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Top Digital Marketing Campaigns of 2016 that became Viral Marketing Hits

Reading Time: 7 mins

Digital marketing campaigns have become more creative than ever, with many different platforms to deliver branded content to your audiences. We have compiled some of the top digital marketing campaigns of 2016 so far, that became viral hits as they resonated with key target audiences.

Who Won Booking Summer? – Booking.com

Booking.com came up with a unique idea to inspire its audience to travel spontaneously, creating many assets across different platforms.

The summer months are the peak of mobile bookings, with many being spontaneous. Booking.com therefore created assets which made frictionless travel possible, but also showed everyone how spontaneous trips could enrich their lives.

who-won-booking-summer_gif_8

Booking.com measured the success of the campaign through engagement, opting to get positive dialogue with the campaign – creating a great relationship which went beyond a typical transaction.

The hashtag #wingityeah gained over 2500 photo entries over 7 days, with 91 photos being turned into personalised GIFs by the company, and shared back with the owner all over social media – gaining 16.4 million views.Taking place over the course of the summer, the video below summing up the campaign was uploaded in February 2016. The campaign gained over 25000 engagements, reaching over 6.4 million people on just Facebook, and drove over half a million to the summer campaign hub.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEi_RG7Sq2Y

House of Fraser Emoji Campaign

A rather controversial campaign for House of Fraser – but the fact it’s controversial and got people talking about the brand, really shows that it could be a strange form of marketing genius.

Many people thought the House of Fraser Twitter account had got hacked when it began Tweeting with an inordinate amount of emojis, yet as time went on, it appeared this was not the case.

House of Fraser had completely gone against its more traditional brand identity, and went all-out on an appeal to a millennial audience for a good two weeks.

Even now, you can see the House of Fraser Twitter display picture now offers a way to add their Snapchat account – which is a clear intent they are pursuing a new audience, and wish to open the brand up to younger age groups.

Ballot Briefcase – PwC

The #BallotBriefcase campaign is out of the ordinary, but that is what makes it stand out from the crowd.

It’s unusual for PwC, a B2B company, to invest so heavily on social media, let alone Snapchat in particular. But this campaign worked very well.

PwC wanted to highlight its involvement with the Academy Awards, and simultaneously reposition the brand to appeal to younger demographics

The campaign story involved the journey of the Oscar ballot briefcase, as it travelled around the country – with many celebrities appearing along the way.

The campaign achieved a 136x increase in impressions on Twitter, and also managed to increase followers and engagement across Snapchat and Instagram.

Shield 5 Instagram Film

Shield 5 is a scripted series shown only on Instagram, uploaded daily and counting 28 episodes.

Essentially, it’s a “whodunnit” movie shown in 15-second clips over almost a month – keeping users engaged, and proving to be a first for Instagram.

And this isn’t some amateur piece of media either, as the director helped on Hot Fuzz, Layer Cake, and Pearl Harbor. So it has credentials.

Having now amassed 30 thousand followers, and the first episode gaining 39.9 thousand views and 720 comments at the time of writing, that’s pretty impressive.

Perhaps brands could learn more on how to create a buzz around multimedia, social content in original ways?

Doritos Super Bowl 50 Ad

Doritos is no stranger to creating humorous, shareworthy content, and the ad for Super Bowl 50 was no different.

The ad depicts a baby which is after a Dorito in its father’s hand during pregnancy. A strange idea, but it worked nonetheless – gaining over 893,000 shares during launch. At the time of writing, it has over 10 million views, and over 6200 likes on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH2LsFcWOFY

Netflix Socks

Netflix has huge appeal across the world, having amassed a staggering fan base. Therefore, the brand can get away with doing some more humorous and inventive marketing campaigns.

With such devoted fans, the concept was that Netflix-watchers were subject to many “first-world problems” when binge-watching their favourite shows. One of these problems, is that they fall asleep when they are using Netflix for such a long time, and lose their spot.

Netflix socks were created as “smart socks”, a second part of the MakeIt campaign which centres around DIY projects inspired by social listening and user submissions.

Netflix socks digital marketing campaign

These socks use an accelerometer in order to detect if the user is asleep, send a signal to the television, and pause your show. Genius, really.

Netflix also invited fans to create their own socks, with specific knitting patterns inspired by shows Netflix produce.

Netflix socks achieved over a billion media impressions, and 1000 media placements. On the social front, within three weeks the socks were mentioned 49 times an hour on Twitter, counting an average of 1175 Tweets per day, from around 20,0000 users.

https://youtu.be/PMtqy8edUq8


What have been some of your favourite digital marketing campaigns of 2016 so far? Drop a comment below, or let us know over @XanthosDigital. If you’re looking to get your own digital marketing strategy into full swing, then get in touch to see how we can help!