Durkeygurl's Blog

Zappos Online Department Store, the Ford Fiesta and Burger King . What do they have in common? These companies brought forth some of the most successful Social Media marketing campaigns ever! They all had creativity, passion, humor and generated curiosity. All went viral almost immediately.

The legends and how they did it:

Zappos.com

Zappos is an online shoe and clothing department store. They were pioneers in Social Media campaigns. When we think of a perfect poster child for Social Media, think of Zappos. They put all of their employees on Twitter and let them talk about the company. The result was that America liked them. They liked these Zappos employees. You wanted to read about their passion for the company and the culture in which they worked.
Zappos was rewarded with huge ROI using Social Media because they allowed their employees focus on customer service. The focus of Zappos was not in getting the most followers. Zappos was humanized by letting multiple personalities humanize the company. They listened to and valued what their customers and employees had to say. And it paid off when Amazon bought Zappos in July 2009 for $928 million!

The Ford Fiesta Movement
Ford recruited 100 really outgoing personalities and gave them the European version of the Ford Fiesta to drive around the USA for 18 months. This began 18 months before the release of the first Ford Fiestas in the USA. These 100 individuals were Social Media ….well, Fanatics. And they were all encouraged to share their Ford Fiesta experience on their Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube for 6 months. They had to complete a different adventure every month, like using Fiestas to deliver Meals on Wheels and delivering treats to the National Guard. The result was that Ford created a huge amount of viral awareness of the Ford Fiesta prior to it’s release without spending one dollar on traditional marketing!
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/The-Ford-Fiesta-Movement/225664051868?ref=search&sid=1427610342.907564019..1
The Results
• 11 million Social Networking impressions
• 5 million engagements on social networks (people sharing and receiving)
• 11,000 videos posted
• 15,000 tweets.. not including retweets
• 13,000 photos
• 50,000 hand raisers who have seen the product in person or on a video who said that they want to know more about it when it comes out and 97% of those don’t currently drive a Ford vehicle
• 38% target demographic awareness about the product, without spending a dollar on traditional advertising ( Fords model “Fusion” doesn’t have that awareness after 2 years of being out in production and yet it has received hundreds of millions of dollars in traditional marketing expenditures).
• Ford sold 10,000 units of Fiesta in the first six days of sales.

The Burger King Campaign

Being creative is the key. One of the best examples of creativity is the Burger King “Sacrifice a Friend” application. The campaign encouraged users to delete 10 Facebook friends and get a free Whopper. It was fun, controversial, and a great idea. Consumers were excited about it, and it generated a huge amount of buzz. 233,906 friends were removed “sacrificed” by 82,771 people in less than a week.
Everything was going great until Facebook freaked out and shut it down, blaming privacy issues. But the idea was perfect. Burger King built in the ability to share it, the incentive to use it, and added just enough humor to make the campaign a hit.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Burger-King-/33572651718?ref=ts

Previously to the Sacrifice a Friend Campaign Burger King had launched a new perfume on their Social Media sites. It captured the smell of flamed meat. The “perfume” supposedly sold out. But the buzz was out there. And was picked up by multiple news TV shows like Regis and Good Morning America.

When launching a Social Media Campaign for your company, it’s important to keep 5 things in mind:
1. Don’t have your corporation dominate the conversation.
2. Bring something interesting to the table: Passion, Laughter, Curiosity or a Cause.
3. Have your Corporation behave like its full of humans by letting your employees participate in the campaign.
4. Integrate Social Media with real events.
5. Support Social Media campaign with some sort of traditional advertising.