HEATMETER: Our look at the most—and least—engaging social media
Bieber’s campaign takes social media prime time
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There’s no better place for a teenager to introduce a product he’s
promoting than through social networking, to which masses of teenagers find themselves addicted. Imagine how great a place it is for
Justin Bieber, who has 25 million Twitter followers and more than 45
million Facebook “likes.” On June 6 Bieber took to Twitter to announce
his fragrance Girlfriend!—a follow up to the perfume Someday, which
was a big hit with the young ladies. In the announcement, Bieber invited
girls 13 and over to enter a “sing off” on Tumblr to help create a commercial for the product. The campaign connected Twitter to Tumblr—
a golden tactic in itself—but then went platinum by connecting those
social networking sites to television, as Bieber announced the contest
winner on NBC’s TV special Justin Bieber: All Around the World.
Prometheus takes
views into the future
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Prometheus marketers at Fox built
even more buzz around the much-hyped
film by creating a very high-tech-feeling,
viral social media campaign. Perhaps
the coolest aspect of the campaign is a
three-minute video clip during which
Peter Weyland (a character in the film
who is a business tycoon of the future)
gives a TED talk—in 2023. The film takes place in
2093, so we’re viewing this in the future, but also in
the character’s past, which is an amazing effect to
pull off. The video, which appears on TED’s blog,
is clearly intended to be
shared via social channels. In addition, the
marketers created a video
that showcased “David,”
a robot built by Weyland’s company, Weyland
Corp., that is creepily
human. For a third video
the marketers at Fox
teamed up with Verizon
FiOS to create virtual
tour of the Prometheus
ship. All in all, these
types of highly produced
viral videos can be the
building blocks for an extremely successful social
marketing campaign.
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RNC’s Anti-Obamacare campaign
mobilizes online for #FullRepeal
The Republican National Committee’s aggressive campaign to kill
Obamacare, which kicked off after the Supreme Court upheld
the Affordable Care Act in June, aimed to get its point across using a
heavy dose of social and Web. The RNC’s website drives traffic to a
microsite where a YouTube video harangues viewers about the dangers of “a government takeover of healthcare.” There’s a dedicated
hashtag (#FullRepeal) that’s caught on with Republican bigwigs like
House Speaker John Boehner, a “Repeal it Now” Facebook page with
more than 77,000 “likes,” promoted tweets, and an online petition and fund-raising drive. The only problem is this campaign seems to be preaching to the
choir. But say what you will, it’s a streamlined effort and the evangelists are
enthusiastically evangelizing. As one tweeter tweeted: “Retweet if you agree
with over 2/3rds of Americans and stand for a #FullRepeal of ObamaCare.”
Wichita State University’s social
media campaign barely passes
College is a time when life-defining experiences occur, and Wichita
State University (WSU) is promoting a hashtag among students
and alums, #WSUexperience, to share those moments on Twitter,
Facebook, and Instagram. Postings will be featured on online ad net-
works and digital billboards in Wichita. While the strategy is solid,
it’s not particularly innovative, nor does it maximize the capabilities
of digital and social advertising. Other universities have created
similar student-alum outreach campaigns, incorporating microsites
and videos. By comparison, WSU is slacking and scribbling its thesis at the
last minute. Moreover, WSU should consider ramping up its own social media
presence before engaging in a full-fledged student-alumni outreach campaign.
The university doesn’t have a huge student body population, but it has an
unimpressive number of followers on Twitter and Facebook.
