Looking Back at the Awesome Social Media Campaigns of 2014
Aishwarya Krishnamurthy
January 21, 2015 • 2 min read
Updated on May 2, 2017
In discussing the finalists to put in our “Awesome Things Brands Did in 2014” infographic, our marketing team took a nostalgic trip through all the amazing campaigns that brands put out last year. We found that although the numbers pointed to a couple of clear winners in terms of raw numbers, each member of our team had a different favorite campaign.
Our resident sports nut couldn’t stop raving about Nike’s “Last Game” commercial, and no one was surprised when I (resident crazy dog lady) chose the Budweiser “BestBuds” as my favorite of the entire year. These were two of the most popular commercials in terms of views on YouTube, which is unsurprising as the commercials were associated with two of the biggest sporting events in the world!
Predictably, the British member of our team chose the most British video – Johnnie Walker’s “Gentleman’s Wager” as his favorite and described it as “the best 6 minutes you’ll ever spend watching a pair of middle aged men dancing.” While I personally didn’t understand the charm of the commercial (aside from Jude Law), it’s hard to argue with the fact that the video caused an incredible rise in the brand’s subscriber rate.
What none of us in the marketing team expected was when our most staid member chose the uproarious sequel to the Pepsi Max Jeff Gordon prank as his favorite. Is he hiding a mischievous side? We’re on it and will be reporting our findings shortly.
Finally, sassy commercials like Ikea’s BookBook and Samsung’s Wall Hugger caught the fancy of our youngest team member (she uses a Nexus, could you tell?), and in her own words “[the brands] created concepts that were as easily adaptable for social media as for mass media.”
Of course, the P&G video “Thank You Mom” Sochi Olympics edition brought us uniformly to tears, or was it those ninja onion choppers?
One of the interesting take-aways is that while each of these campaigns had amazing numbers to back its claim for campaign of the year, what we found was that each of us were drawn to a different campaign for a different reason. There is no one winning formula, and in the end – content, when created well, always delivers.
We’ve already seen that research companies are predicting bigger budgets and higher spends on social for 2015 so this coming year is sure to be even more exciting for smarter brand content.
Which of these succesful social media campaigns from our infogrpahic was your favorite? Has your favorite not been included? We’d love for you to reach out on Twitter and tell us!
Want to stay on top of the best campaigns of 2015 or want to see how your campaigns stack up against your competitors? Take Unmetric for a test drive today.
