Lessons From 3 Successful Social Media Marketing Campaigns

In the world of eCommerce, the importance of social media is no secret. It is one of the main areas that functions in three powerful ways:

• Raising brand awareness
• Building social proof
• Working marketing magic

Creating content or campaigns that achieve all three of these elements is the dream. In this post we will look at examples of successful social media marketing campaigns that have done just this. Hopefully the success they have had can serve as inspiration for your own social media marketing.

Spotify Wrapped



Spotify, the music streaming service, has a successful end of year marketing campaign called ‘Spotify Wrapped’. This summarizes the year of music listened to by the user in a series of highly shareable slides and sounds. 

Every December, each user receives a breakdown of their musical interest data over the past year. The way that this is displayed is on slides that already resemble Instagram stories, in order to encourage users to share in this way.

What To Learn From The Success

The first key element that has ensured the success of this campaign is the personalization element. The campaign involves the users special interests, and personalized experiences are crucial in order to make them feel valued. 

The second key element is the shareability. The combination of personalized material along with how easy it is to share with friends promotes a recipe for success. This achieves social proof along with huge brand awareness all in one go.

If you can create something with the same combination: personalization + shareability, you could be onto something successful too.

Barbie’s AI Selfie-Generator



The global impact of the Barbie movie, and the hugely successful Barbie marketing campaign was enormous. From hearing the phrase “Hey Barbie” to all of the people who turned up to the movie theater dressed in pink; it’s hard to ignore how much space the movie took up culturally.

A social media campaign by Barbie’s mastermind marketing team allowed users to post an AI-generated image of their face within the Barbie poster. 

What To Learn From The Success

The Barbie selfie generator worked in a similar way to Spotify Wrapped in that it combined personalization + shareability. However, it also featured an extra ingredient for success which is: jumping on current trends.

The Barbie movie was trending, and people wanted to be a part of it. When a cultural moment takes the zeitgeist, creating a social media campaign that plays on this is a great idea. The more people that see their friends doing it, the more people want to try it themselves.

These kinds of campaigns spread like wildfire, as each person wants to see their version, whilst spreading the campaign.

What To Consider

If you are interested in making a similar social media campaign, it’s highly possible. However, make sure that your AI-generated image template is of high quality. Invest some time into setting it up, and making sure that the quality of your shareable image reflects your brand well.

Apple’s Shot On iPhone



Apple’s #ShotOniPhone campaign can be found on billboards, bus stops and social media all over the world. The campaign features high quality and breathtaking images that are revealed to be taken with an iPhone camera.

This campaign operates on User-Generated Content (UGC) as it relies on iPhone users themselves to send in the images. This both helps to increase brand trust, heighten social proof, and make the individual users involved feel special and valued by the brand.

What To Learn From The Success

The power of UGC is huge when it comes to marketing. User-generated content creates a huge sense of brand community that will help to create lifetime customers. It is also a cost-effective marketing strategy, as it doesn’t involve backend images and content to be created. 

Furthermore, it is a long-lasting strategy as users can continue to send images as long as they have them, which will always be the case. This is cost-effective, and creates the potential for a long term campaign that will remain relevant for customers.

This campaign was also so successful as it centers around a key feature of the product: the impressive camera. With images that seem too high quality to be taken on the iPhone, every image continues to surprise users and demonstrate how top quality the iPhone is.

Lastly, the use of the hashtag is crucial in the success of this campaign. Having a hashtag that users can all add to means that you can easily find UGC related to your brand. It also makes it memorable in the eyes of your users.

To conclude, there are different elements that can be included in order to make a successful social media marketing campaign. Some of the elements we have seen in this post include:

• Personalization
• Shareability
• AI-generated image templates
• Trending topics
• User-generated content
• Hashtags

Using any combination of these elements can ensure that you can also create a campaign that spreads. The more reach your campaign achieves, the more engagement your social media gets, and the more your business benefits.