meant that their advertisers and major sponsors had an additional channel to reach consumers.
Adidas was an official sponsor of the 2012 Summer Olympics. Nike sponsored many of the individual teams and athletes. Nike took to social media channels as well as developing heart-string-tugging television ads resulting in an increase of more than 11% for @Nike from opening to closing ceremonies and only 4% for @adidasoriginals. Nike used every inch of the Olympic experience it could to get people talking about their brand and they were wildly successful.
To read the rest of the case study, please visit L2: A Think Tank for Digital Innovation.
FanFeedr, a sports news site, discovered the secret formula to getting 10x higher click through rates than typical Facebook ads. Their company aggregates, organizes, and then publishes content from over 10,000 sports related sites each day in a format their visitors love.
This case study covers a number of the ads that yielded high returns. Their primary objectives in using Facebook ads are:
- Awareness of the FanFeedr brand
- Increase “Likes” of their Facebook fan page
- Referral traffic back to their site
Read Full Facebook Case Study Here
Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) is betting the kitchen on their biggest product launch in years, the Chunky Chicken Pot Pie. In support of the multi-million dollar TV, billboard, and print ad campaign, they started a lower cost social campaign with interactive mobile ads inside the popular Pandora iPhone app. Their target – 16-28 yr olds.
The Campaign
KFC is running mobile banner and audio ads within Pandora’s iPhone app. While you’re listening to your custom Pandora radio station, you are bound to get hungry and as a KFC ad pops up you’ll see the Pot Pie, get a discount coupon, check nutritional facts if you’d like, and then find a location so you can buy some pies.
Read rest of case study here. It includes links to other KFC social media campaigns.
Hair Club, North America’s leading provider of hair restoration solutions for men and women created a mobile website with one purpose, to get mobile phone users to “click-to-call” for more information.
They worked with Google’s new free mobile marketing resource site to identify best practices in mobile marketing, from how to design their site to proper calls to action to move a mobile visitor to call their 800# or visit a nearby store. Their “click-to-call” button goes to a live sales person within seconds. Once a call is made, their close rate goes up exponentially.
Lesson Learned
There is still time to be an early adopter. Even though Hair Club’s mobile site is not visually appealing, it’s their effort to go mobile that paid off. Their competition is slow to act and they come up first on search from a mobile device leading to the clicks and calls. full case study.
During the early part of 2010, Mars Corporation launched a massive media campaign to advertise a new product; M&M pretzels. While this promotion was featured on television, radio commercials, and in various forms of print, Mars Corporation began their campaign on Facebook to increase initial awareness. To entice customers to become a fan of the site, 40,000 coupons for a free pack of M&M pretzels were given away.
- Facebook campaign began one month before product launch
- All demographics and income levels targeted
- First 40,000 users to become a fan of M&M’s USA received a free sample
- Samples shipped within 48 hours of enrolment
The free sample campaign was so successful that Mars Corporation eventually gave away 120,000 packs of M&M’s pretzel candy instead of the original 40,000. A total fan increase of 9% was experienced during the one month promotion and it continued to receive hits long after the campaign ended. Mars found customers to be much more knowledgeable about the product at launch because of Facebook. You can view the actual case study here.
In 2010, Nokia sought to introduce their free interactive map application to residents in Europe, Latin America, and Asia that owned smartphones. Their campaign targeted all Facebook users within those regions that were age 13 and older to inform them that their free GPS service could be used while walking or driving, without any restrictions. A secondary goal was also to show that Nokia was one of the innovative leaders in the world of smartphones.
- Nokia used Facebook to introduce their free GPS application
- Everyone 13 and older was targeted on 3 continents
- Additional goal of increased brand awareness for innovation
- Campaign focused primarily on two 24 hour periods
Over 408 million visitors were recorded with 104,330 connections within the two separate 24 hour trials. This represents about 10% of Nokia’s overall fans on Facebook. Over one million people downloaded Ovi Maps during the first week of the promotion alone. You can view the actual case study here.
In February of 2010, Sony Pictures launched a comprehensive advertising campaign on Facebook to promote their upcoming movie “Dear John.”
Even though they knew that their ideal target audience was 13 to 24 year old girls, Sony decided to invest in premium ads that would appear on every user’s Facebook account on January 11th, 2010. The promotion featured an interactive campaign that allowed users to answer questions about love, upload personal videos, answer questionnaires, and other types of trivia.
- Promotion of movie “Dear John”
- One day mass campaign to all Facebook users
- Target demographic 13-24 females
Roughly 298,853 people interacted with the ad campaign on January 11th, which was a 1200% increase from the previous day’s total hits. This was also the first Sony film to ever receive a million overall hits on Facebook before the movie release, with much of it coming from word of mouth after the original campaign. Sony estimated an overall 16% increase in fan awareness over the film and a 2% increase is ticket sales. You can view the actual case study here.
