So what do we think? We have just been looking at the results of the Corporate Social Media Awards for this year and wanted to share our thoughts with you.
For those who have not previously come across these awards, they are run on an annual basis by a UK business intelligence company called Useful Social Media, part of FC Business Intelligence Ltd.
The aim of the awards is to showcase the people and projects that are demonstrating excellence in the use of social media marketing, in the hope of inspiring others into similar or better action..
The award ceremony was held in New York on Monday 15th June and there were five award winners, as follows:
Judging was done by a panel of senior executives and top social media influencers, with the exception of the Corporate Social Media Leader of the Year Award which was done by a public vote. As we are not immediately familiar with the companies and campaigns that won the awards, let’s take a quick look at them all here:
It has been interesting to have a quick look at all the above winners and we may well feature more about them in recent blogs. It is excellent to see not only social media being used extensively as part of cross channel marketing, but also being recognised for their efforts and creativity.
To us, the winner that stands out from the rest is The Dollar Shave Club. What we did not mention above is that the company was in fact only launched in 2012! Their phenomenal success has been massively influenced by their social media strategy.
At the time of their launch, Forbes commented that they were “bursting through to the mainstream media with a cheeky attitude and a viral video with over 4 million views.” and went on to say attribute their success largely to social media:
“Why has Dollar Shave Club broken through where others have not? For one thing, the company understands social media, and its YouTube video does a great job of skewering the shaving giants. The timing is also good; the recession may be over but for many consumers an expensive razor doesn’t seem like an affordable luxury.
Finally, Asian manufacturing continues to get cheaper and better and there aren’t many categories left where you can’t produce a serviceable clone of a class-leading product.”
Their innovative approach is so refreshing and pioneering that we look forward to following them from now on and seeing what they come up with next. We also like the sense of social responsibility that emanates from them. Of all the above companies they are also by far the easiest to find through search engines!
We are also impressed with the pioneering attitude and breadth of activity of the winner of Corporate Social Media Leader Natanya Anderson, and think this quote from her is a fitting conclusion to this article:
“If you have social media without good content and a reason for conversation you don’t have social media.”
Food for thought indeed!
