Social Media Campaigns of the Month - February 2016

A quick look at 3 of the social media campaigns which caught our eye during February.

The Thomson Cruises #NotForMe campaign

During the month of February there was a group of 12 well-known travel photographers & bloggers sharing photos of their travels on social media, alongside the #NotForMe hashtag.

It caught our attention straight away with the tongue in cheek language and cheeky nature of the content, although it wasn’t immediately obvious that this was a deliberate campaign. That was, until Thomson Cruises announced they were the brand behind the activity at the beginning of March - something they’d put together in order to challenge the common misconceptions or preconceptions of cruise holidays.

What was good?

We loved this campaign because of its brave, forward thinking nature. It’s getting harder and harder for even our favourite brands to stand out amongst the noise of our busy Twitter and Instagram feeds, but the very nature of the slightly sarcastic content made it eye-catching and attention grabbing from the off.

Utilising well-known travel photographers and bloggers allowed Thomson to hit their target base of potential buyers by using key influencers, yet maintain its secrecy until the optimum point in time.

Anything else?

There’s a lot of scope for utilising this theme in other areas of the Thomson portfolio, in order to show-off the hidden delights of some of the brand's other destinations (a Benidorm campaign, perhaps?!).

What was bad?

Not much! It really was a stand-out campaign for us. In order to keep the secrecy of the campaign we can see why the brand has yet to share the theme across any other channels to really drive revenue, such as email - but we’ll watch this space for a wider roll-out!

See it for yourself…

See website / See Twitter / See YoutTube

Cancer Research UK - World Cancer Day

On February 4th it was World Cancer Day, a global event aimed at uniting the world’s population in the fight against cancer. Cancer Research UK supported this on Twitter by promoting their own hashtag, #ADayToUnite, encouraging users on Facebook and Twitter to share photos of themselves wearing their branded unity band in support

What was good?

Celebrities including Louise Thompson (of Made in Chelsea), singer George Shelley and former Girls Aloud singer Nadine Cole got involved. This saw popularity spiral and increased the spread amongst fans of these popular stars.

Buying a band before posting your photo also meant that donations had to be made in order to take part. This makes the likelihood of success (in monetary terms) higher than some of the other third sector campaigns we’ve seen of late - such as the no make-up selfie.

What was bad?

Although guarnateed donations made this camapign stronger than some other charity ones we've seen, we can’t help but feel like this type of thing has been done too many times before. Time to change it up a little!

Take a look…

See the website / See press

Time to change – Time to talk

On February 4th Time to Change ran a campaign to get the nation talking about mental health. Their aim was to encourage people to talk about mental health in order to break down stereotypes, improve relationships, aid recovery and take the stigma out of something that affects us all.

What was good?

Running for one day only added an element of excitement to the campaign and meant there was a bit more drive to push it as far as it could go as the timer was counting down. Keeping it refined to an awareness focus only (it didn’t ask for donations) meant followers were more likely to share it far and wide and Time To Talk weren’t really asking too much of them.

What was bad?

Time to Change have been running this campaign every year since 2011 with little change to their tactics - it’s an awareness building campaign so there was no huge push to drive donations like with World Cancer Day, above, but a refresh could do no harm. The ‘if it’s not broken, don’t fix it’ rule never applies for social media!

See what you think…

See website / See press

Leave a comment below to let us know what you think of thee campaigns.

Written on behalf of the DMA Social Media Council.