WORLD CLASS LESSONS ON SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING




But what resonates on social? That is the question we’ve been trying to answer since 2012.
This being the tenth (!) installment of our whitepaper, you the reader may be familiar with our approach already. Glad to see you coming back. For the first timers, even more glad to see you on these pages. Here’s what to expect.
Each year we take a deep dive into the best work in the world – the Cannes Lions winners. With the help of our frameworks, we try to uncover the secret sauce for social media success. Over the years, we’ve had the privilege to learn from 6000ish winners.
During this time social has changed a lot. Not only that, it has changed marketing a lot, too. This year saw some of the latest trends become ever more potent, and naturally the emergence of totally new ones. (Looking at you, metaverse!)
We hope you’ll find as much inspiration from the whitepaper as we’ve found compiling it. Let’s get social.
STEVE LATHAM Head of Talent and Training Lions Festivals CEO & Partner Kurio>> 87% of Cannes Lions winners use social media as a key element
>> Rising steadily: 20% (2012), 44% (2014), 66% (2016), and 83% (2018)
>> 93% of social media winners are what we call act marketing: doing something, not just saying
>> Up from 55% in 2016 and 68% in 2018
>> 83% of social media winners used evidence marketing techniques
>> Bringing the brand to life thru real-life content, rather than fabricated ones
>> 88% of social media winners have input by real people
>> Be that own staff members, customers, influencers, or just random passers-by
>> 54% of social media winners engage people using altruism as the motivator
>> Out of the seven motivational factors, this one reigns year after years
>> 40% of social media winners are based on a purpose
>> With a consistent and credible “big why” behind the brand and its campaign
>> 17% of social media winners have influencer(s) at the core
>> And 58% of the winners use them to some extent
>> 16% of social winners are metaverserelated
>> But even higher for Social & Influencer Lions winners (21%)
In order to find universally applicable insights from case-by-case campaigns, we’re using our Sociability of the Brand framework. The model is based on vast academic research on motivational theory 1 combined with Kurio’s expertise gained from working with a wide array of companies ever since the term social media marketing was coined, ranging from Fortune 500s to startups and spanning numerous industries, Social media is all about people to people communications, and thus brands need a new approach to their communications. The framework is used to define most fitted social dynamic for the brand to find, earn and gain its place in the discussions on social media. At the same time it forces the marketer to think inside out (“What does my brand’s history and persona represent?”) and especially outside in (“Why would our target group engage with us online?”).
1 Füller, Johann 2006. Why Consumers Engage in Virtual New Product Developments Initiated by Producers. Advances in Consumer Research, 33 (1), 639–646. // Hars, Alexander & Ou, Shaosong 2002. Working for Free? Motivations for Participating in Open-Source Projects. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 6 (3), 25–39. // Wiertz, Caroline & Ruyter, Ko de 2007. Beyond the Call of Duty: Why Customers Contribute to Firm-Hosted Commercial Online Communities. Organization Studies, 28 (3), 347–376. // Dholakia, Utpal M. & Bagozzi, Richard P. & Pearo, Lisa Klein 2004. A social influence model of consumer participation in networkand small-group-based virtual communities. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 21 (3), 241–263. // Gruen, Thomas W. & Osmonbekov, Talai & Czaplewski, Andrew J. 2005. How e-communities extend the concept of exchange in marketing: An application of the motivation, opportunity, ability (MOA) theory. Marketing theory, 5 (1), 33–49. // Hennig-Thurau, Thorsten & Gwinner, Kevin P. & Walsh, Gianfranco & Gremler, Dwayne D. 2004. Electronic word-of-mouth via consumer-opinion platforms: What motivates consumers to articulate themselves on the internet? Journal of Interactive Marketing, 18 (1), 38–52. // Simmons, Richard & Birchall, Johnston 2005. A Joined-up Approach to User Participation in Public Services: Strengthening the “Participation Chain”. Social Policy & Administration, 39 (3), 260–283. // Paswan, Audhesh K. & Troy, Lisa C. 2004. Non-profit organization and membership motivation: An exploration in the museum industry. Journal of Marketing, 12 (2), 1–15. // Ko, Hanjun & Cho, Chang-Hoan & Robert, Marilyn S. 2005. Internet Uses and Gratifications. A Structural Equation Model of Interactive Advertising. Journal of Advertising, 34 (2), 57–70. // Funk, Daniel C. & Ridinger, Lynn L. & Moorman, Anita M. 2004. Exploring Origins of Involvement: Understanding the Relationship Between Consumer Motives and Involvement with Professional Sport Teams. Leisure Sciences, 26 (1), 35–61. // Mowen, John C. & Sujan, Harish 2005. Volunteer Behavior: A Hierarchical Model Approach for Investigating Its Trait and Functional Motive Antecedents. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 15 (2), 170–182
With the help of this framework, each brand finds a main role which represents the best way to connect to and engage people on social media. In addition, one or two supporting roles are usually chosen to broaden the approach.
