August 20, 2012 Curve Admin

Top 4 Twitter Competitions of all time

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Top 4 Twitter Competitions of all time

After hours of scouring the internet in search of fantastic examples of Twitter hashtag competitions I must say I didnít come across many that really got my heart racing. In fact, out of the hundreds of competitions I came across only found 4 really stuck with me.

Below I go into detail on each of these successful social media campaigns and show that it really isnít that difficult to make a really successful campaign yourself!

1. Uniqlo UK #luckycounter

Uniqlo UK start off my list and with great reason too. The premise behind their hashtag campaign was based around the idea that for every mention of the #luckycounter hashtag the price of a selection of their merchandise would become £0.01 cheaper.

 

This campaign also ran in conjunction with a separate ìLucky Counterî microsite which showcased the 10 items that were being discounted. To encourage more tweets – if a user clicked on one of the pieces of clothing it triggered a pre-written tweet using the #luckycounter hashtag which enabled logged-in Twitter users to tweet straight from the microsite. This ingenuous idea launched on September 7th sparked a huge amount of buzz online and drove more people into Uniqloía stores on September 9th, the day the discounts created by the tweets would be offered.

2. Domino’s Pizza UK #letsdolunch

Dominoís Pizza UK ran a similar hashtag competition in March 2011 where they offered fans the opportunity to cut the price of its Pepperoni Passion Pizza. Every time someone tweeted the hashtag #letsdolunch the price of the pizza dropped by 1 pence. The promotion ran from 9am to 11am on March 5th and after an incredible 85,000 tweets the pizzaís price was dropped from £15.99 to £7.74. Between 11am to 3pm that day Dominoís offered the pizza at that price.

This remarkable idea saw Dominoís hashtag competition trend in several areas across the UK, and although I do not have any concrete figures, Iíd assume it probably resulted in an increased amount of pepperoni pizzas sold that day!

 

3. Starbucks UK #myFrappuccino + #freestarbucks promotions

Starbucks have taken to social media extremely well and was therefore no surprise to me when they launched their brilliant #myFrappuccino and #freestarbucks Twitter promotions.

I’ll start off with the slightly less successful #myFrappuccino campaign, which nevertheless worked very impressively!

The promotion was integrated across numerous social platforms including Facebook and Instagram, as well as Twitter. The campaign was seeded by sending out an email to Starbucks current database of opted-in consumers asking them to join Starbucks for their ëFrappuccino Happy Hourí and also invited them to take part in a competition which led to a dedicated campaign microsite.

 

The campaign was to last for only 10 days so with the limited time period Starbucks UK tweeted 3 or 4 times a day about what was happening accompanied by some lovely photography (big fan of great images!). Each tweet pushed a user to the microsite where they could find out more about the product and the promotion. The use of the #myFrappaccino was widespread over the UK over the 10 days of the campaign seeing it ëtrendí in several locations. Although I cannot guarantee sales increased according to Creative Brief who were involved in the campaign it was a ëgreat successí.

 

4. Starbucks UK #freestarbucks campaign

Now if that was successful, the #freestarbucks campaign was a monumental triumph in social media advertising. The campaign was only advertised online via Twitter and Facebook, and this campaign was to last only 1 day.

A few days before the launch of the campaign Starbucks posted images and messages via social media promoting the offer of a free latte if you give your name to barista. The response was enormous, with thousands of people engaging and interacting with the brand online. More than 25,000 tweets were sent using the #freestarbucks hashtag which Starbucks claims created 5.12 million Twitter impressions over the course of the day.

 

The coffee chain ended up giving away 2,000 lattes every minute between 8 and 9 am on Wednesday (14 March) and around 350,00 overall!

The #freestarbucks hashtag trended in the whole of the UK for the entirety of the day and the online buzz surrounding the campaign survived for weeks after. The campaign drove thousands of new customers in store, gained thousands of new social media followers and started personal relationships with each and every person who took part.

Summary

I hope these 4 successful promotions have given you some insight on how you can design a creative social media campaign for your own business. All 4 of these campaigns used fairly simple concepts, but all generated a huge amount of engagment online, no doubt improving brand awareness and sales in both the short and long term.

If you would like any help with your own social media campaign please feel free to get in contact with us: 01892 549556