Three great social media campaigns from 2011

As we start winding up 2011, it’s time to look back over the year and see which social media campaigns made the grade and really achieved the goals that they set out to. The following list is a grouping of my three favourite international social media campaigns from 2011.

I chose these three campaigns because they cross the boundaries between online and offline and really make those influenced by the campaigns “live” the brands.

KLM — The airline (yes it still exists)
At the beginning of 2010, KLM the official airline of Holland, embarked on an aggressive social media listening exercise.

Utilising Foursquare and Twitter, KLM staff would look for passengers who had just checked in and were waiting to board their flight. The KLM staff would then quickly scan through their social media profiles to look for something that the passenger was interested in. Armed with this information, KLM then bought (from duty free) small gifts to give to these passengers.

The theory behind this strategy was that these passengers, who are clearly social media users, would use their social media profiles to spread their great experience with their friends and followers which would in turn entice their friends to choose KLM as well as spread the KLM brand even further.

A small group of 40 passengers were given gifts and the campaign received more than one million impressions on Twitter alone.

Stella Artois
This is not strictly a social media campaign, however the spread of the application it developed was social and the usage of the application was definitely social (so I’ll allow it).

Stella Artois a Belgian beer company created an augmented reality travel app. This incredibly handy app was quite simple to use. If you were travelling to a strange city or found yourself in a foreign country, all you needed to do was open the Le Bar Guide application on your iPhone or iPad, give it a little shake and it would point you in the direction of the closest establishment that served refreshing pints of Stella!

One of the great features of the app, was that it acted like Foursquare and let you rate the establishment where you decided to refuel on Stella. This information was then used by the brewery for market research and travelers who also used the app could ensure that the establishment that they were going to try was at least well liked by fellow visitors.

Renault Connect
Renault, the French car manufacturer, allowed visitors to the AutoRAI motor show in the Netherlands to share their offline experience with their online friends through Facebook. When a visitor to the Renault stand saw a car that particularly took their breath away, they simply had to swipe their visitor card across the Facebook Check-in stand. The visitors access card had been preloaded with their Facebook information.

When the card was swiped this information allowed Renault to immediately post information about the car they had “liked”. This information, posted on their wall, was then shared to all of their friends and allowed them to feel and experience the show online with their friends who were actually there.

What did they do right?
These are just three of the many social media campaigns that were executed over 2011, but for me these really show how a simple idea: Coupled with a bit of creativity, ingenuity can achieve excellent results in the world of social media.

They also illustrate the point that social media is about conversation and relationships, each of the examples above put that ahead of pushing and overtly promoting their brands.