B&T Awards The Work: Best Use of Social Media

Of all the categories within the B&T Awards program, Best Use of Social Media is one of the most popular; much like the medium itself.

This category caters to all forms of social media platforms and applications. Examples of types of applications include but are not limited to social commerce, social networking, location-based services, entertainment, advertising campaigns, reviews and opinion, information aggregators, blogging sites as well as product and services. Judging is based on the innovative and effective use of online communities, engagement with these communities and the success achieved as a result.

Of course, now that you’re invested in shortlisted entries, why not come along and see who will be crowned the winners at the Hordern Pavilion on Friday 24 November 2023? Early bird tickets are limited so don’t run the risk of paying full price later.

And if you haven’t already, don’t forget to check out the entire short lists for the 2023 B&T Awards here and here.

Secure your table now!

Catch up on the other shortlisted work by clicking on the links below:

• B&T Award For Bravery
• B&T Award for Diversity
• Best Content Marketing Strategy
• Best CTV Campaign
• Best Data-Driven Marketing Campaign
• Best Digital Campaign, sponsored by Twitch
• Best Direct Response Campaign
• Best Integrated Campaign
• Best Media Campaign
• Best OOH Campaign
• Best PR Campaign
• Best TV Campaign

Here’s the finalists’ work in their own words, the headings below show the name of the agency entering the award, the campaign name and the client putting their trust in them.

Bastion, Dwayne Bennett, Budget Direct

Budget Direct wanted to build brand salience and consideration by leveraging sponsorship of brand-new NRL team The Dolphins. We had to help launch the Dolphins team, drive membership and attendance and importantly make Budget Direct feel like their most significant and likeable sponsor – even though they weren’t!

The Dolphins best asset was one of the greatest coaches in NRL history – Wayne Bennett, However he is not known for his humour or love of the media. Our challenge became – how do you activate & supercharge a sponsorship when your most recognisable name is out of play?

The thinking

We needed a ‘social first’ vehicle through which we could create and share engaging social content to generate support for the Dolphins, grow our fan base and engage the wider NRL community.

The idea

Budget Direct created their own ‘Dolphins super-fan’ – Dwayne Bennett, Wayne Bennett’s long lost and more extrovert cousin.

Through quick-wit and humour, we made Dwayne a social native, sharing a mix of episodic, always-on and reactive content, as well as live commentary across Game Day. Dwaynebennett.com.au also acted as a hub, redirecting fans to engage with Dwayne’s social channels.

The outcome

In four months, Dwayne amassed a legion of dedicated ‘’Phinatics, including many fans of other NRL teams, including over 40k followers on TikTok, 10k on Facebook, and 8.3k on Instagram. Helping the Dolphins raise to 4th place on the NRL Membership Ladder in their first season.

Budget Direct also achieved a huge level of exposure across all major social media platforms, with many subtle references to Dwayne Bennett’s great ‘mates’ at Budget Direct

During the campaign period Budget Direct also delivered “its largest Car & Home Insurance new customer sales volume in its 22-year history” said Jonathan Kerr, Budget Direct Chief Growth Officer.

BMF, The Reluctant Shanty, UNHCR

In the lead up to World Refugee Day (20th June), Australians for UNHCR wanted to boost awareness of both the plight of refugees and the refugee assistance programs they run globally to support displaced people worldwide.

In order to shake people from refugee charity fatigue, we needed to lean into a political, hot-button issue; boat refugees.

With this in mind, we turned our attention to sea shanties, a 400-year old genre of traditional folk song that was once commonly sung as a work song to accompany rhythmical labour aboard large merchant sailing vessels. But, thanks to TikTok, in 2021 sea shanties had a resurgence.

The sea shanty music and community is now more popular than ever on social media, with the hashtag #seashanty amassing well over 3.1 billion views on TikTok. But we wanted to give shanties a new, powerful relevance, by creating the first sea shanty based on real refugee survivor stories.

