170 The Best Digital Marketing Campaigns in the World
Lessons
You read a lot about the potential of social media to create a groundswell of
support around a cause, a product or a brand. But capturing the imagination of
social online communities and building the momentum to create a powerful
movement that embraces and endorses your original goals is difficult. You
need to be creative, you need to be involved in the right online communities,
you need to time things right and you need to engage with those communi-
ties in a way that does more than pique their curiosity. You need their sus-
tained attention.With social media in particular that attention is highly fragmented. To break
through the noise you have to do something different – something that stands
out. Something like getting a high-profile member of the online community
you’re working with to challenge an iconic brand to a duel.Ashton Kutcher’s challenge to CNN lifted Malaria No More’s awareness cam-
paign to another level, catapulting its reach and influence into the strato-
sphere, and capturing the imagination of traditional media, which pushed the
campaign’s reach even further. Of course, getting A-list celebrities on board
as advocates helps, but a great idea – especially one focused on a worthwhile
cause – that really captures people’s imagination can spread quickly online
without celebrity influence. On Twitter in particular, if you can initiate that
groundswell of support from the masses, and get your topic trending, you
may well find some big names weighing in with support.Marketers, aside from the worthiness and influence of this campaign, con-
sider the global elements. Digital lifts the geographical restrictions that often
exist. If your campaign is not sensitive or applicable to one particular geo-
graphical market why not nudge it along and use it as a test bed for new
markets for your brand or service?Another thing that this campaign highlights is the power of social media, and
of digital channels in general, to transcend traditional boundaries like geogra-
phy and time zones to reach a truly global audience... and all with the invest-
ment of nothing more than imagination and a little bit of time.