Nike Phenomenal Shot

Social media and mobile devices have driven fundamental changes in consumer behavior and opened up new avenues for consumers to engage with brands. The need to move faster is greater now than it has ever been. Hence more and more brands around the world have been learning from social media and deploying real time digital and traditional media strategies.

During the recently concluded World Cup in Brazil, Google teamed up with Nike to generate eight different real time campaigns that allowed fans to celebrate, remix and share memorable sports moments, just seconds after they happened. As a result Nike got over two million fan interactions across 200 different countries.

To try it out yourself hop over to riskeverything.nike.com.

Coca-Cola Interactive Mini Bottles

Coca-Cola has recently launched 20 special edition mini bottles to get fans around the world excited about the upcoming 2014 FIFA World Cup, which will take place in Brazil from June 12th to July 13th.

The bottles come wrapped in flags of countries that have hosted the World Cup previously i.e. Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, USA, England, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, South Africa, Japan and South Korea, as well as the three upcoming host countries Brazil, Russia and Qatar – plus two special Coca-Cola editions.

Coca-Cola fans can also create and send special messages and avatars to other bottle owners through Facebook and iPhone or Android apps. In addition, special markers on the bottles activate augmented reality animations when held up to a smartphone camera.

Whopper Sellout

Handing out your competitors product for free may sound like marketing suicide, but Burger King Norway did exactly just that in order to further social engagement with their fans.

On noticing that some of its 38,000 Facebook fans weren’t real fans. They decided to find out exactly how many of them were “true” fans by offering them a Big Mac from McDonalds to go away. From the 38.000 fans, Burger King lost 30.000 and with their new dedicated fan base of 8.000, they received 5x higher engagement.

BBM Channels

Who has 1 Billion users and is about to overtake Facebook? It’s not Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn. It’s a company that most people in the West don’t know. That, however, is set to change, with the explosive growth of China’s Tencent and its mobile messaging app WeChat…

Source: WorldOfCEOs, JPMorgan, Credit Suisse, Bloomberg & company announcement

On November 13th, Snapchat rejected the $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook. These are all signs that tell us that the battle for social dominance is going to take place via mobile chat apps. Brands however are finding it difficult to reach their audience through these apps as most of them don’t allow in app advertising. This has lead to creation of experimental campaigns as seen on WhatsApp from Klick Chocolate and Absolut Vodka.

Now BlackBerry has announced that it is bringing BBM Channels into open beta. BBM Channels is going to be a separate part of their BBM app where users will be able to follow and converse with their favorite brands and businesses. Users will be able to like, comment and share content posted by a BBM Channel, or enter a one-to-one private chat session with the owner or manager of the page. It will also be possible to subscribe to a BBM Channel and receive notifications when new content is uploaded.

The update is available as of yesterday on handsets running BlackBerry OS 5 and above. It will hit iOS and Android in the coming months.

I think this will simplify things drastically for brands, as reaching and engaging with the target audience in their favorite chat app will help them achieve a top of mind presence. This for sure will spur on the competitors like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber, WeChat etc. 😎

UPDATE

Media Markt “Money Trucks”

Over the last couple of years I have seen a handful of brands reach the 1 million fans milestone. To celebrate, most of them have created really nice and innovative thank you videos e.g. Tic Tac “Likes” Matt.

Now joining the list of brands with 1 million fans on Facebook is Media Markt, one of the biggest retailers for electronics in Germany. To celebrate this momentous occacion, Ogilvy & Mather Frankfurt created the “Money Trucks” campaign in which Media Markt fans were asked to guess the exact number of small mining trucks required to transport 1 million cents. The contest was started in June with the below launch video…

Then in July one lucky fan from Saßmicke, a small village in western Germany guessed the exact number of trucks required. So on 16th July, Media Markt dispatched 193 small mining trucks to deliver the 1 million cents right to the door step of the fan… 😎

A barrel for every Maes

Maes is Belgium’s second most popular beer and also Belgium’s 3rd most common surname. Since the market leader for beer in Belgium was outselling Maes 4 to 1, they decided to garner support from all the Maes families in Belgium by giving them a free barrel of beer.

The eligible families had to sign up for this special offer through a custom Facebook app that also allowed them to book a pub on a chosen date while inviting all their friends. The campaign was a huge success and pushed the Maes fanpage into 6% of the most active Facebook pages worldwide! 😎

Like hunting

In the last months there have been cases of people uploading photos on Facebook and successfully asking for 1 million likes. So keeping that in mind, Doctors Without Borders decided to turn their campaign idea “good intentions don’t save lives” on its head and actually make people’s intentions count.

Through a special Facebook app people could create a post and ask their friends for likes while donating 1 Danish Kroner to Doctors without Borders for each like they got. Each collection was run for 48 hours and only likes from your own Facebook friends counted. By setting a maximum amount you could also make sure you dont go bankrupt. If your friends were too slow, you could also simply decide to donate more.

At the end of each donation drive people could post a picture saying thank you to all their friends who helped them donate. The campaigns success has already made it a permanent solution and can still be found running for people who want to turn their friends likes into donation.

Cape Town Tourism Facebook Holiday

Cape Town Tourism wanted to promote the unexpected side of Cape Town. All the small communities, never-heard of places and unearthed gems that can’t be found on Trip Advisor, Lonely Planet, Expedia, or even Google.

Since everyone could not be sent to Cape Town, people were allowed to send their Facebook profiles instead. 🙂 Through a Facebook app users were given a virtual, tailor-made Cape Town holiday that exposed them to all the unexpected places. A few lucky winners even got to experience their Facebook profile’s holiday for themselves.

Similarly last year, Obermutten a little and lovely mountain village from Switzerland was put on the world map through a very simple Facebook campaign. Check that out here.

Augmented Reality in 2013

With smartphones and tablets becoming part of our everyday life, we will also see more Augmented Reality apps mixing the virtual and the real world in 2013. Here are some examples from ARworks that recently caught my eye…

Audi Singapore Showroom app

For the opening of their biggest showroom in South-East Asia, Audi created AR experiences that allowed visitors to fly around the showroom building without actually boarding a plane or drive the Audi R18 race car around Singapore at full speed without the risk of getting a ticket. Whats more, they even allowed visitors to personalize their individual license plates and then take photos with the car.

Dakar race in a shopping mall

A real Dakar desert racecourse was built for the new Opel Mokka on a 4mtrs long table that was placed in a shopping mall. Visitors could use the provided iPad’s to race against time and each other. The results were then shared on Facebook and the weekly and overall winners received various prizes.

Christmas Ornament Sling

Deutsche Telekom for their Christmas promotion developed an iPad app where visitors could throw virtual Christmas ornaments containing their personal message onto a huge Christmas tree erected in a mall. A successful hit to one of the real ornaments on the tree, lighted it up through an integrated server application.