FMCG Content Spotlight

Inspiring Social Media Campaigns

We have curated some of our favorite campaigns and posts from the FMCG Get inspired and learn
industry to help marketers thrive within their social media community. Get inspired
by groundbreaking social media campaigns and see how you can learn from top
performing companies on social to enrich your content strategy! Best practices from the most engaging companies on Facebook, Instagram,
and Twitter

Socialbakers used Inspiration Pro, the largest social media content library with over In-depth analyses that explains why these content pieces worked
10 billion of the most effective content pieces to discover posts that audiences are
engaging with most. To expand our analysis and dive deeper into the data we took
a look at individual companies using Socialbakers Analytics, to shed light on everything A diverse range of highlighted content strategies that have excelled
from promotion strategies to real-time interactions.
 Pillsbury
Creating a Recipe for Success
Pillsbury has become an iconic household name, and has been serving their customers’ needs since 1869. Today,
they have adopted social media marketing trends effortlessly combining alluring visuals and short how-to recipes,
which has helped them build a Facebook community of nearly 4 million.

According to our data, Pillsbury not only ranked first out of FMCG brands’ Facebook performance from July
- August, but also had some of the most engaging posts. So how does Pillsbury keep their audience engaged
- screaming for Pillsbury Dough instead of for ice cream?

The baked goods giant knows their audience well. Their customers purchase their pre-made baking products
because they taste delicious, and are easy to prepare. However, sometimes customers need inspiration - something
that will help them convert a traditional croissant into an… “Easy bacon and egg cup.”

Pillsbury learned from what’s hot on the social media food scene and mastered the art of quick recipes - which
always leaves their audience longing for more. Combining all of America’s traditional breakfast goodies in one
is a sure way to get the attention of their hungry fans. A link is provided on their posts for detailed instructions
which also leads to efficient website traffic generated by their Facebook activity.

More importantly, they keep the conversation going by promptly responding to their audience, demonstrating
how important community management and social customer care continue to be in today’s social landscape.
Comments left under their posts from Fans ask for advice about oven temperature to recipe substitutes and
nutrition information and beyond. Pillsbury responds to each question, providing information in text as well
as incorporating a link to their website where more information can be found. For Facebook Fans, it’s like
having a personal virtual chef that will assist them in their journey through the kitchen.

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 Bud Light
Venturing into Spanish Advertising, but Not Far Enough
Hitting a key demographic in the scope of a larger campaign is always a big challenge. Bud Light has reached This strategy has proved to be effective. This ad alone has about 28,000 views - close to half of what the
their Spanish-speaking audience this football season by taking ads without actors and redubbing the text and English-language version has so far. But Bud Light has a single-platform problem. Despite 3 of their 4 Spanish
voiceovers into Spanish. language ads being only 0:15 long - as in, perfect Instagram length - none of them were published to Instagram,
and the one video published to Facebook was a short preview for a full commercial that had tons of views on
YouTube - but hasn’t seen the light of day on Facebook. Worse yet, there’s hardly any promotion happening
behind the preview video.

Number of Interactions Sep 10, 2015 - Feb 09, 2016

Feb 03 Feb 04 Feb 05 Feb 06 Feb 07 Feb 08 Feb 09

12:00 AM 12:00 AM 12:00 AM 12:00 AM 12:00 AM 12:00 AM 12:00 AM

Shares Likes Comments

That’s under 75 total interactions for a video with 151,000+ views on another network. The 0:30 spot that
it previews has more than 80,000 views on YouTube, but appears nowhere else.

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 Bud Light
Venturing into Spanish Advertising, but Not Far Enough
The lesson here is that content creation, ideally the product of consumer insights from data-driven analysis,
is only half the battle. Large brands in linguistically-diverse markets should absolutely be looking to make
their content more accessible to different audiences, particularly given how easy it would be to target Spanish
speakers (for example) via Facebook promotion. So, yes, try to make your content available in two languages -
but make sure you put equal care into distributing both to the right audiences.

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 Sottilette
A New Way of Shooting Recipe Videos
By now, we’ve all seen the Tasty-style videos on brand pages - every grocer and FMCG Food brand has found
a recipe to build around its products, and has filmed it in the fun, approachable way those Buzzfeed-raised
videos perfected. But now, as with all good things, what was once fresh has gotten stale.
In this example, Sotilette breaks the typical conventions of food-prep videos, filming at new angles and using
different filmic techniques to create a different video-watching experience. These small differences (time-lapse
editing, angle changes, slow-motion) from a formulaic convention can make all the difference in viewer experience.