A brand image is based on perceptions, and those should be aa clear and unified as possible. That is why great brands can find their role on the framework rather easily. And vice versa: if a brand seems to represent all of the seven roles, it usually means that the brand isn’t in such a good form.
The role(s) guides all actions the brand takes on social media, from strategy development to campaign planning and execution. In doing so, it shifts the marketing activities from the old ways of working into the more modern mode of openness, dialogue and engagement.
In the next section, we’ll go through each role in more detail, with case examples of Cannes Lions 2022 winners that represent the particular role.
Description of the role: As a Master of Ceremony, the brand produces content that is meant to entertain and help people pass time. Usually a Master of Ceremony brand has a positive role in its customers everyday life and its job is to bring joy to its users. A Master of Ceremony can produce either small daily pieces of content, epic “once in a lifetime” content experiences or something in between.
Motivators for followers: Entertaining oneself, killing time, enjoying everyday things with other people
Stereotype of a Master of Ceremony Brand: An everyday low-interest brand, such as FMCG brands.
In 2013 the candy brand Skittles decided to make changes in the flavors of their original candy variant chancing the lime flavor with green apple. Later this turned out to be a bad idea as they started receiving tons of negative feedback. 130.880 to be exact. And sadly, for Skittles, the flood of unhappy feedback continued for nine years.
Finally, the legendary candy company decided to set things right and brought back the lime flavor. They also decided to make amends and apologize to all the lime lovers out there. And to highlight that they truly meant all the apologies were delivered individually to each and everyone who ever complained. The company kicked off its regret campaign
with a press conference where Skittles Director of Communication Michael Whelby apologized for 35 mins to real customer complaints. The tongue-in-cheek conference was followed by the whole set of apologies on Twitter, a Times Square billboard, and 16 feet long post, and everyone who complained was also sent free Skittles.
All the corporate remorse regenerated over 5 million viewing minutes on Twitch. Search for lime Skittles went up over 1000% and the sales of original packs rose over 21%. Pretty sweet return for the long-lost Lime – and truly entertaining, for sure.
Description of the role: As a Sage the brand has, produces or distributes information that is in some way exclusive. Usually a Sage brand has a group of followers that are so hungry for the information it provides that they just can’t get enough of it. Usually a Sage can identify a specific community or a group that has a special interest to the information it provides. The interest can be either a professional or a personal one.
Motivators for followers: Curiosity, thirst for knowledge. Being able to appear as an expert.
Stereotype of a Sage brand: Information-intensive brands, or brands that deal with “never-solved” questions (like those of wellbeing). Often a B2B brand, such as a consultancy.
Traditionally Japanese people have had very high standards of personal hygiene. The morning and evening tooth brushing has been a standard practice for most. But recent research has shown that fewer people are tending to their morning brushing especially during the pandemic. Why brush if your colleagues can’t smell your breath?
Aquafresh is committed to promoting good dental health as there are scientifically proven benefits in brushing twice a day. The toothpaste company decided to tailor a motivational campaign, especially to the Japanese market. Japanese are known to be keen on fortune-telling and horoscopes. Practically every morning news has a section of the day’s fortune. Aquafresh used this insight as they created their own toothpaste prophecy app on Twitter where
users would upload their toothpaste blob and a renowned fortune teller would give them instant reading according to the shape, size, and color of their blob. Aquafresh fortune telling was available in the morning, from 6AM to 11AM proving a fun activity to support the morning brushing routine.
The Aquafresh Fortune Telling campaign resulted in the highest engagement rate ever in Aquafresh Japan’s brand history, a 215% increase in social media followers, and over 50MM+ media impressions. That’s how you tap into curiosity!
Description of the role: A Muse brand either inspires, facilitates or provides tools for its followers to follow their own passions and unleash their creative minds. For a brand this means crowdsourcing content or ideas, in other words, getting the followers to contribute their creative talent to the brand’s digital presence. Usually a Muse brand operates in a field that is somehow related to our inner motivations, creativity and selfexpression.
