Social Media Marketing beyond Facebook: 2 Case Studies
As you generate a social media marketing strategy to coincide with your print marketing and promotional product marketing strategies, it's always good to revisit the world of social media and assess what you could be doing differently. Particularly interesting as of late has been the rise of Snapchat and Tinder as go-to social media apps over the past year, and some companies have worked these platforms incredibly well into their overall marketing strategy. Here are two examples of companies that took advantage of what a niche social media platform had to offer in order to bring users a customized, interactive, and memorable ad.
WWF's #LastSelfie Snapchat Campaign
World Wildlife Fund came up with an ingenious campaign in 2015 to raise awareness about animal species that are facing extinction around the world. The organization tailored its campaign to suit the disappearing-photo functionality of Snapchat by featuring images of endangered species with captions like "better take a screenshot this could be my #LastSelfie," "don't let this be my #LastSelfie," and "in 6 seconds I'll be gone forever but you can still save my kind #LastSelfie." The images themselves were striking because they featured the faces of endangered species close up, with eyes looking directly into the figurative camera. This campaign serves as a prime example of fitting the campaign to the social media platform. As media outlet Itissa puts it, "the whole idea behind WWF using Snapchat was to emphasize the fact that endangered species are disappearing around the world just as selfies disappear from Snapchat in 10 seconds."
Ex Machina's @meetava Tinder Campaign
This was a smaller-scale marketing campaign to be sure, as it was carried out only in real time during the SXSW festival in Austin last March, but it shows a remarkable measure of creativity in using the popular dating app Tinder to spread the word about an upcoming film, Ex Machina. Marketers created a fictional Tinder profile ("Ava") using a profile photo of one of the film's female stars, and when Tinder users were matched to the profile, Ava would ask her matches seemingly basic questions like "Have you ever been in love?" and "What makes you human?". Only after being directed to Ava's (really, Ex Machina's) Instagram page do you realize that the profile is advertising a sci-fi film and that Ava is a robot asking questions about what it's like to be human.
While this campaign was confined to a highly localized sphere, its originality definitely caused it to create some stir on social media after-the-fact. In addition, the Tinder campaign pointed Tinder users to the film's official website and Instagram pages, helping to increase the film's following on social media. The campaign does have its caveats, however, as some might call this form of marketing invasive. If nothing else, you have to appreciate the campaign's out-of-the-box thinking.
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