To launch this Shanty, we needed to garner the attention of a captive audience, so we partnered with Nathan Evans – the fresh, global face of sea shanty music, UK #1 artist, and TikTok megastar – to co-create ‘The Reluctant Shanty’ song. A track based on in-depth interviews we conducted with five reluctant sailors: boat refugees from Iran, Vietnam, and Afghanistan.

The real and harrowing survivor stories were painstakingly turned into a song and music video that honoured their resilience, hardship and courage, in close consultation with Australians for UNHCR.

On the eve of World Refugee Day, Nathan gave a mysterious sneak peek of the Reluctant Shanty song to his 1.6 million TikTok followers, igniting conversation about its haunting lyrics and themes.

Then on World Refugee Day itself, Nathan and Australians for UNHCR simultaneously dropped the entire track and revealed its true meaning to the world.

CHEP Network, Flipvertising, Samsung

How do you turn branded content into a game that GenMZ, the most ad-skeptical generation, want to play? By using data and retargeting in a creative way. That’s the story of Flipvertising.

As we noticed more and more conversation on Reddit and other social platforms about algorithms and how to avoid or subvert them – we used this insight into emerging behaviour to power an entirely new style of data-driven campaign that felt very much of the zeitgeist.

By ‘flipping’ the traditional targeted advertising model on its head, we created a competitive ‘internet sport’ where punters actively sought to get targeted by Samsung ads to win the new Galaxy Flip4 phone.

‘Flipvertising’ was about flipping the traditional use of targeted advertising. We seeded humorous online videos with clues that took viewers on a series of searches in the hope of being retargeted by one near impossible to be targeted by pre-roll, which contained our hidden prize – a Galaxy Z Flip4.

Over the campaign period, clues to what search terms people needed to search were seeded out through social media and content-creators. Once correctly guessed, these three specific search terms led the clue-hunters to videos to films which at first glance were amusing product demos, but also contained a clue hinting to the next search term needed to enter the retargeting pool. Whoever watched all three films went into the final retargeting pool and was served the winning ad as a YouTube pre-roll.??

The first person each day for ten days to follow the clues, watch all three videos and be retargeted by the hidden ad won a Galaxy Z Flip4.

CHEP Network, (un)Geddes – Karicare

The brief

Karicare, a baby formula brand, is on a mission to redefine how society portrays parenting. Today parents are under more pressure than ever, everywhere they turn they see an inaccurate portrayal of parenting – that it should look perfect.

In a formulaic category where it’s impossible to stand out, Karicare needed to connect with new parents to turn around a year-long flatlining market share.

The strategy

While the category spouted functional claims and saccharine families, we worked to understand parents’ lives. We interviewed families to uncover how they felt in those moments to glean our insight.

While we knew parenting is overwhelming, we discovered the pressure to be perfect was compounding in a specific place. Not the playground. Not the hospital. But social media.

Insight: social media had become the new mother’s group.

We quantified this, discovering 96% of Australian parents feel under pressure to be perfect, and 61% feel bad when they see ‘perfect’ images.

Karicare was on a mission to redefine how society portrays parenting.

Idea: Feed the Real

Our idea closed the gap between the ‘real’ moments parents experience and the curated ones presented online. This worked in three parts: (1) show parents that the ‘perfect’ portrayal of parenting they see every day is an illusion. (2) give parents and influencers who never share less than perfect images, the confidence to #FeedTheReal, and rebalance the disparity between perfect and real on social feeds around Australia. (3) to spark a wider conversation we launched a partnership with Anne Geddes, creating a powerful story to further fuel our mission. Together this worked to show parents that real can be perfect too.

(un)Geddes hit a cultural nerve in a traditional category achieving 52m+ reach with 60+ pieces of media coverage and record market share at 14.8%.

CHEP Network, The Uncreakening, IKEA

What started as a cultural moments brief for organic channels, fast transformed into a much bigger and unexpected opportunity, driving an important PSA to all of Australia.

It all started because of those dastardly furniture creaks. The ones that lead us to believe our furniture is destined for an early grave on the landfill.

