collection of unique viral social media marketing strategies

Unique Social Media Strategies

Nikhil [email protected]

+91 8882135642

Air Asia are a small, Malaysian Airline looking to launch a new flight from Australia. The airline

launched a Facebook campaign to give a way a free plane. Well, Air Asia created a competition whereby

the winner could choose 302 of their Facebook friends to fly with them free from Australia to Malaysia

( assuming back to). The competition allowed one to choose what friends to take with you and tag them in

the seating plan.

mailto:[email protected]


Nikhil Gadkar [email protected]

+91 8882135642

Mini Billboards by Ant-Man . To build hype for the upcoming movie, the marketing team behind Ant-

Man placed tiny billboards in Australian cities. Folks reacted in the only way you would expect in 2015 when seeing something out of the ordinary, they

posted pictures of it on social media.




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Artist Vows to Sketch Every New Twitter Follower. Artist @GregBurney vowed to sketch the first 3,000

new followers he gained. He started out with 70 followers, and by the end of the day, had attracted

over 2,000.




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The Backpacker Co, India’s first experiential company specializing in taking travellers on informal, informative and fun trips around the world, attempted to bring back the old-

world charm of postcards via its Facebook app called Postcards. One just has to fill in their basic details and postal

address to find a postcard in their postbox ( if you have one). The best part was that, as you fill in your details, you

will find that you can also send these postcards to your friends. Seeing the great response on Facebook, The

Backpacker Co thought of giving this golden chance to their Twitter friends too! They asked the users to simply tag their friends along with hashtag #travel to send and receive these

postcards.




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Bingo’s, chips, #CraziestPlacesToEat campaign. The interactive campaign engaged fans by inviting them to share the #CraziestPlacesToEatBingo that they could imagine and

interesting requests by putting together a series of illustrations.




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Budweiser, the beer brand, targeted people with friends in Denver and Chicago with a promotion to buy a friend a beer

with a redeemable receipt at a local bar. Results: 23m earned media impressions and a threefold increase in-bar

sales.




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TKokuyo Camlin, a stationery manufacturer in India, decided to use the popularity of the trending Rio Olympics to

promote its product with a social media race. Four city specific hashtags for Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Bengaluru-

#MumbaiSprinters, #DelhiJets, #KolkataRockets, and BengaluruNinjas as competing teams. Social media users

had to participate in the race by tweeting using #PencilRace and the hashtag for their city to move their team’s

mechanical pencil to the finish line. The idea behind the activity was, the more tweets a team receives, the further

their mechanical pencil gets on the race track.




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Be ready to seize the moment. Just a few minutes after the Chicago Cubs won, Budweiser played the perfect ad. The video was not a pitch to beer but a

sincere, and thoughtfully put video that told the story of an underdog defying the odds.



Nikhil Gadkar [email protected]+91 8882135642

A new app is entering the world of a custom fashion and personal data. Called Coded Couture, the app is

being built by Ivyrevel -an online fashion house supported by H&M and partnership with Google. Coded Couture's first product is the Data Dress, a personalized dress that's created by tracking the

user's lifestyle for a week.


Dress up on Tweets


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A cognitive dress, made in fabric flowers embedded with LEDS, lights up based on the sentiment of Tweets

made about it. The dress was unveiled at the Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress.




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Consulting firm Collective Next rocks Pinterest. the agency has a “Someone once said” board that

features quotes aligning with the group’s worldview, an “Our Work” board to showcase projects and

results, and an “Inspiration” board.




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Comedy Central’s created a Google Adword campaign, custom videos that could only be

discovered by searching for keywords. The videos were unlisted. The videos contained stuff that masses

usually search for about celebrities.


Unique Media Strategies


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This billboard coughs at people who smoke nearby. As part of a new anti-smoking awareness campaign in Sweden, the

ad agency Akestam Holst has installed a kiosk in Stockholm's busy Odenplan square. Whenever a person lights up near the billboard, which is outfitted with a smoke detector, a

virtual man will produce a nasty, barking cough on-screen.




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DBS Bank India narrates a modern day love story Via Chilli Paneer (Cottage Cheese) film to keep social media fans

engaged. By creating a story around two characters KEN, native to Singapore, and Asha, a foodie from India, the bank

displayed everyday emotions around decisions that we make in our lives. The movie was released in 4 parts. The

twist was you get to play KEN and steer through the story, by choosing options that appear in the movie. By choosing

the options taken, at the end of the movie, a message displays what is your personality –type.




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While attending the #PSEWEB conference in Vancouver, Mike McCready tweeted that, while he liked his room at the Delta, the view wasn’t so nice.

