HP a marketing success with #BendTheRules.

Do you have a favourite advertisement on TV that just grabs your attention every time its on? Or perhaps a campaign run on Twitter, Facebook or another social media platform that lights a fire within you and inspires you to share it along.  Businesses have sure changed the way they market products or services to us.  In the past marketing campaigns were solely focused on selling their products to us post production, now companies are turning to social media from the inception of a product all the way to its delivery on store shelves.  However the challenge has now become how to use social media platforms to reach customers in new and exciting ways while providing real time experiences for them to comment on and share, thus making companies more likeable and trustworthy in the eyes of their customers. I asked Ed Rush, Global Marketing Executive at Elemica to share his thoughts on this subject,

“There is an old saying – “you have two ears and one mouth, listen twice as much as you speak.” In my experience in business to business, it seems most forget that rule when it comes to social. Too many marketers are eager to post their message and speak to the market and attract likes, comments, and follows. However, so much more can be learned when you refocus your attention from social “speaking” to social “listening” across your networks. When the primary objective is to learn about the challenges, priorities, and/or objectives of others in your community, you can then approach your outreach with a much more strategic and tailored communication. Ultimately, facilitating a buyer’s journey is more about understanding where they are at and expertly facilitating them through the process. You can’t do that if your speaking twice as much as listening.”

There is one company that I am excited to share about which is taking its social media marketing campaigns to new heights, and that is HP.  Keeping in trend with the latest platforms, HP launched the #BendTheRules campaign that blew customers away and resulted in much success socially.

So what is Social Media Marketing and what are its the benefits? How are businesses currently working with it and what are the new trends that companies should embrace?  Let me begin by answering the first two questions.  According to Wikipedia, “Social Media Marketing is the process of gaining website traffic or attention through social media sites.”  In the Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2015, By Michael Stelzner, “90% of marketers feel social media increases their exposure while 77% report it increases traffic.”  Digging deeper Stelzner also found that marketers using social media for 2 or more years saw an increase in their sales.

That’s great news,  but now lets find out how companies use it!  Referencing the same report again, “52% of marketers say Facebook is the single most important platform, while Youtube attributes for 55% of marketers and 56%  for Google+… 66% of marketers plan on increasing their marketing on Twitter in the next 12 months and curiously 82% of marketers have no plans to work with Snapchat.” This should give you a better idea of where you’re competitors are headed in the near future, so now lets look at the top trends in social media.

I will be highlighting three out of the six Social Media trends for 2016 brought to you by fellow blogger Jennifer Beese in the audio file below.

1. Real Real-Time Engagement 
2. Live Streaming Video 
3. Social Commerce
4. SEO
5. Mobile First
6. Data- Driven Decision 

I also asked  Michael Stelzner from the Social Media Examiner for his predictions for 2016 and this is what he said, “The year 2015 started an era of live casting with the introduction of new technology such as Periscope, Facebook Live and Blab. 2016 will take some of these live broadcasts to an entirely new level with the introduction of live 360 degree broadcasts that will allow people to move their mobile phones and experience the action as if they were actually present and moving their heads.  In addition we’ll see the wide scale adoption of cost effective virtual reality devices that will enable fully immersive 3D experiences that are live. Much of this will be enabled by low cost 360 cameras like the Ricoh Theta combined with economical devices like Google Paper that transform the smart phones everyone already owns into a virtual reality device.  This represents an entirely new opportunity for marketers to give factory tours and any other form in-person experience the mind can imagine.”

So now that we know what the top trends in social media marketing are, let me draw your attention to the brand HP that I feel is the ideal example for us to review today.  For HP’s 2014 Holiday campaign they partnered with creative agency 180LA to create the #BendTheRules campaign which was to employ the biggest social stars from Vine, Instagram and Youtube.  They also collaborated with pop star Meghan Trainor, to create the official music video for brand new single  “Lips are Movin'”.   Here’s how they did it, “Each social star leveraged the versatility of HP’s convertible laptop, the HP Pavilion x360, to collaborate on the creative production process. They drove the creative process, using HP technology for everything from Meghan’s hair, makeup and nails, to the set design and dance choreography. During the shoot, each social star documented their involvement in the video and blasted it to their respectively massive fantasies through Vine, Instagram, and YouTube, resulting in hundreds of posts that gave millions of fans an intimate look at making the music video.We then tied all of these stories together with a :30 spot and behind the scenes featurette.”  HP states there were 25 million engagements on the campaign before the video launched and two days after the launch of the video it had 2 million organic views.  In four weeks 45 million organic views and today 160 million. Now that’s what I would call a successful campaign!

Lessons for Others

So what have we learned so far? Social media marketing is on the rise and a necessary means of launching campaigns.  Keeping in mind the feedback we received from the social media marketing report at the beginning of this blog as well as the ground breaking marketing trends emerging, we can use that vital information to create campaigns that are bound to bring in the followers.  Vikrant Batra sums it up perfectly, “You can’t force the culture into your brand, you have to get your brand to fit in with the culture,” Batra explained. “You have to be comfortable with giving up control.”

Check out my video below which gives you a little more insight into this campaign. (please open in full screen mode for best results)

If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site, please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.

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