Motivators for followers: Self-actualization, challenging oneself
Stereotype of a Muse brand: Recreational or hobby brands, often related to things people feel passionate about such as cooking, sports or interior design.
Everyone traveling to France has heard the friendly tip to learn some French – as the French have a reputation for sticking with their own language. When it comes to their appetite for TV it’s the same, most viewers prefer to watch the series in French instead of the original language.
Amazon Prime Video wants to cater to their viewer as it fits best for their viewing needs. To engage the lovers of their series they launched Prime Video Dubbing Factory to enable people to become the next French voice of their favorite character in their favorite hit shows. The Prime video Dubbing Factory is a 100% Tiktok contest
that works with the duet function enabling users to add their own voice to Dubbing Factory content and Prime Video would choose the best voice actor from participants’ videos.
The campaign reached over 12.3 million people and resulted in 83K participants, 300 million total views as well gave Prime Video 120K new followers. Oh, and of course made Philippe the contest winner a voice-over artist for the Prime Video original show The Boys.
Description of the role: A Pitchman gets its followers over the moon with offerings and competitions or other kind of promotions. Usually a Pitchman has the opportunity to give away something people really want such as trips, or to offer discounts on everyday necessities people feel reluctant paying for, such as gas or toilet paper. A Pitchman is a brand that can make its followers go to great lengths to get the compensation it offers and it should always try to make the
Does it seem like all the brands out there are making gaming campaigns? Well, it might be true, but this one is different. Burger King jumped into the gaming world by making fun of the glitches in the games and even brought the glitches to the real world. They created glitches in perfectly working apps but also in their billboards, menu boards, and even in their products such as the iconic Whopper burger.
most of this positive kind of madness of its followers.
Motivators for followers: Getting monetary and non-monetary compensation
Stereotype of a Pitchman brand: A low-involvement brand, that you need more than want. Like detergent or electricity. Or a brand that can offer exceptional prizes.
Burger King created a fully playable glitch restaurant in the Metaverse, they also encouraged players to look for glitches in their games and offered promotion codes for glitches shared on Twitter. Buzz created around the campaign resulted in an 11% rise in the target group, 144 million impressions as well as 60 000 sales in glitch coupons, they also made a download record during the campaign. Not your typical coupon campaign, no way.
Description of the role: Host brands have a special power to bring people together. They are brands that represent a topic, a trend, a cause or a shared interest that a group of people have in common. They may also help people be in touch with others or meet new people with same interests. Typically Host brands are topical brands that in one way or another live in the “now”, or in other words are tightly integrated with a particular moment in time.
When the whole world was shutting down, NBA was yearning for their audiences. Players felt like it just wasn’t the same playing without the fans. Michelob Ultra seized the opportunity and joined forces with Microsoft Teams to offer people a chance to experience the game like never before.
17 foot video boards were wrapped around the NBA bubble, featuring a Teams meeting of full people, who activated a seat in the game by scanning a Michelob Ultra bottle. People had the chance to interact with other fans in their section. Even Obama and Shaq dropped in.
Motivators for followers: Social reasons, the need to belong
Stereotype of a host brand: “A brand of the moment”, event, artist, or venue.
And the game experience was top-notch thanks to new camera angles and 120 contact microphones embedded under the floor.
The response was unexpectedly positive, turning the campaign into a pop culture phenomenon – reaching a total of 81.5 million hours of live NBA coverage. Fans all over the world and it became the number one topic in the sport industry, increasing Michelob Ultra’s sales by a whopping 32 percent.
Description of the role: A Volunteer brand gets its followers to stand up and be active for a shared cause. The cause may be related to the brand’s business, history, environment, role in its community or its mission. True Volunteer brands do not just stand for a cause but get people to do it themselves, too. They are there to issue a topic and start the conversation but they let followers do the talking and spread the word.
SOS Children’s Villages in India were facing a severe problem as their expenses were rising but donations were not. Stable and continuous donations are crucial for being able to provide thousands of orphaned and abandoned children with a better future.
They knew large corporations could make sizable donations from their marketing budgets. To get a small share of the budget they created a new kind of influencer, Chatpat, a 10-year-old street kid. He and his friends starred in remakes of Indians’ most iconic ads, which soon went viral on social media. “We did something cool
Motivators for followers: Altruism, helping others
Stereotype of a Volunteer brand: Brands that have a connection to a movement, ideology, or cause. And NGOs, of course.
for your brand, now you can do something for ours.” And the donations started pouring in.
