Forward-thinking brands have long-ago realized that social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools they have at their disposal. Several Seattle-area companies have been nominated for a Shorty Award, which acknowledges excellence in social campaigns, for their work in 2014.
Ad Week released the full list of nominees here: Expedia, Starbucks, Xbox and T-Mobile are all getting nods. Expedia was nominated for its “Throw Back Thursday” campaign in the Instagram category and for Best in Travel: “#tbt (Throw Back Thursday) is the fourth most popular hashtag on Instagram with millions of posts, many of them sharing nostalgic, favorite travel memories,” states the Shorty Awards site.
Xbox was also nominated in the Instagram category for revising “the gaming giant’s approach to the Instagram platform, focusing on fewer, higher-quality images that held true to the Xbox brand…Instagram became Xbox’s best-performing social platform in 2014, with over 200 percent growth in Followers and over 20,000 average engagements per post.”
Starbucks got four nods, three for its pumpkin spice latte campaigns on Twitter, Tumblr and the accompanying GIF (yes, there are even awards for GIFs), the other for its ambitious, feel-good “Meet Me at Starbucks” campaign in the Hospitality category.
T-Mobile was nominated for Best Consumer Brand for the Break Up Letter: “Through this simple Facebook application, annoyed customers of AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and others were able to make their voices heard throughout their social networks. To date, there have been 113K+ letters, 2.7MM+ app page views and 67MM+ social impressions generated by the campaign,” reads the Shorty nomination.
Winners will be announced via Snapchat on March 23. There were a lot of categories and nominations, so if I missed anyone from the Seattle area, please let me know at molly@geekwire.com.
Good luck to all!
