As brands are becoming increasingly clever in their digital strategy, it’s becoming harder to tell between the content created strictly for entertainment’s sake and the content that’s been cleverly developed to sell a product. The digital continues to blur the lines between sales, entertainment and editorial content, and the future of advertising lies in the form of branded content. To continue our wrap up on the best of 2014, here are five of our favorite branded content campaigns of 2014!
GoPro YouTube Channel
Brands such as Red Bull and PlayStation are known for having top-notch YouTube channels, but not many companies can use their own product to create content. The GoPro channel’s two million-plus subscribers love the authenticity of GoPro’s videos, which use a mix of user-generated footage and professional footage (all shot using their video equipment) to film their videos.
LACMA (Snapchat)
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art took their social media presence beyond Instagram and Twitter this year by getting a Snapchat account. As the first museum on Snapchat, LACMA has set the bar very high for other museums that may follow by including relevant pop culture references to accompany the art in their Snaps. Visitors to the museum can even Snaps of themselves at the museum with the LACMA tag using the Geofilter feature. For some examples of the hilarious art snaps, click here.
Build Your Own Mercedes (Instagram)
To celebrate the launch of 2015 GLA Compact SUV, Mercedes launched a virtual custom auto shop on Instagram for their followers. Through the native functionality of Instagram, users could create their own luxury SUV through different tags that lead to alternate accounts containing various customizations, designs and features.
Nestle Coffee-mate’s “Stirring up Love Outside the Cup” (Twitter)
Look bb, our quotes made into art! @martinspikachu Happy Valentines Day! & thank you @Coffee_mate #CMValentine pic.twitter.com/2chhSCIa9z
— Karla Garcia (@Karlitapplebum) February 14, 2014
During Valentine’s Day, Nestle helped making sharing the love a little easier for people with the help of social media a team of professional artists. With the hashtage #CMValentine, users could submit love notes to Twitter and Facebook that were turned into creative and handcrafted valentines for their loved ones.
Tombstone’s “Bites of Fright” (Vine)
http://vine.co/v/hwdz5qPTVZK/embed
Tombstone used their “Bites of Fright” campaign to achieve their goal of being considered the “official Pizza of Halloween,” as their brand name is reminiscent of the holiday. To honor the tradition of pizza and scary movie nights on Halloween, Tombstone posted family-friendly, “horror-movie” Vines every day during the month of October to get viewers in the spooky spirit.
Were there any great branded content campaigns that we missed? Let us know in the comments section below.
Cover Photo Source: Juan G. Aunion
[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://wpmaster.sjadv.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Our-Space-The-San-Jose-Group.png[/author_image] [author_info]Jenny is a Junior Executive at SJG. She earned her BA in Psychology and a minor in Educational Studies in 2014 from Colgate University. Outside the office, Jenny loves to travel (usually to Disney World), bake and watch copious amounts of TLC.[/author_info] [/author]