What is the next step? How can food marketers continue to innovate while showcasing their products
in a way that audiences will recognize and appreciate?

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 Sottilette
A New Way of Shooting Recipe Videos
In another post, they created a great GIF that breaks down their sandwich into its parts. By making a quick, looping GIF,
they increase the number of times each viewer is exposed to the ingredients, improving recognition and recall.

So what’s the next step?

That’s the exciting part - innovations like Sotilette’s are necessary, small steps on the way to a new frontier of FMCG Food
marketing. Imagine having a test kitchen equipped with a 360° video camera, where viewers can watch recipe tutorials
in immersive VR. We’re not far from that reality - and video innovations like these, however small, are steps along the way
to using social to completely immerse users in the experience.

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 Whiskey Distillers
Uncorking Craft Marketing
Whiskey distillers have been ramping up some of the most interesting campaigns in the world lately. While
there are some major names behind their success, each also models the importance of artistry to a B2C goods
producer - particularly one that wants to emphasize the care and craft that go into making their product.

Jack Daniels
To celebrate their 150th anniversary, Jack Daniels has invested in a brand-focused global campaign,
including a 360° tour of their distillery. It’s a way of spreading out with a centralized, focused message
that cannot be diluted - mass awareness with singular focus. It’s a craft-driven message.

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 Whiskey Distillers
Uncorking Craft Marketing
Johnnie Walker
With the help of famed photographer Spencer Tunick, Johnnie Walker is taking on a social problem much
larger than would ordinarily be within the scope of a whiskey distiller. In collaboration with MAMBO, Bogota’s
modern art museum, Johnnie Walker created a short documentary film tracing the lives of five participants
in Colombia’s decades-long, finally-concluding war between the government and revolutionaries. It all builds
up to a massive nude photo shoot in Bolivar Square, in Bogota’s city center.

It may seem unwelcome for a Scottish brand to insert themselves into a momentous part of Colombian history,
but by keeping the focus on the story at hand (the Johnnie Walker logo bookends the video and shares equal
billing with MAMBO, but there is no other explicit brand messaging in the video) it becomes less an intrusion
than an enablement of art. Letting the art take all the attention, and the artists have their freedom, is a sure way
to convey artistic honesty to your audience, and get more out of your responsible messaging.

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 Whiskey Distillers
Uncorking Craft Marketing
Wild Turkey
Wild Turkey has taken the idea of brand spokesman a notch farther than it has ever gone before, signing
actor Matthew McConaughey to a multiyear contract as their creative director. As has been discussed elsewhere,
the hire is unusual in the role’s comprehensiveness. McConaughey will not only star in the ads like most celebrity
spokespeople, but will direct them, create music for them, and generally serve as a top-level creative director.

Of course, most companies do not have as passionate and singular a fan as Mr. McConaughey, nor do they
have the means to bring such a fan on board. But what’s interesting here is the growing importance of artistry
in content. In a world where cognac maker Louis XIII sponsors a film that won’t be seen for a century and
documentary auteur Werner Herzog explores the internet for security company NETSCOUT in a film that has
earned rave reviews, giving your content real artistic merit is a necessity. The future isn’t product placement
- it’s product integrated with art, and it’s important for your brand to be clear about how important artistry,
genuineness, and “the opposite of solicitous[ness]”, as McConaughey puts it, is to your product and your
marketing.

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 Häagen-Dazs UK
Turning Their Focus on Fans
Häagen-Dazs UK turned their Instagram focus outward during the recently concluded Wimbledon tournament, For inspiration, pages like Häagen-Dasz UK don’t have to look far: Häagen-Dasz US has an active, fun
filling their account with photos of fans enjoying tennis, and the tournament’s official ice cream. account full of the right kind of content for an ice cream company on Instagram.

The initiative earned media and follower attention for a fairly inactive account (they had not published content The clever “äah” and “nah” sets just the right tone for the platform, and it loops quickly enough to drive
in more than 2 months before the Wimbledon series). This highlights some important lessons for less-active the brand message home repeatedly for viewers.
FMCG Food profiles - if people can have a sensory reaction to your product, like “Yum!”, you should post often.
Be sure to include images that both inspire that sensory reaction AND carry your brand logo, perhaps more
visibly than you think is necessary (on mobile, everything looks smaller).

