5 Examples of Consumer Brands with Awesome Social Media

If you are an aspiring marketer, or a business owner; you will know by now that in the digital age we live in, businesses cannot survive without a creative and innovative online presence.

For your brand to thrive in all the noise that exists on the various social media platforms, you need an outstanding social media strategy that goes above and beyond your competitors.

After you’ve decided which social media platform to use, it’s time to get creative and hang out with your target audience. There’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, and lots more to choose from.

Social Media is currently the most influential part of online marketing, Facebook alone has 2.07 billion monthly active users. Statistics show that two BILLION messages are sent between people and businesses each month. So if you’re still ignoring your social media strategy or you’re unsure how to stand out, read this article and get inspired.

Here’s what some of the biggest brands are doing on social media, with insight into what you can learn from them…

Domino’s

Domino’s are always on the hunt for the next tech-innovation to use in their social media campaigns. This cutting-edge approach helps them to stay on trend and build a healthy relationship with Millenials and Gen Z.

Pizza Emoji Marketing

Emojis are on-trend, and Millennials love them because they are simple and fun. The majority of Domino’s target audience are from the younger generation and so, Domino’s adopted emojis into their social media strategy, to communicate with their followers.

What’s really stand-out about their approach is that it went beyond pure promotion, and they managed to integrate it directly with their commercial strategy.

They did this by making it possible for young pizza lovers to order pizza via Twitter; all you have to do is Tweet: ‘#easyorder’ or use the pizza emoji!

Beyond Twitter and pizza emojis, Domino’s have recently announced two very exciting ways to order and receive your pizza, using the latest technology.

Domino’s have partnered with Amazon’s voice activated device, Alexa. Allowing consumers to order pizza with one voice command. You can even track your order with GPS tracking!

Domino’s gave also introduced a pizza delivery robot, taking your pizza delivery to a whole new level.

Their focus on innovative approaches to customer interaction is paying off too, with their stock up 5000% in the last 10 years, thanks to the fact “Domino’s also aggressively embraced digital technology to make ordering more efficient, customer friendly and maybe even cool.”

What can you learn? Don’t be afraid to try new things, take risks and be different to stand out from your biggest competitors! Never settle for being mediocre.

Oreo

Oreo’s biscuits are not only delicious, but they have also managed to implement extremely impressive branding and their social media marketing is almost always on point- no need for repositioning here!

Oreo are constantly publishing wonderful, engaging and relevant content every single day, without fail. It’s no surprise that this popular cookie brand has over 3.2 million likes on Facebook, more than 82 thousand followers on Twitter and 87 thousand on Instagram.

And don’t worry, we won’t rehash their famous and always-cited Superbowl blackout tweet.

Instead let’s take Halloween in 2013, as a prime example; Oreo created a series of Vine videos, featuring take offs of classic horror films, with their delicious cookies made into Halloween characters.

Oreo’s Halloween video series is part of Oreo’s ‘Daily Twist Campaign’, where they publish a playful character made from an Oreo cookie, representing a significant event on a daily basis.

Fast forward to 2017 and they’re still not running out of ideas, with their brilliant crowd-sourced campaign for new Oreo flavours like Avocado and ‘Unicorn’ garnering a ton of free press attention.

What can you learn? Take your time to plan an imaginative social media strategy, always think outside of the box. Keep a consistent theme, ensuring you post fun and engaging content that’s in line with your brand.

JetBlue Airline

On Valentine’s Day, 2007, JetBlue needed to quickly react to a crisis that occured at New York’s International airport. An ice storm hit New York and consequently, JetBlue’s planes were cancelled, leaving some passengers stuck in their seats inside a plane for a large number of hours, away from their loved ones in New York’s International airport.

This crisis made national headlines which affected the brand badly, but JetBlue recovered by taking to social media. JetBlue used YouTube to post heartfelt brand messages to openly take responsibility of their failures, apologize for the service failure and admitted that they needed to improve.

Customers now have a lot of respect for their integrity, a few months later, Jetblue joined Twitter and it now has over 1.7 million followers, building the brand by responding and conversing with customers responsively.

This customer-service focused, 1-to-1 approach to social media has made JetBlue a case study in how to create an authentic social brand experience. In turn, they’re rewarded with avid fans like Paul Brown.

What can you learn?

Social media isn’t just a broadcast channel – it’s a chance to converse on a personal level with real people, and an opportunity to create incredible customer service. Don’t delete negative comments, always respond to negative feedback with a willingness to solve problems. As long as you show integrity, take responsibility of failures and show your customers you care; people will love your brand even more.

Dove

Dove, oh Dove… What a beautiful brand with massively inspirational content that pleases many people on a global scale, in particular women and young girls.

Dove is not just a soap brand, they have taken advantage of their media coverage to create a campaign which helps women and young girls all over the world to boost their self-esteem. Their campaigns have become increasingly popular, so much so that other brands have imitated their style.

Their campaigns have been building self-esteem in women and girls since 2004, and by 2020 they will have helped 40 million through social media and educational programs.

The content they create and consistently publish on social media is delivered in a lovely way; letting their customers know they truly do care about them.

While they’ve had a couple of recent missteps in 2017, their decades-long consistency should allow them to get back on track in 2018.

What can you learn?

Show that you care about your customers, be an inspiration to your target audience, really have a think about what you can do to help others.

Playful banter and a bit of Twitter Tic-Tac-Toe

Our top tip is to have fun with social media; your customers will smile, and love you for it. If you didn’t see the Twitter banter between Oreo and Kit Kat, here it is…

So, Nestle own KitKat and Nabisco owns Oreo; they both offer tasty biscuits and are direct competitors.

On March 11th, 2013, a customer of both Kitkat and Oreo famously tweeted, ‘Can tell I like chocolate abit too much when I’m following @kitkat and @oreo hahahahahah’

— LauraEllen (@Laura_ellenxx)

This prompted KitKat to challenge Oreo in a battle to win over the affections of customer, Laura, (I bet she found this highly engaging and told all of her friends).

To which Oreo replied…

We absolutely love the Twitter banter! I bet this made you chuckle and now you want to share it with your friends.

What can you learn?

Have fun with social media, your fans will want to share posts like Oreo and KitKat’s banter if it makes them laugh and they think it will make their friends laugh and shareable content means more exposure for your brand.

A final honourable mention

KFC arguably managed to pull off one of the best, and most subtle, social media campaigns in 2017. It took very little budget, and didn’t rely on huge celebrity endorsements.

In fact it was simply a clever, well executed idea that explicitly tied back to one of the core tenets of their brand. The lesson? Before you open up your checkbook, get creative!

Conclusion

To conclude, if you want your business to grow and exceed customer expectations, it is very important not to neglect your social media marketing (or even brandless) strategy. Your business will gain maximum results if you produce original, consistent, engaging, and valuable content which resonates with your target audience.

Make the effort to discover what motivates your ideal customers by delving into deep consumer intelligence and design your content around the results.

Explore your favourite brands in your industry and take note of what they are doing right, then consider implementing similar tactics. And don’t forget to respond to negative comments with a willingness to accept and solve failures.

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