2012 Silver Best use of social media for brand awareness

Client Lynx, Unilever UK

How did the campaign make a difference? The Lynx social media strategy is as simple as it is powerful: keep Lynx in fans’ minds on a daily basis, and build brand love through the creation of quick-win, reactive, relevant and entertaining content. The Facebook fan base has doubled to one million fans in a year and engagement levels have risen by 300%.

What details of the strategy make this a winning entry? With hundreds of thousands of Facebook fans willing to interact with Lynx every day, the brand set about the two-pronged task of keeping Lynx at the front of fans’ minds and instilling love of the brand. For posts to garner true affection, they need to be of a certain quality every time. For Lynx, that meant they should be funny, widely-varied, relevant, ultra-reactive, and always accompanied by a creative image. On Facebook, images are arguably more memorable and instantly likeable than words, so efforts were focused on making them as great as possible. These weren’t the usual stock shots, but individually crafted, press-ad-style productions. The focus on brand love stemmed from the belief that it can be a key driver of repeat purchase and cross-category purchase.

How did creativity bring the strategy to life? The job was to put that instantly recognisable Lynx spin on every piece of content. Using social media allowed a more fluid client-agency relationship: which meant that any idea could be worked up and be live on the page within minutes. A strong, ownable look stayed true to Lynx's cheeky tone of voice throughout, treating each piece as if it were a quick turnaround press ad. Content included a St Patrick’s Day party and an incredibly believable April Fools’ Day prank. But they were the obvious choices: others included Prince Harry's Vegas shenanigans, National Left-handers Day and the iPhone 5 launch. When there was nothing ‘real world’ to talk about, questions got fans thinking about the brand: in a battle between Attract and Excite, which would win? What was the first Lynx product they ever bought? And which can would they take to a desert island?

Results The Facebook fan base doubled in a year, reaching one million by the height of summer, making Lynx the first Unilever brand to reach one million Facebook fans in the UK and Ireland. Engagement levels have gone up 300% compared to the previous year. Peak engagement was with 6.8% of Facebook fans on any one post: well above the industry average of 0.072%.

Team Susannah Clark, Mark Carroll, Graeme Noble, Alex King, Mia Matulic, Marc Curtis, Yasmin Aluf, Jeff Bowerman, Chris Buckley, Mike Philips