When I think of brands that are using social media to the fullest, the first ones that come to mind are the ones like Dove, Old Spice, and Red Bull. These are brands that go above and beyond when marketing their product to create truly great and memorable content.
I’m not a soap connoisseur but I remember Dove for their popular videos on YouTube, most notably the you’re more beautiful than you think video in which the dove logo isn’t even shown until the very end. Dove constantly has very popular marketing campaigns that are also done in this fashion.
Old Spice also put a lot of effort and money into making entertaining content to be remembered for. There are a lot of references to Old Spice in the videos but people watch them for Terry Crews and Isaiah Mustafa doing ridiculous things.
Red Bull is an amazing example because they have media on so many different things. Their front page is just information on a bunch of different stuff they support with no drinks in sight. They draw in so many different people this way. I for example know and respect them because of what they’ve done for eSports.
I think this approach on brand marketing is a breath of fresh air compared to traditional marketing and I hope it becomes the standard one day. People dislike most traditional advertising unless it’s a very expensive superbowl commercial, and those are very similar to how other brands market on social media.
The one downside I see to this is that if every company starts to do this, individual content creators will have a harder time showing their work. It’s hard to compete with corporate dollars.
So although I do think it’s the future of marketing, I think this kind of advertising will be saturated eventually. The companies who are making use of it now are smart to do so; it’s only a matter of time until the others catch on.