Yet IKEA stands for affordable quality for all, and know well that those creaks are actually the sign of a well-loved piece of furniture crying out for a quick re-tighten due to wood naturally loosening with time. Not that it is old, ill-designed or broken. So, why not educate the nation and keep our streets and landfill clear of disposed furniture?

We reclaimed the moment people typically assume is a time to throw out their furniture: the creak, squeak, wobble and groan that furniture makes as it starts to loosen – the furniture death rattle.?Taking this scary movie trope, we created our own short, unnerving films and launched them on the spookiest day of the year, Halloween.??

Introducing ‘The Uncreakening’; a series of social horror films with an important message – “Don’t be frightened. It’s just time to retighten”, paving a new way to talk to furniture care and give well-loved pieces a longer life.?

Launching in the lead up to Halloween the series was viewed by 1,346,000 eyeballs and was applauded by IKEA marketing teams globally.

A content-first campaign that drove real impact. Beyond engagement and VTR, we also compelled our audience into action with IKEA reporting a 6% uplift in FIXA tool kit range sales and a 121% increase in traffic to IKEA’s Home improvement hub – discovering even more tips to repair furniture.

Importantly, we instigated a new annual behaviour at Halloween, keeping our furniture well-loved for many (full)moons to come.

EssenceMediaCom and Goat/GroupM Nexus, Modern Menu, KFC

KFC Australia needed to make some noise (specifically ‘crunch’) around their new Modern Menu range – with a goal to drive mass awareness, and trial, of the Hot & Crispy Boneless and Zinger Crunch Bowl.

KFC needed a platform that would capture the attention of their young (18-34) demographic and sustain momentum throughout summer.

KFC’s goal was to maximise reach across a broad audience. Recognising social media’s potential to spread the ‘I need to try that for myself’ sentiment like wildfire.

The average social media campaign lives out its full lifecycle on the same platform. But our unconventional use of social & influencer marketing pushed the boundaries of social well beyond the feed – and we have the footfall to prove it.

To bring a flavour of authenticity to the campaign, we amplified bespoke Instagram and TikTok creator content across lifestyle news outlets – where audiences aren’t used to seeing social media content. And the ads drove audiences to KFC stores, and boosted purchases.

We expertly demonstrated social media’s power to extend reach and engagement across programmatic display environments – and tangibly impact the bottom line.

HERO, Through Their Eyes, Maybelline

Maybelline New York wanted to engage with Gen Z, in particular the burgeoning gaming demographic, now with a total audience of 17 million in Australia. The brief was to connect with young female gamers in a meaningful and authentic way and enrich their gaming experiences.

The brand had a clear and long-established purpose; ‘give everyone the self-confidence to express their beauty, to play and to make change’. We knew of anecdotal evidence that female identifying gamers were facing constant abuse online resulting in many playing in silence, or not at all. It seemed the online gaming world was a place where many don’t feel free to express themselves.

To change the game, we commissioned an Australian research survey with over 600 gamers to garner deeper insights into the problem and the results were confronting. Over 83 per cent of female identifying gamers have experienced abusive behaviour online and as a result the majority turn off their microphones.

Our strategy was not just to simply shine a light on an existing problem, but to amplify the silent voices on the subject matter, and create allies both male and female in the online gaming world.

We set out to show male gamers what it was like to play through a woman’s eyes. Two prominent Aussie male gamers had their real identities disguised with voice modification software and fake female profiles in an online first-person shooter game. They experienced first-hand the level of constant abuse and bullying experienced by the opposite sex.

Shared out by our four gamer influencers, the film quickly resonated with the online gaming community and beyond. Appreciating they’d been heard, female-identifying players shared their stories, many who had been hiding in silence, and most importantly millions of male gamers called for others to stand up and say something.

Howatson+Company, Non-Rapid Taste Test, Matilda Bay

Launching a tasty new brew during a cultural moment that was all about “taste”: Matilda Bay’s Aussie Wheat Ale is light, zesty and bursting with flavours unlike any other craft beer on the market. It has been crafted for taste and it ranked #1 in sensory taste tests conducted by Matilda Bay in 2022.