Describe the business problem or objectives of the campaign
Flagler Hospital Bariatric found they could not accurately track new leads or new surgeries by using traditional marketing (TV, billboards, etc.). They came to XE Corporation to explore using a social media campaign to gain awareness of their services and increase the numbers of their surgeries.
Other areas in need of improvement included:
- Increase new patient counts
- Increasing the number of attendees to their free seminars.
- Increasing referral rate to both seminars and Flagler Bariatric.
- Increasing past patient participation/engagement on social channels and at events.
- Increasing fan counts/participation on Facebook.
How were the business challenges / campaign objectives addressed?
XE Corporation formulated a comprehensive social media campaign that utilized offline and online tactics to create buzz around their brand, establish an on-going conversation around their services and engage members of their community to refer their friends to attend Bariatric seminars and then become new patients of Flagler.
Tactics:
Customize Facebook Landing Page
Re-branding of the Facebook page via landing pages and other customization to better control the experience for users.
Create Online Invitations for Events
Promotion of Flagler Bariatric Events using social networks to gain more attendance
Launch a Referral-Based Giveaway
Created a referral-based Wii Fit Giveaway requiring entrants to “like” the Facebook page and to refer a friend to attend one of the Free Seminars held by Flagler Bariatric.
Online Surveys
Designed and promoted surveys to gather feedback specific to social efforts from the Bariatric community
Fan-Favorite Recipe Module on Website
Creation of Fan-Generated “Menus”, where current and past bariatric patients shared their favorite recipes/meals to eat that are bariatric-approved.
“Spotlight Fan” Facebook Contest
Patient submitted Before & After pictures as part of “Spotlight Fan” Facebook Contest to increase support and conversation among fan community.
Campaign Results
- Cut marketing costs by 93% by switching from traditional media to social marketing.
- Increased Facebook Fan Page conversation by 5 times
- Increased visits to the Facebook Fan Page by 400%
- 30% participation rate with online survey after 5 weeks
- Using “crowdsourcing” from survey – it helped Flagler decide on the next Facebook patient appreciation campaign – Giveaway a year’s supply of custom vitamins and supplements
- Recruited 40+ volunteers to be community leaders online to help promote the Flagler Bariatric Community with other fans and potential patients.
- Produced 24 qualified leads to attend free seminar
- Estimated 16 new surgeries from this campaign
Want your own success story featured here? Tell us about your social media campaign!
image source: Wikipedia
With a name like Sullivan, count on me to kick things off with a case study from the Emerald Isle.
Founded in the 1950s, Tayto (a division of Largo Foods) is a top Irish crisp manufacturer (that’s potato chip to you, mate!) with the lovable Mr. Tayto as brand mascot. A veritable cultural icon, Mr. Tayto has his own autobiography and even made an appearance as a fake candidate in the 2007 Irish elections with a number of write in votes to his credit, no less. Needless to say, after more than 60 years on the market, it was time to spruce up Mr. Tayto’s image. Cue Ray Swan and the good people at McCann Erickson Dublin, Mindshare and Boondoggle, who came together to create a multichannel marketing and PR campaign that made mouths water:
Objectives:
- Develop a campaign that allows the audience to engage with the brand
- Make Mr. Tayto relevant again
Results:
- An increase in sales of nearly 1 million extra packets of Tayto crisps
- 90 000 hits on Bebo and Facebook
- Tayto regained the title of Number 1 crisp in Ireland
How did they do it? Check out this entertaining case study video posted by McCann on YouTube, as well as the campaign website and “Mr. Tayto – Guess who’s looking for love?” and “Mr Tayto – Clothes make the man” videos. You can also get campaign partner Mindshare’s take on the Tayto triumph through their own online case study.
For the curious among you, know that Tayto crisps come in the following mouth watering flavours: Cheese & Onion, Salt & Vinegar, Smokey Bacon, Ready Salted, Prawn Cocktail (!), and Tex Mex.
After you’ve … dare I say it … digested this case of Taytos, have fun watching this stand-up routine by Irish comedian Dara O’Briain and get a bit of a sense of what a cultural phenomenon the Tayto really is on the “udder” side of the pond.
Enjoy!
Michelle
Over this past weekend (March 23rd and 24th) a creative agency in India mocked up some ads featuring risque content and using Ford branding. The “rogue group” were attempting to have some fun and show off their creative talents. What they didn’t expect was the backlash. By using unauthorized Ford branding and putting these three ads online, the ad agency was opening themselves up to a full-on Global response from Ford. The ads went viral and began to spread across the web and controversy exploded.