He didn’t tag the hotel, and he wasn’t asking for anything.

Within an hour, Delta responded – offering a room with a better view. And when Mike returned to his

room after the conference, he found a dish of sweets and a handwritten card from the staff at his hotel. It made such an impact that he wrote a post about it –

the very same day.




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Diesel, to launch the new line of street wear, in Pune India, it decided to do something different. A gun, wired up to the

internet was set up in the middle of a mall in front of a moving target. Passers by were encouraged to tweet

@fiftyfivedsl along with #gethit The tweet would trigger the gun and anyone who hit the target would win 55 diesel

goodies.




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Disney started a social media campaign #ShareYourEars that began to run through march 14 this year to benefit the non-profit organization Make A Wish Foundation. The campaign invites everyone to

share their fun and creative photos with Mickey Mouse Ears to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter with

the hashtag of ShareYourEars’..




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Streamline the customer experience – Domino’s. On Twitter, Domino’s fans can order a pizza by simply tweeting a pizza emoji. This is a unique and creative use of Twitter, and it’s

particularly interesting because it is simultaneously a campaign and a transaction. That’s impressive efficiency. You can see

from the photo below how many Twitter followers Domino’s has earned.




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Listen and keep track of the social media influencers. Emirates Airlines to promote its First Class upgraded you Tuber Casey Neistat from Business Class to First

Class on a flight from Dubai to New York. With 6,258,716 subscribers around a cumulative total of

over a billion views for his videos, Emirates dominated the web with a first-hand experience

video published by Neistat.


Unique Social Media StrategiesFilmfare Awards India 2017


Filmfare Awards, one of the biggest event in Indian cinema, generated 300 million social Media impressions. Filmfare entered into an alliance with Facebook and Twitter, which

made the awards reach a larger audience, beyond TV and in real time.

With Facebook, an FB Live booth was set up to capture reactions of celebrities at the event.

A celebrity Instagram wall was unveiled, adding more than 100,000 new followers.

Through Twitter Amplify, a content sponsorship package that enables brands to extend their presence to targeted

Twitter audiences in India. @Filmfare broadcast exclusive content, live from the Twitter Blueroom, an hour before the telecast, world wide to Twitter's audiences and connected devices. The partnership also led to the creation of Twitter emoji and celeb stickers the first such for an Indian awards

event.




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Imagine seeing your Instagram selfie as a literally moving thread picture. Forever21 brings this imagination live. Forever21 hired Breakfast, a Brooklyn-based agency to

execute a digitally synced billboard that was made primarily of the thread. The machine took a 1.5 years to make. The machine ran 24-hours a day displaying Instagram pictures

with the #F21ThreadScreen and sent the users their photo-clips. This thread screen displayed only properly hashtagged

Instagram posts.


Menu written in Emoji-Like Symbols


The Indian restaurant, Gaggan, was named the top restaurant in Asia, for three years in a row.

To me the highlight is the 25-course tasting menu, which is written in Emoji-like symbols.




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Online Science Fair. If folks can’t reach you, you go to them. GE launched a campaign hosting a

#6SecondScienceFair on Vine and Tumblr where they re-vined posts from people using this tag to

encourage interest in science, increase engagement, and build GE's reputation as an innovator.




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GE launched #DRONEWEEK, a project that allowed “viewers to criss-cross the U.S. via Periscope and get a

drone's eye view of some of the company's least accessible facilities where jet engines, locomotives,

wind turbines and industrial machinery are made and tested to extremes, featuring interviews and expert commentary from GE scientists and technologists.”




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Sony Pictures Branded Ghostbusters Snapchat Lens the first Snapchat lens to utilize both front- and rear-facing smartphone cameras, Sony Pictures' Snapchat campaign helped generate excitement for the new

Ghostbusters film by encouraging Snapchat users to create and publish unique branded content with their

friends and followers.




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A baseball cap with a video camera mounted on the brim. On 28 February Google was granted a patent for the

headwear. According to the patent, Google's removable hat-mounted camera would be used for capturing photos and videos, which you can upload and stream directly to social

media platforms. To do so, the camera will connect to a wearer's mobile device via an app.




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Inject a dose of relevant humor-Cutting Edge is the largest haunted house in the world. It exactly knows

to give goosebumps to their social media fans.




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Healthy Choice introduced a progressive coupon on the Healthy Choice Facebook Page. The coupon began

at a low value of $0.75 off and increased as people 'liked' the page and signed up for the coupon,

ultimately reaching a “buy-one-get-one-free” deal.