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 Baileys
Showcasing Value
Baileys is on a mission - to show Fans the many ways they can use their liqueur in different kitchen creations.
They post elegant photos and videos with simple, delicious recipes that Fans can follow (Example 1, Example 2,
Example 3). Not only does this kind of content show the product’s value, it elicits an immediate reaction.

Realtime Interactions

40 k

30 k

20 k

10 k

Jan 30 Feb 1 Feb 3 Feb 5 Feb 7 Feb 9 Feb 11 Feb 13 Feb 45

1:00 1:00 1:00 1:00 1:00 1:00 1:00 1:00 1:00

Shares Likes Comments

This post received a total of 35,000 interactions just 24 hours after it was published!

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 Simply Orange
Creating Cinemagraph Magic
Simply Orange inspired us in April by using a simple but innovative video technique that combines the best It’s an excellent case study of how Simply Orange highlighted their product in a way no .gif, image, or video
aspects of GIF marketing with the video-friendliness of the News Feed. GIFs have become one of the most could. Could your brand be next?
popular formats for content presentation for many reasons, including their repeatability, ease of viewing,
small file size, and quick loading.

So what Simply Orange did this month was not only technically innovative (though simple!), but also network-
savvy. Their small campaign began with one overarching video showing four different settings. In subsequent
videos, they made cinemagraphs of each scene - videos where only one image is moving, on loop.

Cinemagraphs are something different from other content entirely. By pausing a frame of one video and
masking a section of it into an auto-loop, creators effect the effect created here (and yes, now we’re just
messing with you). Because it is a video that looks like several loops of a GIF, you get both the qualitative
benefits of a GIF and the quantitative benefits of native video.

As an example to other brands, they ran this campaign in a way that also highlighted their brand messaging
- that only the important things are included in their juices. By isolating both “the moment” - like the swirl in
a toast, or the lazy loop of ice freshly stirred - and the juice, they took everything but what they wanted out
of the message.

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 M&M’s USA
Strategic Benchmarking
The ideal post promotion goal for social marketers should be to get a consistent, fixed percentage of either Below is an example of a progressive promotion strategy for a post that probably didn’t perform as expected
total interactions or a key type of interactions (such as Shares) from promoted posts. This consistency comes right off the bat.
from setting small goals - for instance, only promoting posts that reach 100 Shares within an hour, or 500
Shares within 3 hours, etc. (These are just illustrative figures - every brand needs to set their own KPIs.)
Realtime Interactions May 25, 2015 - Jun 26, 2015
40 k
M&M’s USA has been doing a great job of sticking to their threshold and as a result received an incredibly
high percentage of interactions from promoted posts. They also promote content progressively, meaning that 30 k

if a post did not hit their desired threshold right away, they promoted the post for a brief period to see how
20 k
users would engage with it. Instead of promoting all content blindly, they waited to know more about how
their content would be received by Fans first.
10 k

0
May 29 May 29 May 30 May 30 May 31 May 31
00:00 12:00 00:00 12:00 00:00 12:00

Shares Likes Comments

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 M&M’s USA
Strategic Benchmarking
To find the result of well-timed, data-driven promotion, we looked back at M&M’s USA’s past three months Promoted Posts Strategy Apr 14, 2015 - Jul 12, 2015
of content. Over that period, they promoted 13 of 77 posts, or just 16% of their content. The results speak
for themselves.

The team behind the 6 distinct M&M’s characters is making sure that their target audience sees content they
love in an efficient and effective way. Make sure you’re also spending your ad budget as effectively as possible
- check out Promoted Post Detection from Socialbakers, now available in Socialbakers Analytics.

Summary
Analysed Posts Interactions from Promoted Posts Interactions from
Analysed Posts Promoted Posts

77 1 549 350 13 1 285 879 24,0x

16,88% 82,99%

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 Reynolds Wrap
Proving Instagram Can Accommodate Your Endless Ideas

By now, hopefully, you’ve seen Reynolds Kitchen’s Endless Table. It is a masterful (and delicious-looking)
use of Instagram. By taking a single background and changing the foreground to present the illusion of
an endless table, they’ve managed to capture press, engage followers like never before, and associate
the Reynolds Wrap brand name with creativity and flair on a burgeoning platform.

