5 BWS brands slaying it with social

We’re always keeping an eye on the fantastic work being produced by many brands in this sector. Here are a few that have caught our eye in recent months…

It’s never been more important to produce content that encourages engagement. Over the past 18 months, Buffer found that Facebook Page engagement has dropped by more than 50%. Platform algorithms have grown increasingly aggressive, to solve challenges like relevance, spam and click-bait, which has left organic results across social channels dwindling faster than you can say “Cambridge Analytica”.

Gone are the halcyon days of “if you build it, they will come”. With algorithms now making thousands of considerations, businesses are no longer only competing against each other; they’re now facing competition from every single profile, Page, and Group on Facebook. It’s a jungle out there.

In order to consistently make it into people’s feeds, brands need to be regularly publishing quality content to engage their followers – sounds obvious, but there’s a new twist – with their friends and networks. Helpfully, the social networks have published a series of signifiers around content value, showing what’s likely to be surfaced to fans and audiences. The general gist is that your content needs to appeal to the motivation within us all to connect with other human beings.

With these new rules of engagement in mind, it’s vital that marketers in the social space recognise the power of experiences over purchases.

At Sticky Content we’re very proud of the work we’ve been producing with our BWS clients, including E&J Gallo and Accolade Wines, to increase engagement across Facebook and Instagram channels. We’re always keeping an eye on the wider market and the fantastic work being produced by many brands in this sector. Here are a few that have caught our eye in recent months:

#1 Absolut Vodka – Never Gonna Gif You Up

Giphy has over 100 million daily users who send 1 billion GIFs each day. Facebook Messenger, Slack, Twitter, and Tinder all connect to Giphy’s library, which has developed its own platform to tag and surface a GIF for every occasion.

Absolut created this punny campaign to build a presence on GIPHY, enabling them to introduce themselves into the online conversations of their target audience. With stop-motion they were able to find a style that resonated with their audience and stand out from the crowd with a high-quality finish.

This clever idea, and high-level execution, earned them a Bronze Lion at the 2018 Cannes Lions awards. N-ice.

#2 Treasury Wine Estates’ Living Wine Labels

Treasury Wine Estates’ Living Wine Labels app delivers an augmented reality experience from various wines in their portfolio. From swirling vortexes to grim confessions, the app brings the bottle labels to life, revealing a story behind each one.

Ok, so it’s not a social activation per se , but it sure does encourage word of mouth and UGC from fans. If you take the 19 Crimes brand as an example, ultimately the success stems from an incredibly fertile narrative, which creates opportunities to leverage technologies like AR, adding another dimension to the brand.

#3 Gordons Gin

Tech brains at Curalate identified the types of images which get the most engagement on Instagram. Gordons Gin are absolutely leading the charge, with visual content so refreshing it’s like sinking your teeth into a wedge of fresh zingy lime. 

This simple, thumb-stopping creative is vibrant, humorous and guaranteed to cut through your news feed of holiday pics and sports highlights, rather like junipers through tonic.

#4 Ballentine’s Whisky

True Music is a creative partnership between Ballentine’s Whisky and Boiler Room. Together, they’ve created a gold mine of content which they share across both brands’ social channels – led by longer-form content, hosted on YouTube and Facebook Lives. Again, it’s the narrative of the partnership that opens the door for some really on-point content. Speaking directly to their audiences across its African and South American heartlands has earned them thousands of engagements each time.

#5 Moët & Chandon

The content on the Moët & Chandon channels is the very essence of luxury, elegance and class – exactly as you’d expect from this legend of the fizz shelves. High-quality lifestyle photoshoots embrace the extravagance in everyday moments – or a #MoetMoment, if you will. Materials with high-shine and high-gloss finishes, furs, metallics, sequins, flowers and leathers all feature in a series of sophisticated statics that scream premium.

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