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Hellman’s (the mayonnaise company) created a fun, helpful social media campaign centered around WhatsApp. The

campaign centers around a service called WhatsCook that empowers WhatsApp users to make something delicious using the ingredients they have on-hand. Here’s the situation: John

Doe (not a real person) is hungry. He has a few random ingredients in her refrigerator, but doesn’t know how to put

them together. Using WhatsCook through WhatsApp, youcan send a picture of the ingredients to a real chef who will suggest a recipe idea and then walk you through the cooking process.




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Honest Tea’s brand is built on the idea of, honesty. They use real ingredients with no hidden sweetener or weird stuff you can’t

pronounce. This campaign found a unique intersection between their product’s value proposition (a bottled drink without artificial who-knows-what in it), and their customers’ values (honesty and authenticity). The campaign set up pop-up shops in major cities.

Each shop offered tea samples in exchange for donating $1 to charity. The twist was that The tea stands were unstaffed. Would

people pay for tea even if no one was watching? It’s easy to think a high number of people would simply steal a free drink. However,

the results contradicted that assumption. It also challenged participants to prove their honesty by sharing their experience at

each shop on Twitter and Instagram using the #RefreshinglyHonest hashtag. At the end of the campaign, the results were posted to a

landing page.




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Ikea's 'Perceptive' banner ads acknowledge that you might have clicked on them accidentally. "Perceptive Banner" ads acknowledge that, fairly often when you click on a mobile

banner ad, it's not on purpose (Ikea cites research suggesting that over 60% of clicks are accidental, and down

to "fat thumb syndrome.") So, the Ikea-branded banners that pop up greet you with messages like "Really, are you sure?" and "Oh, did you tap by mistake. That Happens?"

rather than taking you somewhere you didn't really want to go, and annoy you.




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IKEA, created a furore when it launched its latest PS 20414 collection on Instagram. IKEA created a specific wesbite for the PS 2014 collection within Instagram. Each Image block represented different categories,

(for example – benches, chairs and storage ).




No sad endings for Japanese fans of virtual romance. A Japanese book editor Miho Takeshita, recently married, is having an affair. She is not afraid of being caught because her boy friend only exists on a smartphone. Takeshita is a

fan of romance stimulation game, a booming market in Japan. The Ikemen App has been downloaded 15million

times since launch, 5 years ago. The game does not rely on complex algorithms but offers multiple choice scenarios

that lets players escape into a world where they create their own love stories. The virtual romance market in Japan is

worth $135million annually.




JOJO SIWA and her Giant Bows

Source : Times of India 19 Mar 17




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Katy Perry released a snippet of her upcoming single on Instagram. The videos are captioned Why Are We All So Chained #Fridaythe10th alongside a clip of her walking in heels with a disco ball chained to her feet. She also posted a video of billboard featuring a photo of

her with February 10 written across.




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Kayne West , now a University Subject. His social media strategy is must-know for all social-sellers

1.Launch of a new product. It got 500,000 illegal downloads in a day. May be it was his freebie, so those few fans could spread the word.2.Timing is everything. West’s notorious behavior and Twitter tirades all seem to be connected to a release or event.3.Align tone with audience: No matter what the approach, one of the most important aspects is authenticity. Audiences recognize that no matter what, Kayne stays true to himself, no matter how crazy his opinions may be.4.Build a bigger audience. Share your content on your social media sites, e-newsletter and blog, and pitch to industry press as well. Share relevant content from others too because if you are always self-promoting, people will see through it and likely ignore your message.5.Create Your Brand Identity & stick to it: His confidence may be seen as arrogance but by not being afraid to say what he likes, he found an identity that works for him. He understands that it is his brand identity.




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GT Ride—Viral Gaming for Kia Motors. Going after a digitally savvy audience, Kia created a car racing video game in which players built their own virtual racetracks. By gesturing in the air with their phones, the game would translate the motion into a customized course. Results: The app was downloaded

180,000 times and led to 250,000 racing games played.




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With each passing year, The Great Indian Octoberfest gets better, topping the user experience becomes an interesting challenge. So, the world’s first Beer Dispenser Machine that dispenses beer when you headbang to it, the Good Times Dispenser. The mechanics were simple, the participant had to login to his or her Facebook account, strap on a helmet

that captured the head’s movements and headbang in front of a beer vending machine. A mobile device attached to the helmet recorded the number of headbangs generated, and the count was displayed on an LCD screen. Through motion capture technology, the action of headbanging caused beer

cans to be dispensed from the machine.




