Our Favourite Summer Social Campaigns

The summer is traditionally the time for social media campaigns based around certain themes.

Every now and then, whether the campaigns follow the themes (sport, holidays) or not, you can see some real gems of high quality, carefully prepared campaigns that have real impact.

We thought we’d take a look at three campaigns that surprised us this summer, campaigns that were just quite special.

Pantene and #PowerOfGrey

Pantene is a huge and much-loved beauty brand that has worked hard to develop an image aligned with its views around beauty. It really hit the jackpot this summer with a campaign that highlighted the beauty of naturally ageing hair.

Grey London was the agency involved, and in July it released the #PowerOfGrey campaign. This was launched very cleverly at Westfield in London, and Pantene’s involvement was only made clear the day after launch. And that was where the genius aspect came into play.

The first day simply showed models with slogans that were tied into the negative ideas behind grey hair that the beauty industry has (subconsciously) created. For example, some of the slogans that came up on the Westfield screens were ‘Grey hair says-cover me up’, and ‘Grey hair says-you’re invisible’. These sentiments are essentially what the beauty industry has used historically to sell hair colour products.

Then Pantene showed up on the screens on day two. This immediately turned these industry problems on their heads, and made Pantene appear revolutionary.

It’s been an amazing campaign, and has genuinely moved some customers to the stage where they are proud to show their grey hair.

iD Mobile

It’s great to see good old-fashioned social media marketing skills come into play every now and then. Here, iD Mobile picked up the services of Georgia Steel, who made waves as a contestant on Love Island back in series 4.

Steel finished the season with bags of popularity and became something of a celebrity. She also had a few catchphrases and some appealing quirks that have made her stardom last significantly longer than most other contestants, no matter what year they were involved in.

However, this particular campaign picked up on some solid social media marketing truths. If you manage to pitch your marketing campaign around the time when it will engage the most, you’re winning. Summer is all about Love Island in the UK, it’s all over TV.

That’s why it made perfect sense to run this campaign in Summer 2019. Well done.

Coca Cola

The ‘Ball Games Allowed’ campaign was a real winner, and picked up on that essential summer social media area of sport.

The ad was all about showing young people playing football, but rather than show them playing on pitches (although the video does do this at one point), it is concerned with kids playing football on housing estates, in built-up areas, and even at one point in an impossibly small backyard.

This worked well because the Women’s UK International football squad had a great summer, and seemed poised to win the World Cup. The country got behind them, and this all fed into various social media campaigns through the season. However, to see this video meant you were pulled back to your youth, where ‘no ball games’ signs were everywhere.

All about freedom, feeling young and being aspirational, the campaign was a joyous antidote to the nation’s preoccupation with Brexit, just as cheering on the women’s team was in the summer. Again, timing is everything, but the message was strong too.

What we’ve learned

Summer is a great time for marketing, as long as you know what you’re doing. The ‘silly season’ doesn’t need to be about gimmicks and ways to ‘push the envelope’ of taste and so on. It can just be about good quality marketing that is well-timed and has a strong message.

This is what these three brands did right here. They saw what was going on, and found their space in it all. It’s timed well and it also hits all the brand message points that resonate with audiences. The three campaigns above did just that.

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