How Social Media Can Turn the Tide
of Any Marketing Project

Social media is one of the best marketing tools to use in today’s modern era. Everyone can have an opinion on social media. In fact, some of the best key opinion leaders today are not famous celebrities or political figures. They’re the social media influencers; the Twitter famous, Instagram hits and YouTube celebrities.

Social media has become so powerful as a marketing tool, there are cases where careful and correct use of social media turned what would be a big failure into an amazing success. We’re going to take a look at three classic examples of how social media can turn the tide of any marketing project in this article.

The Dark Knight and Health Ledger

Until The Dark Knight, Health Ledger wasn’t an actor famous for playing geeky or grim roles. He had the image of a pretty boy and was not close to the comic fans and geek communities at all. When Warner Bros announced his role in the upcoming The Dark Knight movie, social media exploded. No one wanted Ledger to play Batman’s arch nemesis, especially not in a movie that was going to be toned the way The Dark Knight was written as a comic book.

The Joker is indeed the most famous villain in comic book history and the outcry was justified. Warner Bros had to do something to make the movie a big hit. They did just that with the help of social media.

When the movie started filming, Warner Bros launched a site called IBelieveinHarveyDentToo.com. The site was designed to reveal a photo of Ledger’s Joker for the first time. In order for the photo to be revealed however, users needed to submit their email addresses. The more email addresses that were submitted, the more parts of the photo would be revealed. The campaign worked beautifully.

Thousands of users submitted their email addresses just to prove their complaints, only to find the photo to be an absolute shocker. Everyone loved the dark, gritty look of Ledger’s Joker and a huge buzz was created on social media. The photo got shared so many times it became a classic. The tide had been turned completely.

Following the death of Heath Ledger and the huge buzz surrounding the movie, The Dark Knight opened with a record breaking $158 million. Heath Ledger was the right actor to cast after all and the hype, powered by the geek community on social media, made the film a big success.

Responsible Online Gaming and Funny Videos

The online gaming industry has always been the trickiest to market. Even when you can hard sell most gaming sites, it is really difficult to gain traction on social media. More importantly, it is also easy for these sites to fall victim to backlashes and outcries on social media, especially when all the companies do on their profiles is share promotional offers.

A well known gaming company, Sportsbet, was one of the big names that was not enjoying any success with their social media pages. If you did a quick search a couple of years ago, you would have seen most of the content coming from Sportsbet was bombarded by questions and complaints.

It was when Ladbrokes finally decided to be part of the social media community and reach out to other sports and gaming enthusiasts in a different way that the company started getting positive feedback. The two tones they push forward the most are funny videos and commentaries of sporting events as well as key messages on responsible gaming.

Today, Sportsbet is getting more than 1 million monthly views on the company’s YouTube channel. Even those who don’t engage in online gaming still visit the company’s YouTube channel and follow other social media profiles to get the latest insights and funny highlights from sporting events like the Premier League and Formula 1. Sportsbet’s latest campaign for the Ashes was also a huge success.

Other online gaming websites have done similar things. Just check out the Sun Bingo Twitter feed for an example. They often run fun competitions that receive many retweets and likes. William Hill is another good example, sharing funny photos and sporting commentaries that again see tons of engagement.

The Mercedes Twitter Race

One of the biggest problems with marketing a luxury brand is the limited market segment. Mercedes-Benz and its AMG division experienced this issue for a while. Their products are not for the average customer, which means the campaigns they do on social media will produce almost no result and engagement.

When they finally made the switch and started the Mercedes Twitter Race however, they managed to engage more people than ever, particularly in the United States and Europe. Anyone could get involved in the race through their own social media profiles. Users could pick a team to tweet for and tweet more to help their team win the race.

The campaign was also among the first to actually use sentiment as a metric. The more positive tweets a team received, the more power the team’s car had in return. Everything was done automatically and users were really involved in the race all the way. It was noted as one of the most successful, and one of the most creative, social media campaigns of all time.

From these examples, it is clear that social media can really do a lot. The power lies behind the people behind those social media handles and pages, so be sure to formulate a campaign that can reach them in a way that will turn the tide for your brand or business.