Without giving you a lecture about “How consumers are done with a traditional form of advertising? How they are with so many “so called engaging posts,” nowadays, are easily bored and want something new and enticing,” I would like to give a few ideas on how to create a teaser campaign using some examples.
Gif-ing Twitter
Twitter is an effective marketing tool only when you’re good in expressing in limited words. Not for HBO though, which is merging text with animated GIFs in its tweets for the promotion of Game of Thrones Season 5.
In one such Twitter campaign, #CATCHDROGON, involving the three dragons in the series, the fans were made to catch a dragon on Giphy. They had to retweet the post containing the Gif as soon as any of the dragons appears. If done right, they had a chance to win prizes and gain access to exclusive content.
By running this campaign before the commencement of the new season, HBO is not only rewarding its loyal fans but also presented a creative way for fans to celebrate the beginning of the new season. Not to mention, 6 million people and some 1 million tweets that became part of the campaign.
What HBO Did Right?
First, HBO kept things simple. They just embed a Gif in their every Tweet, that’s it, no rocket science. This campaign is a good example of simple-minded creativity. Second, the pick of the hashtag was not only enough to generate curiosity in its present viewers but also to attract new viewers. Third, this campaign wasn’t just restricted to Twitter. Game of Thrones Facebook page gained more than 1.6 million followers during the run.
Treasure hunt and Twitter
How many of you used to like treasure hunts as a kid? How many of you have ever thought of running a treasure hunt to increase engagement on your business Twitter account? Even if you have, Cold Play, the rock band from London, UK, is already running one, dubbed as Coldplay’s ‘Ghost Stories’, to reveal the lyrics of a song in their upcoming album. They have hidden pieces of paper in libraries across the world, containing a part of the lyrics. The hints for the treasure hunt will be Tweeted by Cold Play official handle from time to time with #lyricshunt.
Everyone, who successfully completes the treasure hunt in his or her respective country by retrieving one of the papers, will be presented a “golden ticket,” inclusive of a paid trip to London to see the band perform.
What was the Mantra?
To Coldplay’s surprise, some 14, 000 Tweets were part of “Ghost Stories’” first day. Once again, a unique campaign with nothing complicated. Few Tweets with the hashtag and a cryptic photo as a hint to the treasure hunt. Clues and cryptic messages though common were never used in a Twitter campaign before. The clues and cryptic messages with pictures created enough interest among Coldplay fans to make the campaign viral, not to mention, first of the kind promotion to employ both online and offline elements for a single cause.
Channel Exclusive Campaigns
If you think that social media marketing is restricted to few form of industries, then chances are you have to think twice. In a recent campaign, French luxury giant, Christian Dior, successfully used social media to build anticipation around their new mystery make-up line. Dior’s campaign, however, was unlike any other multichannel social campaign where every channel is used to the max to promote a brand or a product. Dior’s was actually a single channel campaign where other channels were used to draw attention to that single campaign.
Before the commencement of the daylong Twitter campaign, Dior teased many videos about the make-up line on their official YouTube, like behind the scene videos and models wearing that make-up line before announcing the hashtag #IconicColors and the date for the Twitter campaign.
Tweets with one punch line, a brand colour, and an image of a makeup look, clothing item, an accessory item, or a fashion illustration were posted the whole day.
Daphne Groeneveld, who was the face of Dior’s Addict fragrance launch, near the campaign’s end was announced once again, further building the anticipation.
The Takeaways:
No doubt the Twitter campaign went viral. It was promoting of highly visual focus like the spectacular images of the model, and glossy photographs of Dior’s fashion lines. Together, the campaign displayed the “Luxury” that this fashion house is known to carry. And the way their marketing team used other channels to build excitement around a single channel was, simply, stunning.
Conclusion
Social media teasers provide exceptional prospects to productions dealing with a new product launch. They allow the messages to be couturier, as in the case of Christian Dior, mysterious, as with Coldplay or exciting, as with HBO’s Game of Thrones, providing the highest level of content engagement and personalisation, more than ever offered by any other form of media, before or after the launch.
