Most stories about airline baggage aren’t uplifting, but leave it to Southwest and its crack social media team to turn that narrative around. If you missed it recently, they generated a lot of buzz around a customer’s checked pool noodle. It got us thinking about effective use of social listening. So we asked CTPers: What are your favorite examples of brands using social listening?
Marketers cringe when they hear the words “make this go viral.” But when something does spark on social media, brands have to jump on the opportunity quickly. My favorite and most recent example is the viral skateboarding TikTok from this fall. This video with Ocean Spray + Fleetwood Mac is now a classic example of how brands can capitalize on UGC. Turns out, the creator was skateboarding to work because his car battery died. So after the video went viral, Ocean Spray gifted him a new cranberry red car as a thank you. Point is, brands have to act swiftly and have a little fun to make a real impact with their social media marketing. -Courtney Bombardier, Social Media and Content Specialist
Netflix kills it on a regular basis. Their Netflix Socks idea was a great example of taking a seeming negative (people were falling asleep during their programs) and embracing it with socks that would pause the programming if you fell asleep. Brilliant. – Grant Pace, Executive Creative Director
Viral sharing of customer engagement is as much about luck as it is about dedication. What I’ve found most interesting are those brands for whom ongoing customer dialogue is part of their social DNA. Take, for instance, AirBNB, which does a great job of engaging customers by providing more value beyond the initial booking. When customers tweet that they just booked an AirBNB, the company – whether tagged or not – replies with an encouraging note, often asking “Where are you heading.” Any replies are then met with further info about that city, designed to enhance their experience. It’s a way to extend that relationship with timely, relevant, helpful information – which gets further multiplied by others seeing the dialogue on Twitter. They may not go viral, but they’re engaging customers every day. – Todd Graff, SVP Public Relations
The Adult Swim TikTok trend has been awesome to watch unfold over the past few weeks. For those who remember back to their Cartoon Network days, ‘Adult Swim’ was the name for the late-night programming block that featured shows like ‘Family Guy’ and ‘King of the Hill.’ During this block, there were also pieces of content called ‘bumps’ or ‘bumpers’ that filled space between programming or advertisements. These transition shots, which typically consist of what seems like a mundane scene (someone cleaning their room) shifts and then shows the [AS] logo (sometimes out of scattered laundry in the shape of the logo). Now, TikTokers are creating their own ‘bumps’ and are jumping on a trend that actually lets them be creative, as #AdultSwim has been used 1.1 billion times on TikTok so far. We are just watching this unfold as we speak but it will be interesting to see how Adult Swim and Cartoon Network use this to spark interest in their shows again. – Brett Labnon, Senior Marketing Analyst
