Brands and Friends - and other recipes for social media

In my last article, I talked about snackable advertising content for mobile and social media campaigns: it is quick to consume, easy to share and quickly available. The changeover requires more agile teamwork and many new advertising recipes. Three of these were already featured in Advertising Week 07 from 18.04.2014: Adcompression - the fastest and most sustainable way to reach consumers on the social web is with concise short ad messages. Tweetability - short messages of 140 characters are the fastest way to get around the world. And newsjacking - we inject our own content with breaking news and reap virality in the social networks and PR coverage in the media. Appetite for more snackables?

Snack recipe gadgets:

Start your next search for ideas by looking for gadgets on Pinterest. That's where the snack ideas come pouring out of the cannon. Gadgets are objects and nothing seems more welcome in the social web community. Objects can be used, described, loved, disliked, photographed, filmed, bought, given away, recommended, lost, raffled, found again, auctioned, destroyed, put down, put up, put over and much more. Steve Jobs once said: "One is the objects and the other is the web." With the iPod, he brought the two together: digitized music from the web, organized via iTunes, and the iPod as an object that convinces with functionality and enchants with design. Jobs continues: "This is exciting, because it means the fulfillment of many dreams." What is meant here are not objects for dreams, but useful things for everyday tasks that delight, enrich, fulfill purposes and tell stories in an intelligent and creative way. Stories and purposes that create a crystal-clear connection to the core matter. The best gadgets are those that support the use of the advertised offer (product or service). Jobs on this in 1997: "It saddens me that many products lack insight and creativity."

Snack Recipe Hero:

The concept of heroic "product benefit dramatization" is celebrating a grand comeback on the social web. Provided, to stay with Jobs' words, that the product and dramatization sparkle with insight and creativity. "Customized Botteling" is what you could call last year's Coca-Cola campaign, in which users could have their names put on real bottles. In 2013, Coca-Cola Israel experimented with a 3D printer campaign when launching the new "mini-bottles". Consumers could win a 3D printed plastic mini-figure of themselves as part of a competition. The creators of the "Coke Social Can" story thought that half the fun is twice the pleasure. It is a can that can be split in two. The divisible Social Can lets friends share in the pleasure of Coca-Cola in no time at all. Thanks to its physical properties, the product itself becomes a shareable social medium. Who invented it? The creators of the Oreo campaigns have brought their cream and chocolate cookies into the top ten of the global Facebook ranking for brands thanks to creative snack recipes. Last year's "Daily Twist" was masterful. For 100 days in a row from June to September, there were stories in which current events were dramatized using the product features. For example, with an animation on the occasion of the full moon on August 2 or with the staging of the cookie as a button at the start of New York Fashion Week. It will be interesting to see whether the Rivella campaign makers try their hand at similar staging. The brand, product and recipes undoubtedly have what it takes to become a social web classic ...

Clickbaiting snack recipe:

The social web is not really fair. Products, for example, have it easier than service providers. Because physically tangible objects are social media boosters. Service providers need stirrups. Gadgets, for example, as explained, or the power of good stories. And here, a new style is currently conquering the social web. The headlines that most effectively entice users worldwide to click and share are based on the clickbaiting formula. So far, the technique has mainly been used on news portals with exploding user numbers. Hence the hype. These include Buzzfeed and Upworthy from the USA, but also portals such as Heftig from Germany or LikeMag and Storyfilter.com from Switzerland are now challenging the established news portals for click domination.

The secret? The headlines are optimized in such a way that they specifically entice people to click. Examples (source: 20000flies.de): "This street musician got change from a girl. What happened next stunned the whole city." Or: "A woman meets a homeless man in Brazil. I would never have guessed what happened next." And although the subsequent stories rarely really fulfill expectations, the formula works. The subsequent retransmission rates on Twitter and Facebook are remarkable. It seems that users can be lured out of their click reserves in a news frenzy with curious and pseudo-curious snacks. Caution and quality are required when using them in an advertising and marketing context. But it is certainly worth a try. And here at www.upworthygenerator. com you can go straight to the Upworthy generator - the training ground for all those who feel like taking their first steps in writing click-baiting headlines ...

Snack recipe Brands as Friends:

Nutella celebrates its 50th birthday and a user posts a homemade cake on Instagram and Twitter - two layers of Oreo cream and one layer of Nutella chocolate cream. The teaming up of brands on the social web is my personal snack tip. Brands are bringing each other into their campaigns in an appropriate way to gain visibility in each other's user base. There are three forms of interaction. The Nutella case described above is the most effective because it comes from the user community itself.

As a rule, such user stories result from a mix of very positive product experiences with emotional brand loyalty, incessantly creative brand management and profound knowledge in dealing with as many media genres as possible. Then there is the form of agreed collaboration with licenses. Coca-Cola is known for its licensing business and, as can be read on adage.com, has "clawed" a brand from the beauty segment as its latest partner. Whereby "clawed" is to be understood quite literally. This is OPI, a company that is using the Coca-Cola red to launch a new nail polish. The beverage giant is showing its colors and the relatively unknown OPI brand is likely to gain additional users as a result. The third form involves a lot of creativity and spontaneity, but rarely money. As part of its "I want to invent" campaign, General Electric called on users to post their dream inventions on Twitter, which GE's developers immediately sketched out and published on Twitter and the website for all users to see using the hashtag #Iwanttoinvent. Chewing gum stuck in litter garbage cans is annoying. This is also a thorn in the side of the makers of Trident chewing gum. And so the Trident team sent a tweet asking GE to think about a waste bin that would put an end to the annoying sticking. Tweeted, invented: An integrated heating system as a solution. It's an exciting approach to involve yourself as a brand in other brands' campaigns in an appropriate way in order to gain visibility in their user circles ... My question: Who knows other snack recipes for social media? I look forward to hearing lots of snackables from your practice on my blog www.huerlimanncc.com.

Beat Hürlimann