A social media campaign is a coordinated marketing effort to reinforce or assist with a business goal using one or more social media platforms. Campaigns differ from everyday social media efforts because of their increased focus, targeting and measurability.

Big Commerce Essentials,  Ecommerce Marketing and Strategy

Spotify Wrapped

In a nutshell, Spotify Wrapped is a marketing campaign that uses users’ data to form a compilation based on their activity on the app. Parts of this compilation include their most listened-to song, artist and band, their favourite genre of music and how many minutes they have spent listening to songs within the year.

Due to the unique function that Spotify provides, when it was first introduced, it went viral. Every year millions of people share their compilation across social media for their followers and friends to look at. This creates great exposure for the brand as it reaches an audience beyond its users.

Since Spotify Wrapped is a unique campaign, there is a lack of competitors. Having a lack of competitors attracts and encourages more people to use Spotify. Apple has over one billion customers and only 88 million of those are subscribed to their Apple music service, where as 138 million are subscribed to Spotify. Part of that huge difference is due to Spotify having more features, such as the Wrapped campaign.

Spotify’s aim is to target those who aren’t already users, this is why the campaign is so impactful. It almost makes the non-users feel as though they are missing out since everyone else is sharing their compilations. That is what makes this campaign so successful.

Although users have the option to share their stats across many social media platforms, Instagram and Twitter are the most popular platforms used. Below are show comments taken from twitter, as well as the engagement on the campaign on Instagram.

Apple #ShotOniPhone

Just like Spotify Wrapped, this campaign is made up of user-generated content. The Apple #ShotOniPhone was introduced in 2015 and was initially used for a competition where users would take pictures and upload them to Instagram to potentially have them on billboards across the world.

The aim of this campaign was to encourage the users to live a passionate and empowered life through technology. In 2017 after the competition had ended, Apple continued #ShotOniPhone where marketing became organic as users were still sharing their images using Apple’s #. The image below shows the amount of interaction the campaign has had on Instagram.

The power of user-generated content is amazing when it comes to engaging audiences and this is something that Apple takes advantage of. They use this campaign to promote their products along with the Apple lifestyle.

The target audience isn’t specific as they want to engage with people who are already customers whilst also promoting their products.

Ikea Back-To-School Campaign

The Ikea Back-To-School campaign is an annual campaign. They specifically target 18-24-year-olds who have just enrolled in college/university and are moving into halls. The goal of the campaign is to drive traffic to their website and increase sales.

Ikea uses Pinterest as its main campaign platform as this is a platform for users to gain inspiration, whether that be art or interior design. Pinterest is well known to most of the younger generation and this is typically used for them to find inspiration such as dorm room ideas. During the back-to-school period, they pay for sponsored posts on Pinterest as well as many other social media platforms to reach a wider audience.

On their Pinterest account, they provide many different interior design ideas almost like virtual showrooms. The users are able to click on the posts and there are direct links to the products they have used which can take the user directly to the product.

Ikea also take advantage of influencers by getting them to promote the campaign to their followers, again to drive people to their website to boost their sales.

Just like the previous campaigns, Ikea also makes use of user-generated content. A lot of Pinterest users share images of their ideas and hacks using Ikea products.

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References

Big Commerce. Unknown. What is a social media campaign? How to increase social sales. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.bigcommerce.co.uk/ecommerce-answers/what-is-a-social-media-campaign/. [Accessed 22 November 2022].

Business.Pinterest. 2022. Your audience is here. [ONLINE] Available at: https://business.pinterest.com/en-gb/audience/. [Accessed 22 November 2022].

Digivizer. 2022. 10 Genius Social Media Campaigns. [ONLINE] Available at: https://digivizer.com/blog/10-genius-social-media-campaigns/. [Accessed 22 November 2022].

Medium. 2020. Social Media Analyzation — Spotify Wrapped. [ONLINE] Available at: https://madelinepotter.medium.com/social-media-analyzation-spotify-wrapped-d1c62f7d6459. [Accessed 21 November 2022].

Social Bee. 2022. 10 Social Media Campaign Examples to Learn From. [ONLINE] Available at: https://socialbee.io/blog/social-media-campaign-examples/. [Accessed 20 November 2022].

Social Samosa. 2020. Shot On iPhone: A Campaign that turned into a phenomenon. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.socialsamosa.com/2020/08/shot-on-iphone-campaign-list/. [Accessed 22 November 2022].