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Monitor Twitter complaints – #HappyToHelp. KLM, a Dutch airline , took this idea to the next level with their #HappyToHelp campaign. During the social media campaign week, they set up a control room in front of Amsterdam Schiphol Airport where they monitored thousands of tweets coming in from unhappy

airline travelers. They paid special attention to customers having trouble with other airlines. Then, they came to the

rescue, retrieving forgotten visas, delivering a bed for a stranded traveler, and even singing a lullaby for someone who

couldn’t sleep. Gained 36m impressions.




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Unilever’s food brand ‘Knorr’. #LoveAtFirstTaste is the social media campaign that intends to let one find an ideal match not on the basis of looks, but on the basis

of the same food taste. Through the Love At First Taste profiler, the participant comes to know about

his/her type from the range of: Salty Adventurer, Roasted Romantic etc.




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Krispy Kreme Used Social Media to Boost Sales on Fathers’ Day. A Facebook app was created on the Krispy Kreme India

Facebook page, where anyone who logged into the application could enter a 15 character message for their

father. These special messages were then iced on to doughnuts that were delivered by Krispy Kreme to the

address provided.




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Leo Burnett’s website now reads from right to left. Leo Burnett has a simple message of solidarity to

share with people impacted by the U.S. travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries.




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Love has No Labels – AdCouncil. A large X-ray installation set up for public viewing showed couples dancing, hugging,

kissing and otherwise interacting. Then they would reveal the people behind the skeletal images seen by the crowd.

The point was to confront bias by showing most differences are only skin deep. Results: 40 m views in two days, and the

second-most viral PSA in history.




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#LowesFixInSix is an ongoing social media campaign that shares clever home improvement tips in six

seconds. The campaign uses stop-motion and clay-like animation to demonstrate each tip.


Mc Donald’s New J Straw


McDonald’s has developed a new J Straw, which delivers

both chocolate and mint flavors into the mouth at the

same time. This new straw was

developed for its new Chocolate Shamrock Shake.

Delivering two flavors at the same time. If this is applied to retail sales, it would be combining the online and

physical buying experience together. Amazon is doing

just this on Dec. 6, 2016. Amazon unveiled technology

that will let shoppers pick groceries without having to scan and pay for them thus

eliminating the checkout line.The possibilities are endless.




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Build a GLA on Instagram. Looking for a younger audience for its GLA, Mercedes launched a campaign that let people

customize a car right on Instagram. It also promoted a video to a target audience on Facebook. Results: 100,000

Instagram likes and 20,000 new followers.



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Mirinda’s short film on exam stress captures the audience. Weeks before the board exams begin, PepsiCo India has

rolled out a great campaign raising the issue of examination stress among teenagers which often leads to depression and suicidal tendencies. Named ReleasethePressure, the film is

a great appeal to parents to support and motivate their kids. The film, released on the official YouTube channel on 15

February, is a big success gathering over 7.8 million views.



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Show your product in action. Nest, a company that produces advanced thermostats, smoke alarms, and home security

cameras, has an enviable Google+ page that can be an example for your brand. Here, Nest succeeds in showing

their product in action in an engaging and humorous way. Seeing the Nest Cam in a real person’s home makes it easier

for a potential customer to picture it in her/his home.



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#Newcastle Brown Ale used Facebook for its award-winning Super Bowl Band of Brands campaign, Lacking

the $4.5m needed to buy 30 seconds of Big Game airtime, Newcastle decided to take a cue from the

sharing economy that’s made Kickstarter, Uber, AirBnB and CityBike so popular. The plan was simple,

sell ad space in its ad, asking 20-30 brands like itself to pitch in for airtime, and then cram all 20-30 of those

brands into one Big Game ad.



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British Telecommunications company Orange dramatized its Twitter followers' summer plans by

giving them the summer blockbuster voiceover treatment. All Twitter users had to do was include #thissummer in their tweet along with their plans,

and Orange would capture it and give some the voiceover effect.



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After having created a big buzz globally, Oreo, takes their latest campaign #PlaywithOreo to an all new level across

cities in India. Taking inspiration from the idea of Oreo graffiti, the #PlaywithOreo campaign also takes to social

media to showcase its interesting designs, further extending into the second phase of the campaign, called #DoodleIt. The #DoodleIt activity is aimed to encourage folks across

social media platforms to create interesting doodle art around the Oreo cookie and win exciting prizes by posting their work of art on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube

or Instagram.

