The Best Facebook Marketing Campaigns of the Year

Facebook recently announced its selections for the best marketing campaigns on the social network. The campaigns set the bar for Facebook marketing and provide social marketing ideas.

Facebook bases its selection on “innovation, originality and executional excellence” in campaigns that ran between Feb. 1, 2014, and March 31, 2015. Facebook’s creative council seeks “brilliant, inspired work that changes the way the industry approaches content publishing and sets the bar at new heights.”

Facebook picked over a dozen winners. These are the winners that most impressed us.

Like A Girl

The Proctor & Gamble campaign for its Always brand campaign sought to change the meaning of the common insult “like a girl” into a phrase that inspires girls. A long-format online video, the campaign’s centerpiece, portrayed people answering what it means to act like a girl. The campaign had limited paid support, making earned media crucial. Like a Girl became the most watched video in P&G’s history with 48 million views in North America and was the second most viral video globally.

The Ice Bucket Challenge

The ALS Association’s Ice Bucket Challenge was the top social media phenomenon last year and perhaps ever. The challenge dared people to dump a bucket of ice water over their heads, post a video of it on Facebook, donate money to ALS, and challenge others to do the same. Seventeen million videos were created, 159 countries participated, 70 billion video views were counted and $220 million was raised. It is the ultimate case study of a viral campaign – and one of the most successful fundraising efforts ever.

KISSaLOT

LOT Polish Airlines “put the world under mistletoe.” It placed mistletoe on its planes and encouraged people on the ground around the world to track the flights and kiss when they were overhead. Facebook ads targeted people in cities along airplane routes, and the airline’s Fan page tracked plane routes by integrating its plane tracking system with Google Maps. The campaign generated more than €300,000 worth of free media. The campaign even reached the tiny island of Skúvoy in the Faroe Islands, where 90 percent of the residents used the opportunity to kiss.

GT RIDE Viral Gaming for Kia

 Kia turned video gamers into brand ambassadress with GT RIDE, a mobile racing game where users build their own race track by moving a smartphone through the air and send the track to Facebook friends as a challenge. Gamers accepting the challenge could race the track on their smartphones or other devices. Users entered a competition to win a real pro_cee’d GT, Kia’s first high-performance model, and were enrolled in a GT Ride Facebook Community. The app was downloaded 180,000 times. More than 30,000 Facebook users sent over 80,000 tracks and took part in over 250,000 racing challenges.

I Will What I Want

Sports apparel firm Under Armour wanted to overcome its masculine image, seen as a barrier to women. Its campaign urged women to defy expectations and ignore outside judgments. A video featured the challenges of Misty Copeland, soloist for the American Ballet Theater. A second video featured supermodel Gisele Bündchen in athletic actions. Marketers invited the public to comment on the video and included the disparaging social media remarks in the campaign. The campaign generated 5 billion media impressions worldwide, $35 million dollars in earned media and helped increase Under Armour Women’s sales 28 percent.

Love Has No Labels

The AdCouncil campaign was designed to show people’s implicit biases. The video posted on Upworthy’s Facebook wall showed a large X-ray screen displayed before the public. Viewers could only see skeletal images of couples interacting and were often surprised when couples revealed themselves. The video achieved over 40 million views in two days and became the second most viral PSA in history after just three weeks.

The full list of winners can be viewed on Facebook.

Bottom Line: The Facebook Awards show examples of some the most creative and effective social media marketing campaigns. They demonstrate the impact and value of creative social media campaigns and provide models for developing successful campaigns on social media.