At the time of launch “taste”, or lack thereof, was a trending topic. Social media was experiencing an outbreak of posts from people and online communities who had temporarily lost their sense of taste due to the latest wave of COVID. We saw an opportunity to launch our new brew by connecting the superior taste of our beer with this unique cultural moment around taste.

A bold idea that engaged online communities around “taste”: We found 50 online category influencers and journalists whose tastebuds were recovering from COVID and sent them a Non-Rapid Taste Test. Asking them to publicly take the test via their social media channels on day seven to determine if their taste receptors had fully recovered. The test appeared like any other, only inside was a can of delicious Wheat Ale and step-by-step instructions.

Through the strange and familiar language of internationally produced COVID tests, we outlined the four delicate flavours a healthy palate would detect. If our influencer or journalist could detect all four, their taste had officially returned. If not. they could request another test. A tongue in cheek way to get coverage for Matilda Bay on a small budget in a gloomy and medically saturated media environment.

We essentially turned online communities of category influencers and journalists into brand ambassadors and content generators for Matilda Bay.

Delicious results:

+95 per cent increase in sales vs. previous product launches
+2.2 million earned media impressions
+180 per cent increase in bottle store distribution

Publicis Worldwide, Subdog, Subway

‘We Let the Dogs Out’

The fast food category is a dog fight amongst the kings and colonels with Subway at #4 and constantly outshouted by six times the media spend. So as the challenger in the category, Subway cheekily posted an April Fool’s Day joke revealing they are launching a new product the SubDog – except they weren’t. The social team were hounded incessantly for the next few months including one customer ‘Dave’ who threatened to never eat Subway again unless it was true, and Subway listened. They approached Don’s Smallgoods – Australia’s most famous hotdog maker – and convinced them to make a limited time hotdog for Subway. Subway tracked down Dave, gave him the red carpet treatment to be the first taste-tester and let the dogs out. TikTok and Meta social content engaged like never before for Subway reaching over 20M people across ANZ and leading to record-breaking sales for a limited time product.

The Monkeys, part of Accenture Song, VB England Bitter, VB

From the moment Alex Carey whipped Johnny Bairstow’s bails off: Stumpgate became the most talked about cricket moment in recent memory. And if you’re English: one of the most whinged about. In fact, they were so cranky, they went as far as refusing to have a beer with the Australian team after the series.

For over 50 years VB, has always been about earning a thirst. A hard-earned thirst. Championing deep-held Aussie values of getting on with it, putting your head down, and getting the job done. Words have always been cheap. And words that were downright whinging needed some action.

So we created “England Bitter”, a beer to match the bitterness of an entire nation.

Within 48 hours, we shipped a warm slab of “England Bitter” directly to the English team’s dressing rooms in Leeds: addressed directly to Ben Stokes and his bitter mates.

The PR response was immediate, with all major news outlets in Australia picking up the story. Karl Stefanovic opened a stubby with his teeth live on air, and even the notoriously ad-free ABC devoted a whole minute of airtime to VB.

We also poked the bear by running full page press ads in England’s daily papers, handing out beers at the ground and dressing an army of spectators in England Bitter T-Shirts.

In just 3 days, England Bitter generated over 23.5 million impressions and $4.5 million worth of earned media. Organic social engagement levels were the highest in VB’s history at +1391% vs benchmark.

But the most important result: The Aussies retained the Ashes. So we’ve got 30,000 slabs of England Bitter on their way to bottle-shops to help the nation celebrate.

We’ll leave the final word to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese: who when told the news simply said:

“Ha! That’s great. Good On Em”.

Thinkerbell, XXXX Postcodes of Origin, XXXX

XXXX is an iconic 145-year-old Queensland beer brand that lost significant market share in its home state. XXXX has a long legacy to Queensland communities, including a 33-year-long sponsorship with Queensland Rugby League’s Maroons team in ‘Australia’s Super Bowl’, the State of Origin (SOO), which unites communities through footy, beer and mateship.

