Winners: 451 Marketing - America's Best "Liked" Candle and MWW - McDonald's New York Metro: Red Zone Replays
451 Marketing - America's Best "Liked" Candle
451 Marketing set out to make Yankee Candle America’s most “Liked” candle by increasing audience, engagement and direct sales from the brand’s Facebook page.
In developing a campaign that is co-winner of Most Engaged Brand, 451 Marketing published a mix of Yankee Candle content to drive sales and loyalty, through 5-7 tweets daily; created a monthly content calendar to manage all messaging; ran strategic campaigns to increase fan engagement, including RT giveaways, Twitter parties and fan-generated content promotions; tracked sales generated from tweets containing product links; integrated SEO tactics to optimize posts using a social keyword strategy, including 5-10 static keywords that will not change, and 5-10 dynamic keywords based on trends; functioned as a member of Yankee Candle’s team through weekly meetings and monthly reporting; and developed and executed blitzes consisting of engaging programs, content and contests.
451 Marketing’s America’s Most “Liked” Candle campaign grew Yankee Candle’s social engagement and fan base like wildfire; on Facebook, it resulted in 120,603 new fans liking the page, contributing to more than 137 million impressions – a 72.6% increase and 102.5 million in reach – a 204% increase.
New and existing fans were excited about the unique content. Nearly 1.7 million daily engaged users contributed to 1,023,444 likes and comments – an increase of 312.1% – and 53,739 shares – an increase of 408.2%.
MWW - McDonald's New York Metro: Red Zone Replays
After month-over-month analysis and trends showed that there was overwhelming interest in visually appealing product-related content across the McDonald’s New York Metro social channels, the MWW team shifted the content strategy into one that placed appetite appeal imagery mixed with relevant pop culture references at the heart of its daily engagement.
This also included shifting the daily content calendar themes into “owning days” with one specific message rather than hitting users with multiple messages throughout the day. Prior to this shift, users in the morning, for example, would be exposed to messaging around breakfast, coffee, oatmeal or other morning-specific themes. The new strategy involved placing one product per day at the heart of communications and tailoring the messaging to fit in throughout the day.
To bring the new content strategy to life, the team received approval from McDonald’s national to integrate Vine and Instagram into its communications mix. Knowing that both of these channels are heavily used by millennials, a key demographic target for McDonald’s, it was imperative to leverage these outlets to speak with customers.
In 2012, the local McDonald’s social presence generated 37.4 million impressions with over 6,500 individual engagements. The content strategy shift in 2013 increased yearly impressions by nearly an additional 5 million impressions; even more impressive is the year-to-date statistics in 2014, which have already generated over 63 million impressions.
Honorable Mentions:
• Association Headquarters Inc. - You are Now Entering the Baby Safety Zone
• Cohn & Wolfe - Blueair Social Engagement Campaign
• Transamerica - Enterprise Social Team