Then, companies big and small started asking for a remake of their own. Chatpat’s videos got SOS Children Village over 1506% rise in the brand impression, but most of all they got a 61,5% rise in the corporate donations, resulting in 300.000 USD, and counting.
Description of the role: An idol brand has what they call “badge value”. It has followers, or fans to be more exact, that are prepared to go to great lengths to show their support for the brand. Followers feel that being seen beside the Idol brand promotes their own personal brand. Idol brand is one that people feel proud to follow, like, share or interact with.
Motivators for followers: Self-branding, visibility, recognition
Stereotype of a Idol brand: An exclusive brand, which is premium priced and scarce.
Beer brand Brahma has always been one of the biggest football sponsors in Brazil. When Brahma was banned from players’ jerseys, they decided to go for the second most important part of footballers’ bodies, their heads. They hired the most famous barber in Brazil to design the Brahma Foamy Look. You know, a hairstyle that looks like, well, Brahma.
The trend started with Sao Paulo player Renaldo and was later taken on by many other players globally, creating a cultural phenomenon. Everyone wanted to be part of it. The Foamy Haircut earned Brahma 37.6 MM impressions and 415 MM impacts.
The seven roles defined in the Sociability of the Brand framework are the key to successful engagement – the help you define how best to get the attention of your target audience and how to get them join the conversation. But building a thriving brand in the era of social media needs more than that: it needs the four aspects depicted on the inner circle (see image 2 below). Together these five elements make up what we call the Social Brand framework.
Image 2: The Social Brand elements at the core of Sociability of the Brand framework (CC Kurio 2017)
Purpose: What is the big “why”? The purpose statement is both bigger and bolder than the mission statement which is solely market-driven. It is crucial in the era of huge global challenges and declining trust – brands can no more operate in a vacuum, and need to become active players with a clear, universal purpose that is more about people and planet than products and profits.
Evidence: Are the actions turned into shareable proof? Brand-actions have always been around, but what is different from the past decades is that everyone has the devices to create content and anyone can be a media. Brands need to make the most of this opportunity and see that the evidence of what they are is being documented and published.
Connection: How do your stakeholders relate to your purpose? What is their part in the story? Having a purpose isn’t enough, if people don’t feel the connection to it. Make sure that all the important groups are taken into account, from customers to personnel, and from investors to influencers.
Sociability: Why would anyone care? Why would anyone share?
Understanding the motivations to participate in the conversation with a particular brand is the key to stand out from the clutter. The seven roles described earlier help you build a strategy that suits your brand.
Action: Do we see brand-actions happening? Once our stakeholders feel a connection our purpose, the brand comes to life – in various ways and contact points, each and every day. Actions speak louder than words, and we need processes that support the “breathing of the brand”.
Using the Sociability of the Brand framework, we analysed winning campaigns of Cannes Lions 2022 in order find implications for success in social media marketing. Cannes Lions is the most prestigious festival of marketing and creativity, and thus it offers a one-of-a-kind global set of data for the research. This year there were 25,464 entries from 87 countries.
Our sample consists of winners in eight particular categories: Brand Experience & Activation, Design, Direct, Media, Mobile, PR, Social & Influencer and Titanium. All of these categories have a wide range of different types of campaigns, including social media campaigns. Besides some minor changes in Cannes Lions’ categories over the years, our analysis has stuck to the same categories consistently.
A total of 329 winners were analysed. Since one campaign may win multiple awards, this doesn’t represent the exact total number of campaigns in the analysis.
87% of the winners had social media as a key element of the campaign. These campaigns were further analysed through the Sociability of the Brand framework. It is worth noting in the remaining 13% of the winners, many campaigns had social media involved to a certain degree, even thou not as a key element.
With the help of the framework, we analysed the drivers of engagement of these award-winning campaigns. Using a weighted scale (4x for GP, 3x for Gold, etc.), we calculated the success of each of the different roles in the framework (see image 3 below).
The role of Volunteer was clearly the most effective one in Cannes Lions 2022 with 261 points, which is 54% of all the points. It was also the role with the most individual awarded campaigns: 89 in total. These numbers are pretty much in line with last year, when Volunteer scored 55%.
The second role per weighted points was Sage with 65 points (13% of all). This too is very similar to the results in Cannes Lions 20/21. When it comes to supportive roles for other main roles, Sage was number one (at 64 campaigns supported).