To reignite Queenslanders’ passion for the brand during SOO, the iconic XXXX logo on the Maroons jersey sleeve was sacrificed and replaced with Queensland (4000) postcodes in a powerful demonstration pride. The postcodes represented players’ junior rugby club, where their passion to play for Queensland began. To include and unite all 447 Queensland postcodes, XXXX boldly changed their beer cans’ packaging, swapping branding for numbers. 30million special edition cans were released so every Queenslander could create and share their postcode with XXXX cans.

Via social platforms, XXXX asked Queenslanders to share their demonstrations (photos) of postcode pride for the chance to win $25,000 or a holiday with Maroons players. Both players and SOO legends featured across TV, radio, and social content to share their postcode pride, to drive awareness and entries.

To set the tone for submissions, XXXX briefed 40 Queensland micro-influencers to capture their own postcode pride to seed via their personal Instagram. XXXX shared these across owned Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to inspire Queenslanders’ UGC submissions, which were featured in owned social, digital, earned media and hyper-localised OOH. 7,294 UGC demonstrations of pride were submitted, flooding in from across 447 postcodes in Queensland.

The campaign received 113 pieces of coverage with a combined reach of 19,594,667 and 100% positive sentiment. XXXX sales increased by 6% increase, more than 1.3million litres of beer and 3.4million cans sold than previous year and 22.4% recorded market share of total pack beer sold in Queensland during the SOO season.

VaynerMedia Australia TikTok Plot Twisties, Twisties

The Brief

After years of little to no brand activity, Twisties faced becoming a nostalgic brand, with declining Gen Z sales and fading cultural relevance.

Solution

‘TikTok Plot Twisties’ reinvented the brand for a new generation, ripping up Twisties’ traditional on/off marketing playbook to go all in and always on where Gen Z attention was, namely TikTok.

This new working model for the brand integrated creative and media with one agency partner – shifting from traditional campaigns and short term ad buys into a TikTok-only, always on approach that rapidly created and amplified hundreds of moments designed for attention, speed and relevance.

‘TikTok Plot Twisties’ was the integrated social idea that brought the model and these insights to life; a co-created TikTok platform that grew and evolved from content to new flavours, epic fashion collabs and beyond, partnering with Gen Z to subvert and hijack the trending conversations they cared about in truly twisted ways.

This real-time content and insights engine also enabled Twisties to rapidly turn community feedback into real-world activations that ensured the ‘Plot Twistie’ platform was able to cement Twisties in Gen Z culture.

Impact

‘TikTok Plot Twisties’ doubled community growth and drove a double-digit sales increase, making Twisties the most followed Australian snack on TikTok whilst proving that an audience-centric approach to new-media creativity can translate into transformative brand and commercial outcomes – even with a limited advertising and marketing budget.

Wavemaker, Auscheer, Colgate

Colgate is the major sponsor of Australian Rules Football, as the smile of the AFL.

In this game, if you’re a fan, you need to be able to sing, because every club has a team song.
But not every fan has a voice. 1 in 6 Aussies experience some form of healing loss.

On a mission to make the game more inclusive, Colgate supports deaf QAFLW player Jamie Howell.

It all started with an inspiring local footy story – Jamie’s team surprised her by performing their club song entirely in Australian sign language, Auslan.

We made it our mission to spread this story of optimism in action. But we didn’t stop there… We used the power of social media to help others put that optimism into action themselves.

We introduced Auscheer: Breaking the sound barrier between deaf and hearing fans.

Just in time for footy finals and the commencement of AFLW season, we took each club song and for the first time, translated them into AUSLAN, designed specifically to be duetted on social media.

Fans (hearing, hard of hearing and deaf) got on board, AFL superstars got on board, even the AFL got on board.
Finally, the deaf and hard of hearing community were able to celebrate their team along with everyone else.

Colgate ended up making a lot of noise, without saying a word.

That’s the sound of a smile.

Colgate, Smile Strong.