KLM, Volkswagen, Procter & Gambler, and Nivea are leading four social media marketing campaigns that have stood out in recent months for their originality, creativity, ability to engage customers, and brand repositioning.
Here are the keys to its success:
KLM's surprise.
This summer, the Dutch airline relaunched the "KLM telegram data Surprise" campaign , first launched in late 2010. The goal: to build passenger loyalty by rewarding them on-site with a small gift while they waited to board their plane. Passenger identification was done exclusively through social media : the company monitored each time a customer checked in at a KLM location on Foursquare or shared their plans with KLM on Twitter or Facebook. It selected passengers and explored their social media profiles to learn more about their reasons for travel or their personal tastes. The KLM flight crew would then purchase a related gift and deliver it to the selected passenger in the departure lounge. To give the campaign visibility, KLM disseminated more than 200 tips on its Foursquare page in airports around the world, informing them about the campaign. An original way of using social media proactively to reach customers and transform a generally unpleasant experience (the boring wait) into a pleasant moment, integrating fully personalized online and offline actions . And one more detail: passengers never felt their privacy was invaded. The result: KLM's Foursquare page now has nearly 17,000 followers, at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport alone (to give an example), more than 3,000 check-ins have been recorded, and the campaign video has nearly 150,000 views:
The Volkswagen Passat challenge on LinkedIn.
It was one of the first campaigns to use the LinkedIn API , open to developers since late 2009... but with little development yet. To demonstrate that its new Passat came fully equipped, Volkswagen launched the LinkedOut campaign in the Netherlands in April 2011 , with the slogan: "Are you as fully equipped as the new VW Passat? Challenge your colleagues on LinkedIn and prove yourself to win this brand new car." Users had to register on the application with their LinkedIn profile and "challenge" other members of their professional network to see who had the most education, experience, recommendations, and connections. The more points, the greater the chance of winning a car. The campaign combined advertising and entertainment in an original advertainment program on LinkedIn, a social network still underutilized in marketing , and also encouraged users to improve and complete their professional profiles. The application, www.linkeduit.nl, is now deactivated, but a demonstration can be seen in this video: