Not too long ago, we looked at brands that are killing it on Instagram and we came up with a pretty sweet list of brands that top the ratings in our books for customer engagement.
We love Instagram for all that it offers and use it vigorously in our own social media strategy for:
- Fostering an engaged community
- Visual mediums that rock
- Building brand reach and growth
We thought we'd look at successful Instagram campaigns and why they rock, for some social media inspiration. Companies have been kicking their social media plans into high gears lately and it's hard to find businesses these days we don’t get Insta-envy from. Let’s relive some of the best Instagram campaigns that have taken over our smartphones and laptops over the last few years.
Canadian Tire - Snowing Kindness in Canada #ShovelItForward
How much more Canadian can you get than helping others from the goodness of your heart? That’s why we loved Canadian Tire’s #ShovelItForward social media campaign from last winter that captures Canadians being Canadians.
The campaign encouraged people to shovel a neighbour’s driveway and ‘pass on’ the act by leaving their Canadian Tire #ShovelItForward shovel behind, and obviously share it on social media.
Although the campaign screams Instagram in more ways than one (great hashtag, geo-tagging, images) the campaign primarily focused on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. It had all the right parts for a stellar Instagram campaign, so we will still include it in our list. The company benefited largely from the success of the campaign on Instagram, they saw a 45-point lift in ad recall, 18-point lift in campaign awareness, and 6-point lift in the target’s groups’ likelihood to recommend the brand.
ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
Perhaps one of the most infamous social campaigns to-date is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. This campaign, started by the ALS foundation in the summer of 2014 to raise awareness and funds, has garnered 2,540,426 hashtag uses and has become a global social media phenomenon with more than 1,520,00 Youtube results, and 17 million videos uploaded to Facebook.
The ALS ice bucket challenge is definitely a top Instagram campaign that holds global tribute, it even helped transport their fundraising efforts by $97 million. They have truly used social media to find global awareness for a disease that was not known prior to the campaign.
Dove Beauty Campaign: #BeautyIs
Dove has a history of making us feel good with campaigns centered around women’s self esteem and self appreciation. The brand launched it’s Dove Real Beauty concept in 2004 and has had massive success. The campaign uses mediums including commercials, Youtube videos, and brings it’s ‘real beauty’ tributes to it's social media campaigns and posts.
#BeautyIs launched roughly two years ago on the company’s Instagram account and has since led a revolution of 14,440 posts from users applying the hashtag. The campaign started on their account with a simple post, challenging women and their mother’s to take an honest selfie and use the hashtag #BeautyIs.
Mercedes-Benz - GLA Build Your Own
Mercedes-Benz Build Your Own GLA is one of the most creative campaigns on Instagram! This campaign launched nearly a year ago, and truly uses Instagram to its’ fullest potential, in new and innovative ways, we might add.
No hashtag used, which would have benefited the campaign further by allowing for better searchability, but none the less it is still awesome!
When an Instagrammer looks up user: GLA_build_your_own they are asked to ‘tap to begin’. Once the photo has been tapped the, user then builds their own Mercedes GLA by choosing from colour, wheels, roof, and grille photos. In the end, the user is then presented with ‘their GLA’ , the price and the option to bring the image to your local Mercedes-Benz dealer to get started. Great incentive.
Hopefully you have learned something new from these successful Instagram campaigns and feel Insta-inspired for your next business campaigns! What we can take away from these top business examples is creativity, user-generated content, the importance of time of year, and having fun with your campaign!
