This past Sunday was Father’s Day, and some big brands really left us with the feels with their social media tributes. How did your favorite brand celebrate Father’s Day and what can you learn from them for your own social media tactics?
iHeartRadio chose to celebrate Father’s Day with a twist of humor. They shared several photos and memes of celebrity dads from Macklemore to Kanye. A meme featuring Louis Tomlinson read, “The Dad who will guide his son in the right direction.” receiving 1.2 thousand retweets and 1.5 thousand likes. Jay Z was also featured in a comical meme, “The Dad who will make sure his daughter never has 99 problems.” receiving 78 retweets and 195 hearts. Justin Timberlake, “The Dad who can’t help but to dance, dance, dance.” scored 82 retweets and 254 favorites. The lesson? Comedy and puns equal retweets and faves.
Nike hit a homerun on their baseball account with a video of Ken Griffey Jr. scoring a homerun with his father cheering him on in the stands. The video ends with Griffey hugging his father and tugging at your heartstrings. The video received 1.3 thousand retweets and 1.4 thousand likes. Nike’s main twitter page, however, dropped the ball without mentioning a word about Father’s Day. The main Nike page, @Nike has 6.12 million followers compared to their Nike Baseball @NikeBaseball page’s 193 thousand. Imagine the interactions Nike could have received had they shared this emotional video with their 6.12 million audience.
Coca-Cola showed that quality is better than quantity, and that adding a celebrity really adds to your quality. Coke only featured two Father’s Day posts on their twitter page @CocaCola. One post read, “His repetitive jokes. His unique dancing. Tell us what you like about dad. Better yet, tell him. #FathersDay” and a photo of a coke bottle with the lyrics, “What I like about you…” and a “It’s Father’s Day. Tell Him.” message. Simple, direct, and effective, receiving 92 retweets and 322 favorites. Their other post, retweeted from Selena Gomez, featuring a video of Selena giving a shout out to her dad and saying Happy Father’s Day to all dads with the classic #ShareACoke tagline, asking viewers which coke they’d share with their dad. This post received an astounding 16 thousand retweets and 38 thousand hearts. Go Selena and Coca-Cola.
Last but not least, the company that capitalized on your Father’s Day feels and owned the Twitterverse: American Family Insurance. This is the company that should inspire your own holiday Twitter posts. American Family Insurance shared a commerical-type video to show how much fathers do. The video features a dad bringing home a package to his son which has a karate uniform inside. It goes on to show father and son walking through a bad neighborhood while being heckled, and ending up at a karate studio. The video shows the father being there and encouraging his son through practice, training, and every tournament, until he has developed his own confidence and pride. The video has a powerful, heartfelt message. You can view it here:
The video was shared by American Family Insurance and by Twitter users themselves multiple times. One of the posts received 166 retweets and 493 favorites. Multiple Twitter users remarked about the feelings the video stirred up in them while sharing. However, American Family Insurance didn’t stop there. They used the hashtags #DadInsurance and #DreamFearlessly in tribute to fathers as well. In addition, they featured multiple Father’s Day polls including, “How will you celebrate the person who's helped insure your dream?” with 8,097 votes and “Who helped insure your dreams?” with 3,675 votes. Finally, the icing on the cake, their header on their Twitter profile features the father and son from the previously mentioned commercial video embracing each other (AWW!).
Did Nike lose out on any sales by not celebrating Father’s day on their main Twitter page? Who knows, that’s a question for their marketing team to answer. But what they certainly missed out on was an opportunity to align their interests with the public's. They failed to celebrate with the rest of America, which leaves all of those possible, personal and emotional connections flying loose in the wind. American Family Insurance's ingenious Father’s Day campaign however, took advantage of the holiday by pulling on your heartstrings. They directly plugged their insurance company in with your holiday and successfully established an emotional connection with their followers.
Twitter is a social media platform and social media is nothing more than a social network of friends. Your company needs to be a friend to your followers. You need to care about what they care about and personify your brand. In fact, your goal on your social media platforms should be to project your company as a friend, a confidant, someone who understands them and someone they can trust and rely on. Once you establish these feelings and that kind of bond, you’ll be on the path to a life-long consumer. So celebrate those holidays, from Father’s Day to Farmer’s Day, and show the human side of your brand.
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Author@littlemissmktg is a current marketing student at Northern Kentucky University. She loves all things branding and marketing and welcomes any comments or insights. Archives
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