There are two simple but essential lessons that brands should take away from this (excepting the obvious
one for FMCGs, which is that crisp food photography and easy-to-follow recipes incorporating your product
are a great way to drive business from social).

First, that Instagram posts are a great tool for planning your Facebook content strategy. Those that perform
best on this organic-only platform are prime candidates for promotion on Facebook. Reynold’s Kitchen did
this to the literal extreme with their Endless Table content, sourcing the best individual photos, and reusing
them on Facebook, whether as a single photo or paired into themed groups.

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 Reynolds Wrap
Proving Instagram Can Accommodate Your Endless Ideas

Promoted Posts Strategy The second thing brands can take away from the Endless Table is a simple lesson in marketing with new
formats. The best comparison is to centerfold pullouts in glossy magazines - Reynolds made something that
can expand in one direction while staying confined in another. More generally, they played with space in a
way marketers can on any social media platform, by breaking a larger picture up into smaller pictures (each
detail being its own post).

Summary
Analysed Posts Interactions from Promoted Posts Interactions from
Analysed Posts Promoted Posts

14 23,565 14 23,565 N/A

100% 100%

All of Reynolds Kitchens’ content from August was promoted.

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 Pepsi and Hovis
Whistling Back to the Past

You know the scene: a brand and their agency, putting their heads together to try and find what part of the
brand’s identity to bring to light, settle on a joyful, nostalgic past: The Ad That Worked.

Revitalizing old, arguably classic ad campaigns happens plenty - but it often doesn’t have nearly the impact
it could. Sometimes that’s due to fundamental miscalculation, as when audiences either don’t care about the
brand’s past nearly as much as the brand does, or when the audience nostalgic for their bygone campaign
has aged out of relevance for the brand.

We have two pretty good examples of different ways a brand can revive an old campaign.

The British bread brand Hovis ran a famous campaign in 1973 that became more cultural touchstone than
brand asset. In a great example of a revitalization campaign that was released in October, they isolated
elements associated with the 1973 spot while designing a completely new ad around it.

While not a world-beater, the ad accomplished everything it seems to have set out to do - it retained
nostalgic triggers like the bicycle and the overall joy of childhood, while working in the best of the modern
day - an empowered girl, impressive technology, and a brand message committing to the traditional,
the outdoors, the away-from-technology.

It certainly made a dent on social.

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 Pepsi and Hovis
Whistling Back to the Past

It certainly made a dent on social.

Number of Interactions Jul 13, 2015 - Oct 11, 2015 Realtime Interactions Jul 16, 2015 - Oct 13, 2015
6k 4k

5k 3k

4k
2k

3k
1k
2k
0
1k Oct 06 Oct 06 Oct 07 Oct 07 Oct 08 Oct 08
12:00 AM 12:00 PM 12:00 AM 12:00 PM 12:00 AM 12:00 PM
0k
Shares Likes Comments
Jul 13 Jul 27 Aug 10 Aug 24 Sep 07 Sep 21 Oct 05

Pepsi, meanwhile, went back to its most iconic ad in October - but didn’t post the video to social media at all.
Likes Comments Shares
It’s a mystifying choice - why introduce an audience to your content on TV and then fail to give them searchable,
social content to match?
Likes Comments Shares Max Min Average That particular oversight is shocking, but doesn’t stop us from looking at the ad on a conceptual level. Unlike the
per Week
Hovis spot, this new “Joy of Pepsi” is counting on its audience to still remember the original ad in it’s entirety, not
6,291 2,074 1,387 5,628 16 68 185 just by its elemental parts - and so they recreate the ad in the modern world. The song itself feels dated now, but
64.51% 21,27% 14.22% Week of Oct 05 Week of Jul 27
it’s still catchy - and involving Bieber-era YouTuber Tori Kelly is a smart move to keep young audiences singing.

The only big problem they had was leaving value on the table. Hovis’s posting strategy didn’t involve setting But instead of seeing if the revitalization campaign had legs, the brand put their social ad spend into the “Pepsi
benchmarks; instead of trialing different, short versions of the video or posting photos from it organically to Perfect” campaign that centers around a specialty product based on an endorsement made in the movie Back
create an engagement benchmark for the campaign, they only posted the main video in full - and they waited to the Future II. In this case, the most important step of a revitalization campaign was missing: reminding your
more than a day to promote it. (new) audience just how important it is that this campaign is happening at all.

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