Does great creative drive ROI?
We certainly think it should.
Here are 14 case studies that highlight creative on digital campaigns. They include brands from B2C, B2B, small business, large brands, profit and non-profit. Tactics range from paid, owned and earned media to user generated content.
In each case, the impact of the creative idea is isolated and measured. We found great creative drives ROI. But it drives even greater ROI when it is combined with smart targeting, sound strategic thinking and has a specific business role in the overall marketing mix.
Here are 14 case studies that show great digital creative drives ROI.
- ADP: Developed a content marketing campaign to connect and engage with their target audience on a ADP solution using white papers and a diagnostic assessment tool. The campaign generated over $1 million in new sales opportunities with several deals closed within the first 3 months of launch.
- ALS ASSOCIATION: Created the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. It relied on user generated content and is, to date, the most successful viral social media campaign ever. In one month, over $100 million dollars was donated versus $2.6 million in the year ago period. Over 6.000.000 people created their own Ice Bucket Challenge video and posted it on YouTube. Participants included (George Bush, Barak Obama), business leaders (Mark Zuckerberg) to celebrities (Matt Damon, Charlie Sheen), many people of influence have given their implied endorsement by taking the Ice Bucket challenge. Traffic to the organization’s website, alsa.org, ranked as the 648 most viewed website in the US and 4.192 in the world (an improvement in rank of 168,792 within 3 months) according to Alexa.
- COCA-COLA: Used the digital channel to “Share A Coke.” The campaign gave people the chance to order personalized Coke bottles through a Facebook app. resulting in a 7% increase in sales. It also earned a total of more than 18 million media impressions, and traffic on the Coke Facebook site increased by 870%, with ‘Likes’ growing by 39%.
- CREME EGG: Invited consumers, in a seasonal social media campaign, to ‘Have a fling with Crème Egg’ on Facebook. They created a long series of one-off posts that fed into an overall narrative across the three months. With one third of the spending in Facebook compared to TV. Facebook matched TV in driving brand consideration. ROI research showed consumers exposed to both TV and Facebook were 66 per cent more likely to purchase than the expected combined effect of both. Creme Egg saw a 7% increase in sales.
- IKEA: The 2014 IKEA catalogue came to life this year taking the customer experience further with extended digital content. To unlock 50 pages of digital content, including videos, furnishing tips and room designs, users needed to download the IKEA catalogue app, scan the plus logo in the catalogue with their smartphone or tablet and have access to a variety of digital content. One of the features was an augmented reality capability which allows customers to view and place selected 3D virtual IKEA products in their own rooms. The app was downloaded 8.5 million times.
- LOGICALLS: A global IT and managed services provider, used content assets such as emails, microsite and ebook, Logicalis developed a thought leadership effort that supported sales teams by enabling custom messaging based on the prospects interaction with the campaign. With a target audience of about 2,000, nearly $8 million in new pipeline business was closed.
- MERCEDES: For the launch of the new Mercedes A-class, Mercedes wanted to appeal to a younger generation of drivers in the UK. The idea behind the campaign was to reach out to young people watching TV while interacting with a mobile or tablet device. Showing the commercial during prime time TV (during the X Factor) and using the hastage #YOUDRIVE, viewers were encouraged to use Twitter to determine the outcome of the story. Brochure requests increased by 140%, exceeding the original goal and on social media the hashtag appeared 103 million times on Twitter and 30 million times on Facebook. The #YOUDRIVE website was visited by over 740,000 people and the YouTube trailer viewed 237,000 times and had a very impressive 95% completion rate.
- NILLA WAFERS: Used Facebook to change perception of a brands that was seen as old to one that for those who are young at heart. Through a campaign of posts that showed everything from versatile and new uses, they measured engagement. By combining likes, comments, shares, and estimated impressions to create an engagement score, Nilla Wafers was found to have a score of 557 against 46 posts during the prior period. This is a massive 11 times higher than the U.S. Food sector average. The campaign produced a 9% increase in sales.
- PICON: Wanted to revamp its brand promise of ‘spreading happiness’ across Lebanon. The FMCG brand’s civic activism programme became part of the country’s school curriculum via some smart digital marketing. Each area of civic activism was represented by a Lebanese superhero, who represented the programme as an ambassador and spoke about the effort to the media. Picon developed ‘Happiness Heroes’, a program that taught civic education to school children and allowed them to apply those lessons outside of the classroom through civic works projects. The campaign reached 6,700 students. Together, those students collected two and a half tons of bottle caps, recycled two tons of paper, and planted 1,250 trees. The students also helped 158 families in need, entertained 2,000 seniors, renovated 15 public schools, and helped 550 people with special needs participate in sports events. Picon estimated the company garnered $1.8 million in earned media and reached 2.5 million people.
- SAMSUNG: To promote its latest Galaxy camera, this global campaign from Samsung targeted the millennial community who regularly upload photos to social media. The electronics giant created a social media marketing campaign –dubbed ‘Life’s a Photo Take It’ – using young influencers to demonstrate the key differences between the quality of images from a normal smartphone and the Samsung Galaxy camera- getting results that blew away expectations. Purchase intent grew by 115% with Tumblr pictures and YouTube videos getting over 1,000,000 views (300% higher than expected).
- SMART BALANCE: Grew its US market share by 14%, giving power brands such as Flora, Country Crock and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! something to worry about. They introduced new health/nutrition content, recipes, seasonal promotions and coupons, and streamlined navigation across the site. Site visits were up by 42% and time spent on site has increased 27%, while bounce rates decreased by more than 16%. Several thousand coupons were delivered and the Smart Balance email database grew over 15-fold.
- SNICKERS: Targeted fat-fingered typists across the UK, this clever search campaign from Snickers used misspelled words in Google keywords to capture hungry office workers’ attention during the working day. The concept was to bid on commonly misspelt words with an advert reading “Grab yourself a Snikkers” as “Yu cant spel properlie wen hungrie”. the campaign smashed their target of 500,000 people within just three days of launch – showing that with a little creativity, search continues to throw up opportunities for increasingly cost-effective marketing.
- WILKINSON SWORD: Ran a #DADICATION social campaign in the to coincide with Father’s Day. It setup a booth in London so that members of the public could record video messages paying tribute to their dads. A montage of some of these clips was posted on YouTube to promote a Facebook competition that allowed people to win one of 20,000 personalized razors for their dad, a Wilkinson goodie bag or a day out at a brewery. The YouTube ad has been viewed more than 1,300,000 times and many people left tributes on the Wilkinson Facebook page.
- XEROX: Created a targeted “Get Optimistic” campaign to connect with 30 top accounts and partnered with Forbes to create a magazine that offered relevant business tips. 70% of targeted companies interacted with the microsite, readership increased 300-400% over previous email campaigns, added 20,000 new contacts, generated 1,000+ scheduled appointments, and get this: yielded $1.3 billion in pipeline revenue.
Do these examples show you how great digital creative drives ROI? Do you wish your brand had these kind of creative ideas working for it?
