NZ social media: The best and worst of 2011
2011 saw social media in New Zealand move from being part of most marketers agendas to central to almost every marketing conversation. Here is our best and worst of the year.
McDonald’s embraced check-in rewards at store level, which was a great initiative and showed they now take social media seriously. They also had great success with the ‘Flick Rugby’ game, which was an app that sat on the Facebook page and let people to flick a coin across a counter full of McDonald’s food to win points. It wasn’t ground-breaking, but it was a nice tie-in with the Rugby World Cup. It was also simple, very addictive and had strong engagement numbers.
The Pedigree adoption campaign ‘Doggelganger’ was a real social media success. Doggelganger allowed people to find which dog they should adopt by uploading a pic of themselves to see which canine they looked most similar to. The idea was fun, very sharable and had a good truth (people often buy dogs that look like themselves).
Westpac’s ‘Gen W’ – a Facebook page specifically for the next generation of customers where they could win cash and a financial mentor – is a favourite of ours. Again, it taps into a core human emotion, in this case that everyone loves sharing their baby photos. Plus, it gets potential customers at an underused customer lifecycle point.
I also love the NZ Airforce ‘Step Up’ interactive YouTube channel. This is a cool way of connecting people with as real an experience as is possible. I like the fact it’s taking online video to a different place than just playing engaging content.
In terms of the worst, nothing comes close to sending a gamer to Iraq for the launch of a new computer game. Turtle Beach’s idea for a ‘real’ gaming experience was awful as it didn’t represent why people should buy the product and just felt wrong and insensitive to the families of those who died in battle. And I wasn’t the only one who didn’t like it as they pulled the content after lots of criticism:
Finally, Pump’s ‘Make like water’ campaign. I really like the overarching idea and the tagline, but think the eventual social media execution is weak because the idea stops at the line and the online videos aren’t funny or interesting enough to be sharable.
Image credit to Racheal King.