The third position goes to Idol which receives its first-ever top 3 place with a score of 53 points (11%). Almost tied in the next positions are Pitchman at 46 and Master of Ceremony at 42 – the first being the biggest loser of the year and the latter the biggest winner.
Finally it is Muse at 20 points (4%) and Host without any points, which is a first for any of the roles.
Social has become mainstream in the best marketing of the world. Over the few past years, around 9 out of 10 Cannes Lions winners have used social media as a key part of the campaign. And we thought the numbers were high back in 2012!
Social runs on real-life actions. The online and offline are intertwined. 93% of Cannes Lions winner with social at the core, are built on actions – something done, built, created. The numbers have gone way up from 55% in 2016, when we started this particular analysis. With the rise of the metaverse the experiences can of course be online-only, too. The key thing in what we like to call Act Marketing is that you create something that can then be experienced by the audience. This is the fuel that keeps your buzz going.
Authenticity goes a long way on social. People like people like themselves. Especially on these channels that are all about being real. This year 88% social media winners of Cannes Lions featured either brand’s own staff members, its customers, influencers, or just random passers-by to bring that authentic feel to the content. There are many ways to bring forth the genuine feel, ranging from casting your personnel in an epic stunt to building a campaign around a comment made by a tweet by a random fan of yours.
If Act Marketing is the fuel, then Evidence Marketing is the motor running on it. Since we all are our own media thanks to social media, many campaigns are spread via those networks. And the content usually is real footage instead of staged and dramatized scenes –hence the name. Evidence Marketing is much more about gathering and showing proof about what we and our offering are all about, instead of making something up and polishing it to the max.
If there is one clear insight from the ten years of analysing the Cannes Lions work via our frameworks, it is this. People are best engaged with the motivation of helping others, of solving some wrong in the world. Out of the seven motivational factors that make us engage in any activity online, the number one is altruism. Doing good is truly good for business. When brands want to leverage this strategy in their marketing efforts, it is vital that they first walk the walk. The greenwashing days should be long gone.
Social enables us to leverage real-time marketing – meaning that some elements are rolled out in as things are happening. This can range from operational such as livestreaming to more strategic such as tapping into an event such as Halloween. Even thou this year saw a minor drop from last year’s 44%, we’re still at more than one third of the social winners of Cannes Lions. Comparing that to the 18% in 2016, 22% in 2017 and 30% in both 2018 and 2019, we see that RTM is elemental to social media marketing.
There has been a lot talk about the purpose fatigue lately, but in Cannes Lions it is still a growing trend. 4 out of 10 winners with social media as a key element are built on a solid purpose, a big why. If done right, there is no reason for fatigue – at its best, it should lead to a win-win-win for the brand, its audience and the bigger picture too, be it related to which ever of the UN SDGs.
Influencers are an important element of social media marketing. They go hand in hand – as it is manifested in the category name at Cannes Lions, too, the Social & Influencer Lions. This year the share of social winners with influencer at the core of the idea declined a little from last years 21%. Yet, we are way ahead the numbers in e.g. 2017 and 2018, when they were 6% and 11%, respectively. Also worth noting is that 58% of the 2022 social winners used influencers to some degree.
Metaverse is all the rage now. According to the Marketer’s Toolkit 2022 by WARC, 52% of marketers will increase their spend on the metaverse this year. When it comes to world-class campaigns of the past year, 16% of the Cannes Lions winners with social at the core are metaverse-related. Mostly these campaigns tap into gaming or AR, but also things such as NFTs and the blockchain. Social is truly a gateway into the metaverse: when looking at the Social & Influencer Lions winners, the percentage is as high as 21%.
Social media is such a ubiquitous thing that most of the social campaign leverage multiple channels. Such is the case for Cannes Lions winners too. But looking at channel-specific campaigns, TikTok reigns as the winner. Of all the winners using social, 6% are TikTok-first. Trailing right behind is Twitter (5%), followed by Instagram (3%), WhatsApp (2%) and YouTube (2%).
Based on our research since 2012, we see some trends over the years. The both graphs below have insights gained from the Sociability of the Brand analysis.
Looking at the share of winning campaigns per role, we see that both the top and bottom roles are clearly visible: Volunteer and Master Of Ceremony have been dominating over the years, with Sage trailing them, and now taking the second spot. On the other hand Pitchman and Host have struggled – except for the first surging upwards this year.
The graph for weighted points (i.e. awards) per role shows the total domination of Volunteer (note that the number of Cannes Lions winning campaigns, be that with or without social media, decreased since 2018, which explains the overall declining trend).
Published in August 2022
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