Brands and corporations looking to build influence over today's markets have to create and execute brand advocacy campaigns — which can be either simple or complex — to get the general public viewing the brand in a positive light. And to create even more business growth, the customers should share all of their positive experiences with the company itself.
When many ideas, services, and products from the brand are shared on social media platforms, people and other companies will start looking at that brand as popular and respected in their market. However, given how every market is increasingly more crowded and competitive, brands have to be creative and think outside the box when creating their campaigns. Advocacy is where earned loyalty compounds into paid attention — and where retention economics beat acquisition economics every time.
To stay on top of all the marketing trends, companies should be using multiple successful marketing strategies and combining them with relevant and timely resources. Since social media is an expanding sphere, with different platforms using different rules, brands have to use different approaches when creating their brand advocacy campaigns.
Coca-Cola's Happiness Machine
A decade ago, Coca-Cola released its Happiness Machine marketing campaign. The brand put up vending machines on various college campuses where students could get as much of the beverage as they wanted. When these customers realized how the vending machines worked, they would get happy or excited. Coca-Cola managed to capture those perfect moments with hidden cameras in the machines.
The campaign was seen by over 15 million people in the initial week of release, with people in their homes sharing the joy with the people they were seeing on their screens during those commercials. This way, Coca-Cola created a very successful brand advocacy campaign by combining its popular product with human interaction and sharing the consumers' delight with the world.
Starbucks: @tweetacoffee and the Pumpkin Spice Latte
Another corporate giant that has created a very successful brand advocacy campaign when it released the @tweetacoffee campaign several years ago. In the campaign, whenever a Twitter user shared that they wanted to "Tweet a Coffee" they could order a cup of coffee for someone else.
The brand has also implemented a yearly recurring brand advocacy campaign whenever fall comes back around, when the Pumpkin Spice Latte becomes available once again — a seasonal ritual customers eagerly share with their networks. Not every Starbucks campaign moment has been a clean win, however: the Pumpkin Spice PR crisis is a study in how advocacy assets can also become brand liabilities when the product doesn't match the myth.
Adidas and the Chinese Women's Volleyball Team
Adidas has been sponsoring the Chinese Women's Volleyball team for decades now, even though the team declined in popularity after the 1980s. The goal of this campaign was to bring up the team's popularity, and Adidas was more than happy to help with the challenge.
Adidas created six different viral videos of the team playing volleyball, which were shared across social media platforms. The videos were watched by more than 5 million people, which skyrocketed the Chinese Women's team's popularity because they were very interesting and well-edited.
Most people and businesses are already familiar with some, if not all of these brand advocacy campaigns, simply because they were extremely successful all over the globe, and others can use their impact to learn which elements to implement in other campaigns.
Related Reading — Brand Advocacy, Loyalty, and Social Campaigns on EPR
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
