10 Best Social Media Campaigns of 2010

by Nikita Porwal on December 28, 2010

Social media marketing has been an important part of today’s marketing options. However, it is also a niche way to market and therefore takes a lot of planning and understanding to get it right. Many brands and companies have tried their hand at marketing using social media. However, only some have succeeded at using it to their advantage.

As year 2010 comes to a close, the following is a list out some of the success stories that brands have had with social media marketing:

1. Ikea’s Showroom : Though technically this campaign started in 2009, the impact of it has gone on to be one of the most successful campaigns in 2010. It also won the 2010 Gold Cyber Lions at Cannes. When Ikea wanted to open a Malmö store in Sweden, it created an online showroom hosted on Facebook. This page gave options to people to look at the kind of products available in the site. The social media campaign also posted an impressive video on YouTube.

2. Old Spice : Old spice certainly made a stir in the social media marketing sphere with their campaign on YouTube. Old Spice made a 186 video campaign across social media platforms in real time. These were focused on promoting the 71 year old product that was considered a product for the old, to the youth. The campaign without a doubt was a success and is said to have had over 69 million viewers.

3. Ford : Ford decided to try social media to unveil its new Ford Explorer. They chose Facebook as their platform, and had a free Ford Explorer as a give away to a lucky person. Ford set up a countdown showed videos chat and photos on the events. This took its competitors by surprise and became one of the most successful campaigns on social media in 2010.

4. Vitaminwater: Vitaminwater took one of the biggest risks of having its Facebook fan page double as the brand’s official website. It also embarked on an interactive campaign that allowed Facebook fans to create their own flavors of Glaceau Vitaminwater, and announced that the winner of the best flavour would receive $5,000. As a social media campaign, this was a risk that worked well for the brand, because currently this page has over 2 million followers.

5. Microsoft : Microsoft’s Bing search engine advertised and gained a lot of popularity all on one day this year. Microsoft’s Bing advertised on Facebook’s very popular game called Farmville. Microsoft’s popularity grew by over 400,000, as the fans on Facebook increased because of their advertisement on Farmville.

6. Coca Cola : In the beginning of 2010, Coca-Cola released a YouTube video called The Happiness Machine. They further went on to create a UK version of the video as well. These video have over 3 million viewers. The campaign also received the Gold Interactive Award at the 2010 Clio Awards.

7. Pepsi : Pepsi took a different approach in marketing using social media. Instead of taking the predictable route of advertising their product, they instead took the route of improving people’s social conscience. The campaign was focused on getting people to come up with innovative ways to refresh the world, submit them on Pepsi’s Refresh Everything , add them to Facebook and ask for votes. The best and the most popular and ideas would be funded by Pepsi.

8. Ridley Scott’s Life in a Day : Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald, along with YouTube and in cooperation with LG wanted to create an experimental documentary film to be shown in the Sundance Film Festival. The idea was to see how July 24, 2010 was experienced by different people in the world. For this they created the short film and posted it on YouTube. More than 81,000 people submitted their video entries to be included in the experimental film. More than 1 million people have watched the video on you tube and many followed the progress of the film, and saw the behind the scenes footage.

9. Gillette: Gillette used a super viral video on YouTube featuring tennis star Roger Federer. The behind the scene footage attracted a lot on attention and 7.9 million views to date on Gilette’s official channel, the video makes up 99% of Gilette’s viewership on YouTube.

10. The Last Exorcism: Before the release of the movie The Last Exorcism, the marketing strategy that the creator applied was social media related. They released frightful video that intrigued the audiences and encouraged them to respond to it. The videos received over 3 million views for the video. The movie also earned over $20 million on the first three days alone, after opening at number 2 in the US Box Office.