The Best Viral Campaigns of 2019 so Far

We’re only one month in to 2019 and the marketing world has already launched some ground-breaking campaigns. We’ve seen Greggs break the internet (and Piers Morgan!) with its vegan sausage roll, Gillette take the world by storm and tackle toxic masculinity and ‘The Egg’ set a world record as the most liked post on Instagram. It’s been one month and three big campaigns, but what do they all have in common? Social media played a big part in their success. We take a look at some of the key take away points from each of the campaigns below.

Greggs

Greggs is celebrated online for its down-to-earth and conversational social media presence. It has created trending hashtags, gained millions of likes with comical Tweet responses and most recently, had roaring success with the launch of its very first VEGAN sausage roll. Greggs plunged into the headlines within hours of launching the 30 second video of the vegan sausage roll on Twitter. The video received over 5 million views, #GreggsVeganSausageRoll was used over 800 times and Greggs’ marketing team were hot on its tail with witty responses, receiving 100,000’s of likes. The thing is, this wasn’t even Greggs’ first vegan item – it’s just an example of some smart social media marketing! It definitely paid off as they reported the vegan pastry treat selling out at record-breaking speed.

Gillette

The viral ‘We Believe: The Best Men Can Be’ campaign was launched from Gillette in a bid to challenge the stereotypes and expectations of what it means to ‘be a man’. Like Greggs, Gillette’s short video was released on Twitter and received 15,000 likes, 2,300 retweets and 3,500 comments. The brand’s campaign and new slogan, #TheBestMenCanBe, has been both critiqued and praised for its attempt to tackle toxic masculinity. Unlike Greggs, Gillette did not respond to any tweets about this, and let the messaging of the video do the talking. However, Gillette reported that sales haven’t declined since the campaign launched and is calling the campaign a big success. So, it just shows different social strategies work for different campaigns, objectives and brands.

The Egg

With a hint of comedy, a stock image of an egg has drawn over 50.5 million likes on Instagram – becoming the most-liked post on Instagram EVER and beating Kylie Jenner’s record of announcing her baby’s birth in 2017. Using the power of influencer marketing, ‘The Egg’ got Kylie Jenner to create a video highlighting the post, and the likes came flooding in from Instagram users, including other celebrities and influencers. A great example of how influencer marketing can be a benefit as part of a wider strategy.

Are you looking to create a top social media campaign? We can help! Contact us now.