“I have learned that any fool can write a bad ad, but that it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.”
-Leo Burnett
Ads are changing. Nearly every message we see online today comes with some solicitation behind it, whether upfront or buried. This evolution of media puts brands directly at the forefront of communication. They’re no longer ads in between content people seek, but increasingly the providers of that content.
Is your Facebook content worth seeking out?
Last week we looked at a number of brands doing a great job to break through the noise on Facebook, and this week we have three more posts to examine.
Social Fresh uses Expion to monitor the most engaging posts from the past week on Facebook. Out of all the big brands we monitor, we call out at least three Fresh Facebook Posts to feature here.
1. Nordstrom
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, except at Nordstrom. While retailers prep themselves for the most infamous day of the shopping season, much of the online chatter has been about the lengthening holiday season. In fact last year Reuters reported U.S. spending had reached $9.7 billion in the first 20 days of the holiday season, up 14 percent versus 2010.
More and more retailers are skipping over Thanksgiving completely and heading straight to the red, white and green sales, a fact that Nordstroms has painfully called out in their message.
What’s unique about this photo is they are actually showing you their retail store. Nordstrom could have certainly created a custom graphic for Facebook alone that would have expressed the same message, yet they decided to put their Facebook customer in the mind of someone walking by their store window.
2. Red Bull
What all brands should learn from Red Bull is that they truly understand the “brand as media” philosophy. Putting aside the unparalleled success of their Red Bull Stratos Space Jump project, every single day they are activating content that really resonates with legions of fans.
From their Tweets to their Facebook posts, down to localized content from their many regional accounts, everything they do is designed to create conversation around the hundreds of events they sponsor each year.
As you can see in this post, they have created something that is easy to interact with. The photo, a surfer cruising a huge wave, is not just a beautiful image that begs to be shared with anyone who loves surfing, but by captioning the photo with a surfing term (point break), they’re talking directly to hardcore surf fans as well.
3. Philadelphia Cream Cheese
What better time to share recipes than the holidays, and Philadelphia Cream Cheese used just that strategy this week. Exploiting our taste buds with a picture of some amazing cupcakes, they’ve invited their fans to visit the recipe section of their website.
Instead of skipping right to Christmas however, the purveyors of the finest cream cheese in all the land opted to keep it Thanksgiving themed. After all, who really has time to think about unique and original Thanksgiving deserts when there’s so much turkey to cook?
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As the holidays approach, it’s easy to say we’re hitting a crucial part of the marketing calendar for many brands and you need to stand out.
But this year, with the certain influx of digital initiatives to drive sales, it is more important than ever to have some sort of strategy behind what you’re posting.
Facebook will become extremely crowded with holiday-themed photos and updates, bigger brands will spent money on paid social, squeezing out smaller brands, and in order to make your messaging stand out, you truly need to own your identity and create great content.
Data provided by Expion, a social software company. Expion provides scalable enterprise-grade software to listen, content plan, publish, moderate, analyze, govern and share content on Facebook and other social channels across thousands of users.