What made Apple’s #shotoniphone Social Media Campaign Work?
Similar to Starbucks Unicorn campaign, this is yet another form of UGC (User Generated Content) campaign. It was set as a challenge, inviting users to post their pictures on social media platforms like Twitter or Instagram. Photos were then reviewed by panel judges and featured on billboards, online, retail stores, and other forms of physical ad media. The campaign ultimately selected 77 photos from photographers around 24 countries. These works were displayed across billboards worldwide in prominent locations and buildings around Dubai, London, Paris, etc.
Though it was launched in 2015, it is revamped each year with a different theme, for example, recently as shot on iPhone night mode challenge. The campaign is a testament to the quality of photos that can be shot from a simple device, making any novice user close to a professional photographer. This hashtag is relevant to date, where many videographers and artists have used it to portray their work on YouTube and other social media tools alike. Check out these impressive videos that popularize this hashtag: Hermitage, Valley of Fire, The lonely Palm Tree, Full Circle, each of which have anywhere between 500K to 1M viewers and continue to engage users and further extend brand presence, customer loyalty and show what the product can do. Apple also commissioned artists to do experiments, Full Bloom, is one example which shows product features and has been viewed more than 1.5M times since its launch in May 2021. These videos could easily inspire anyone to give it a try. Apple uses this feedback for product improvement.
Key Stats
- Launched in 2015
- 6.5 million media impressions
- 95% positive mentions
- More than 15 million posts to date on #ShotOnIphone on Instagram
- YouTube, Pinterest, Facebook
Why it has worked?
I think that real-life content that comes from audiences is considered authentic, is trustworthy and stands-out. Instead of themselves creating professional photos to advertise, when users are engaged, there’s magic and the results are powerful. It demonstrated to audiences how great iphone shot photos can be and how it could be scaled to large billboards. Can you imagine how each of the 77 photographers would have influenced their social circles! Such content moves passive buyers, expediting their buying cycle by answering their product questions with convincing reviews and brand hype, leading them to react and motivating them to try the brand for themselves despite its high price as compared to its competitors.
Conclusion
Ultimately, both brands recognized the importance of human factor in crafting their social media messaging and strategy. This only works when the brand stands for quality. Both these brands have a large and broad customer base. Both these examples created a sense of urgency with a limited time campaign, triggering the need to “act now”. They also create a sense of belonging and relatedness to the brand by having audiences participate in something bigger like a UGC.
