With the hangovers gone and resolutions already broken, I thought I’d take a look at how some of the UK’s top brands “celebrated” the New Year on Facebook.
Some are good, some are fails and some are just plain dumb but there’s definitely something we can learn from all of them.
All of these were sourced on January 2nd 2014 giving them a good 24 hours to get that all important engagement from followers. So lets see who won the internets with 10 Facebook New Year 2014 Posts from Top Brands.
Coke
Coke are massive when it comes to social media. They are consistent with their engaging campaigns that clog up Facebook’s edgerank more than the calories from their drinks in your body. So what did they do to bring in 2014?
Lets just see what’s getting tweeted under that hashtag shall we?
#ReasonsToBelieve 2pac is still alive. In the video ‘To Live and Die in LA’ Pac is wearing shoes that didnt come out for 3 years after death
— $LEAZY-ß (@ReguIator_) January 2, 2014
Not quite sure that’s what their super high paid marketing team were wanting, but hey, that’s their fault for not laying down any ground rules for that hashtag.
Ikea
Ikea, they’ve got a solution for all your home’s needs, even the ones you didn’t know it had. So what did they do for the new year?
They get themselves some internet points for managing to find a link between the new year and their huge product range. They also get some bonus points for using a trackable URL on Bitly. Sadly, they lose points when you look at how many people bothered to click it. Just 53 as of 3pm on the 2nd of January.
Maybe they should have included a cat in one of those boxes.
Smooth Radio
Let’s take a visit to Smooth Radio who sit in the corner of social media that never forgets to fail, UK radio.
Screw everyone else, Smooth’s love and well wishes is only for those that “love life, love music” and listen to the station that has kept James Blunt’s career going.
Yorkshire Tea
Yorkshire Tea don’t pay me to say this, but they make one of the best brews going. But how do they fair on Facebook when celebrating the new year?
Although it may lack a picture, it’s right on target for the brand and who doesn’t love a pun?
Boots
Boots sell things to make you feel and look better, which is exactly what you need on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Did they manage to get that across in their social media posts?
That’s right, in 2014 come to Boots for all your huge 3D letter needs. Least they managed to link to their own profile correctly, which is more than can be said for the next entry on this list.
ITV
ITV produce fantastic content, if you like watching minor celebrities eating the genitals of Australian animals, karaoke singers getting churned up and spat out by Simon Cowell’s musical anus or soap operas showing how grim life is up north. Did that come across in their new year post?
Well they’ve got the full gang of ITV stars there, but they haven’t quite managed to get that link to their own Facebook profile to work.
Aviva
Aviva, or Norwich Union for those that can’t get over the past, sell insurance. But can they turn their business in to likes on Facebook when it comes to the new year?
Aviva done good here. They’re in the business of insurance of all sorts, including life insurance. They have a vested interest in their customers being healthy, that way they can take their money and not have to give them any back. That’s why they’ve welcomed in the new year by giving everybody advice on how to stay safe when drinking their body weight in celebratory booze. It’s a win tick in their social media box.
Confused.com
Confused.com have gone from annoying cartoon singing adverts, to annoying robot adverts. That’s no mean feat even in the ever shrinking intelligence of comparison website advertising. Did they manage to translate this in to engaging content for Facebook at new year though?
Wow, just four likes? Not sure what Confused.com’s marketing team are going to think of those stats, but with 33,058 fans at the time of writing that’s not a good sign of love for their robot BRIAN.
Maybe they were a little too friendly with the x there at the end, or not friendly enough. It’s tricky working out how many kisses you should give a mass online body of your customers.
Microsoft UK
Remember Microsoft? They used to be big in the game. Now, in the world of web 2.0 they’re relegated to making operating systems for the dying desktop and torturing millions of office workers with software that prefers to crash than save their work. But how did they do with social media posts at the end of 2013?
Well least they didn’t use any Wordart.
Oreos
Oreos generally win at social media. There’s loads that has been written about how they’ve embraced the medium and picked up a fair few new customers along the way (and lost some of the homophobic ones too). You’d expect something special from them at new years, but did they deliver?
The fact I’ve embedded the post should tell you they definitely got infinity internetz for this one. It’s a video that’s short enough for Instagram and Vine which is cool for the hipsters, it’s stop motion which is well hipster, it features the product and has confetti and party blowers just to make sure you know it’s about partying.
The end
So there you go, 10 different brands posting on Facebook to bring in the new year 2014. Some did it well, others not so well. But which was your favourite and if you manage a brand page, how did you do it (if you did it at all)?
