20 brands using social media in really innovative ways

Using social media effectively is good for your brand, no matter how big you are. There wouldn’t have been US$3.08-billion spent just on advertising on social networking sites in 2011 otherwise.

A recent study by research company Millward-Brown also showed that there was a direct correlation between how successful a company is and how well it uses social media. Research from eMarketer meanwhile suggests that brands can profit dramatically from a well-executed social campaign.

But if you want to stand out, you have to do something really special. The 20 pieces listed below are all special and all stand out. They also all won awards at Cannes Lions, one of the world’s biggest international advertising festivals. Every year around 9 000 registered delegates from 90 countries visit the Festival, which receives more than 28 000 entries across various spheres of advertising.

1. NIKE+ FUELBAND
Cyber Lions Grand Prix

NIKE+ Fuelband keeps track of one’s daily activity with technology and the use of social, helping individuals achieving personal fitness goals while comparing the results with friends.

2. Curators of Sweden
Cyber Lions Grand Prix

Sweden becomes the most democratic country on digital media by giving citizens the opportunities to represent the voice of the country under Sweden’s official Twitter aacount @sweden.

3. The Museum of Me
Cyber Lions Gold Lion

The Museum of Me is an interactive movie that reveals one’s identity via presenting one’s Facebook activities visually such as important life events, photos, circle of friends and frequently used words. Intel uses this virtual museum experience provided to users to illustrate its innovative business products and creativity. Want to know more? There is a video.

4. The Liberation
Cyber Lions Gold Lion

An online interactive film created with elements of fashion catalogue, game and music targeting teenagers and young women. With a click, the film freezes and the screen turns into an interactive catalogue that allows viewers to like, pin, tweet and buy. The viewers follow the plot of the story, of 3 rebellious teenage girls exploring a new city and can interact with the story by assisting the girls to make decisions.

5. Bear 71
Cyber Lions Gold Lion

Bear 71 is a project that features a 20-minute interactive documentary that explores the raise awareness about the relationship between human beings, animals and modern technology. The narrative follows the real life of a female grizzly bear in Canada from a bear’s perspective. Users to view real footage collected as well as more than one-million photos collected.

6. Small Business Gets an Official Day
Cyber Lions Gold Lion

American Express created an official “Small Business Saturday” and uses digital media to assist small businesses via creating platform that brought together business owners, consumers, and governments to assist small business owners. As a result, over 100-million Americans ‘shop small’ and American Express has helped small business owners reach more customers.

7. Connecting Lifelines
Cyber Lions Gold Lion

Hondo responds to the North-East earthquake in Japan by providing road information collected real-time though its Internavi system installed on all vehicles. The Internavi system contributed rebuilding efforts by showing the road to recovery.

8. Don’t Make Up and Drive
Cyber Lions Gold Lion

Volkswagen partners with a YouTube blogger Nikkie with over 25 million views to promote road safety. She applies make-up on her YouTube video until she is suddenly flung towards the camera – similar to a car accident.

9. Skate Pinball
Cyber Lions Silver Lion

Frucor Beverages built a website that updates on design and construction of a Pinball Machine park for skaters. Upon the completion of the Skate Pinball machine, skaters can explore the park while the cameras would capture 360˚ videos of riders mid trick and upload photos and videos instantly to the website for people to like and share.

10. IQ Streetview
Cyber Lions Silver Lion

Toyota iQ assisted Google Maps in completing the map of Belgium by filming narrower streets that Google cars cannot access to. Citizens live in narrow streets could invite Toyota to complete the street view online and receive discounts to purchase Toyota iQ upon the completion of street view capture.

iQ Street View case from Toyota Belgium on Vimeo.

11. The beauty of a second
Cyber Lions Silver Lion

An online contest (www.montblanc-onesecond.com) that invites enthusiastic users to share and edit one second long video to Montblanc’s website and the participants can compile others’ videos into a one-minute playlist containing different music scores.

12. Bespoke Album Creation Experience
Cyber Lions Silver Lion

Kaiser Chiefs fans can now pick 10 out of 20 songs on Kaiser Chiefs album website and compile their unique album with their choice of cover photo. In addition, fans can volunteer to sell Kaiser Chief’s album on social media and get paid for every album they sell.

13. Project Re: Brief
Cyber Lions Silver Lion

Google designed and developed an interactive website to display Google ad technologies that balances the past successful ads for Alka-Seltzer, Avis, Coca-Cola and Volvo with new technology.

14. The Smallest IKEA Store
Cyber Lions Silver Lion

IKEA built an entire catalogue in 10.5cm x 8.8cm web banner to showcase its commitment in providing solutions to small spaces.

15. Hilltop Re-imagined for Coca-Cola
Cyber Lions Silver Lion

With the help from Google, Coke-Cola echoes to its advertisement from 40 years ago (‘Buy the World a Coke’) by connecting different parts of the world literally. By placing vending machines that deliver cokes to an unsuspecting recipient, users can create personal messages to the delivery and connect with the other side of the world with Coca-Cola.

16. MFCEO
Cyber Lions Silver Lion

Via creating a fictional character online, K-Swiss successfully get people talking bout the footwear. In the 2010 campaign, K-Swiss signed the controversial fictional ‘athlete’ Kenny Powers to an endorsement deal. In the 2011 campaign, Kenny took over K-Swiss as CEO, re-shaping the company in his image and enlisting the world’s baddest athletes to help him un-suck the sports world.

17. Push to Add Drama
Cyber Lions Silver Lion

American channel TNT launched its campaign in Flanders, Belgium by placing a push button in the middle of the street that would eventually trigger real-life drama.

18. Go Beyond The Cover
Cyber Lions Silver Lion

“Go Beyond The Cover” surprised everyone by using a fully tattooed male undergoing a head-to-toe transformation to demonstrate the effectiveness of Dermablend Professional Leg and Body Tattoo Primer.

19. Backseat Driver
Mobile Lions Gold

By using iPhone’s GPS function, passengers on cars can now enjoy driving a virtual car, which moves along with a real car that one is driving via downloading the ‘Backseat Driver’ app.

20. Parking Douche
Mobile Lions Gold

A Russian online city newspaper created a free app to help the city become more parking-friendly. It allows people to take pictures of wrongly parked cars, and save the car number, type (e.g. crossover) and colour. This data is streamed live to special banner ads that are targeted through IP address to locations where these cars were parked.