Lotame

People have been asking me what I think is the best Social Media Marketing Campaign so far this year. I have a few favorites; Burger King, Skittles, and Flight of the Conchords…but who cares what I think…I want to hear from you which one do you think worked best.

The criteria you should think about, before casting your vote:

• Did the campaign generate buzz?
• Was the campaign groundbreaking?
• Did the campaign sell product?

I have highlighted 3 campaigns that I believe are the best of the best, please vote on which one you think was best (or add your own.) If the Campaigns are unfamiliar to you I have provide written descriptions and links to the campaigns below the poll module

TAKE THE POLL

Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice:
Whopper Sacrifice, a Facebook application also for BK that encouraged users of the social networking site to ditch ten friends and receive a free burger in exchange was being heralded as an innovative step forward in digital advertising (despite being quickly banned by Facebook itself for breaking its privacy rules). (Link here)

Skittles - Social Media Takeover
Skittles, the colorful candy brand owned by Mars, transformed its home page into an online portal featuring a live Twitter feed alongside Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube content. Instead of the usual corporate propaganda, the home page and “chatter” section became the brand’s Twitter page, the video media and images pages became the brand’s YouTube page and Flickr stream, respectively. (Link here)

Flight of the Conchords - Social Media Contest
Flight of the Conchord’s micro-site - “Lip Dub Video Fansterpiece.” The concept is to learn the lyrics of one of the songs the two main characters sing, and then users videotape themselves lip-synching the song, and then upload it to the website - where you might be added to a final “Fansterpiece” that will air on HBO. This viral content was advertised only on social channels like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Digg and many others. (Link Here)

The winner will be announced on Friday in a short post. After the winner is announce I will try to get the creators of the winning campaign to join me for a podcast to give us the inside story of the campaign and the results!

Vote Hard!

Listen up brand managers, have you have been trying to get your organization to expirement social media? Have your efforts been unsuccessful? Well it’s time to reverse the conversation, and explain to your organization that you need to defend your brand and marks within the social media world. If you don’t grab your brand name on the various social media services out there, someone else will, and effectively Hijack your efforts. And the people who register your brand may (read: definitely will) say things that could damage your organization. I implore you, for the next 48 hours, take some time out of your busy day and register your brands and trademarks on the various different services. Hats off to our excellent PR firm Perkett (and their Blog), a my behest they put a list of the top 30 social media sites that you need to register your brands on.

Don’t wait or you may find that someone else has already taken them.

Top Tier – Set up profiles, actively monitor for relevant content, drive traffic from your blog, etc.:
Del.icio.us
Facebook
Flickr
FriendFeed
LinkedIn
SlideShare
StumbleUpon
Twitter
Technorati (“claim” your blog at minimum)
YouTube (along with other video distribution platforms: Vimeo, Viddler, Revver, Yahoo video, etc.)
DocStoc
Scribd

Second Tier – Set up branded profiles and use as warranted:
Digg
Windows Live spaces
Yahoo Groups
Google Groups

Third Tier — Claim your name and monitor:
Bebo
Brightkite (individual focus)
Friendster (international focus, Asia)
Gather
Identi.ca (alternative to Twitter)
Imeem
Ma.gnolia
Meetup
Multiply
MySpace (more for usage policy than an active corporate presence)
New York Times (TimesPeople)
Ning
Orkut (international focus, Brazil)
Picasa (alternative to Flickr, smaller community)
Plurk (alternative to Twitter, younger demographic)
Spoke
Tribe.net

If you think that there are other social media platforms that brands need to register on, please add a comment to this post or email me at scott@lotame.com