Unique Social Media StrategiesOreo Cookie Drones


Oreo’s latest stunt for National Oreo Day and the cookie’s 105th birthday, Oreo put cookie costumes on five drones

and flew them over New York. Dubbed the “Drone Dunk,” the drones dropped cookies into cups of milk set up on a

barge alongside the East River.The campaign is tied into a social media campaign where consumers can post pictures of their own Oreo dunk on

Twitter or Instagram for a chance to win a trip to Los Angeles or New York.



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Pepsi’s #livefornow bus shelter campaign in London. This is something you have to watch. Such campaigns

require big budgets.



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#KISSaLOT—The World Under the Mistletoe. LOT Polish Airlines, this airline put mistletoe on its planes and

encouraged people on the ground all over the world to track the flights and kiss when they were overhead. Facebook ads were targeted at people in different cities when planes were

en route.



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#BALLOTBRIEFCASE ON SNAPCHAT. PWC wanted to raise awareness of their 82-year involvement in the Academy

Award’s ceremony and reposition the brand to appeal to a younger talent demographic. The campaign story revolved around the journey of the Oscar ballot briefcase as it raced

around the country, arriving in time for the live awards ceremony. Celebrities like Neil Patrick Harris joined the

briefcase journey, which helped generate buzz and interest .



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Newsjacking provides a great way to use trending hashtags.



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As a loyal Samsung customer, Canadian Shane Bennett asked for a free unit of their latest, soon-to-

launch phone. To sweeten his offer, he included a drawing of a roaring dragon. Samsung said “no”. But

to say thanks, they sent him their drawing of a unicycle-riding kangaroo. Shane then shared both messages (and drawings) to Reddit where it went viral. In response, Samsung Canada sent him the

phone he asked for and customized it with his fire-breathing dragon artwork. Great customer service.



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Snickers used interactive technology to create a impression of their new range of vegetarian chocolates. The campaign used motion and gesture based technology to gamify their

message of Going Veg. The campaign required the audience to complete a puzzle challenge where they could pick up and

place puzzle pieces with motion and gesture in order to complete the challenge.


Nikhil [email protected] +91 8882135642

Another great campaign from 2015 was the Star Wars #ForceFriday campaign, a global release and unboxing

of dozens of new and exciting Star Wars toys. The marketing team did an amazing job building up the

hype for what would have been just a normal Friday and turned it into a global event with a global

livestream and hashtag where fans shared their excitement and photos of new purchases of Star Wars

toys.



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2015, when the new taco emoji came out, Taco Bell announced a campaign where you could tweet

@TacoBell with the taco emoji and another emoji, and Taco Bell would tweet you back an entertaining

mashup of the two emoji..



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Tourism Victoria gave all avid travellers, a chance to re-discover Melbourne through their interactive ‘Remote

Control’ campaign. The idea was to show an entirely new side of Melbourne, that may have not been seen before. In 40 hours over 5 days, two participants of remote controlled tourist travelled across Melbourne to discover the city. Each

of their movements was live broadcasted on web in real time with the help of helmet bound cameras, GPS trackers

and other live streaming technology equipments.



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T-Series became the most popular YouTube music channel of 2016. Statistical data research shows that videos were viewed 7.32bn times last year, which also included a massive 892.5m views in

December 2016 alone. With this, T-Series seems all set to become the first YouTube channel to bag a whopping billion views in a single

month. While T-Series came first, in the second place was the Turkish channel ‘netd müzik’ with 6.03bn views last year. The third place belonged to Justin Bieber whose videos had garnered 5.89bn views. The recipe for success, original and exclusive content, which

is relevant to the times. Additionally, it also keeps its audience engaged via concepts such as lyrical content, twisters, behind the

scene videos, jukeboxes song making machines etc.



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Turkish Airlines takes off on its first ‘Periscope’ journey from Istanbul to New York. The live broadcast began at Crew

garden, the airport lounge where the pilots and the flight attendants were preparing for the journey ahead. When the

journey began, the broadcast continued with the flight attendants interacting with the viewers. On asking about the

crew rest rooms, the telecast also gave the viewers a peek of the rooms which are usually not accessible to passengers. All of the video streaming took place mid-air giving the users

a ‘live’ feeling.



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The virtual paparazzi project. A tunnel with motion sensors was created as the entrance to the event, while back

projected walls formed the sides of this tunnel. Here, virtual fans (pre-shot people) were waiting for people to arrive, and take their pictures. As soon as someone entered the tunnel, these virtual fans would spring into action, and real flashes

that had been pre-installed fired and pictures were taken by real digital cameras. These pictures went up on the Google Plus event page immediately. The facial recognition feature

of Google Plus auto tagged people on the network. A live feed displayed for people inside the event, so whoever was

inside also knew who had just walked in.