Paid, organic, can both be successful?
Building a brand presence on social media that will last is certainly no cakewalk. Many companies are still trying to figure out how to master it. Creating engaging content that will resonate with an audience and give them a reason to return to your brand is the key to building long-lasting customers and a memorable brand. A significant part of achieving this is through advertising. Within this type of content, there is paid social media advertising and organic social media content.
The amount of money spent on paid social media ads has been “steadily climbing since 2019” (Coleman). Now, with businesses preparing to spend a fifth of their advertising budgets on this “pay-to-play promo”, it’s clear that social media ads are becoming instrumental in marketing strategies across all businesses.
Let’s face it, paid social media advertising is usually just more successful. Although it’s more costly, it helps with targeting specific audiences catered to your brand and, ultimately, driving sales. And while organic social content can do these same things, it can take much longer to orchestrate. Paid social content ensures “speed to market, campaign sustainability, and good message frequency” (Coleman). Organic content can take days or even weeks to build simply due to the unpredictable algorithms of social media. If your brand is running a shorter campaign, that precious time could cost your brand visibility and potential sales.
With paid social media, your brand’s campaign can get started right away with extra boosts at a speed that organic posts just can’t achieve. In addition to sustaining views, traffic, and engagement, you even have the ability to retarget consumers with your ads to achieve a frequency of your own control.
Now, putting all of this aside, I am 100% an advocate for things that are real and authentic content. So I would usually vote that organic content on social media is the way to go for achieving real success for your brand. But nowadays, “for many brands, organic reach is declining” (Barnhart). That’s not to say that organic content is completely dead. But, as I alluded to previously, social media algorithms can be tricky and hard to predict. So it can be hard to decipher that certain content that works for one audience will also work for a different audience. But even so, I still prefer content that feels real. But as more brands are mastering online branding, paid advertising can feel genuine and authentic if it is done correctly.
Successful Paid Advertising Campaigns
Like I said, mastering the art of successful brand content is not for the faint of heart. It takes next-level thinking to create social media strategies that resonate. Many brands just don’t have it. Many have tried, and many have failed. But there are some brand campaigns that have just hit the nail on the head and will prove to be memorable in years to come.
IHOP to IHOb
For over 60 years, IHOP, the International House of Pancakes, has been focused on one thing: pancakes! So when the chain restaurant came out with a new line of hamburgers in 2018, they had to think big. How could a restaurant built on pancakes make their burgers stand out. And from that, IHOb was born, flipping the p for pancakes to a b for burgers. This social media stunt was fully involved and the company went all in, changing everything from all their social media handles to every single sign and billboard across the nation. In response, the Internet went wild. Without an immediate answer for what the b stood for, people were in shambles. “Outrage, confusion, and speculation flooded every social platform in what became one of the biggest guessing games in history” (“How Do You Get the World to Care about Burgers from a Pancake House?”).
This sensation even got celebrity attention, with Chrissy Teigen, Cardi B, Cookie Monster, and more all joining in on the discussion. With everyone from the CEO of the company to all of its employees being in on the “joke”, it came as a shock to everyone when the secret was revealed, all in an effort to create an exceptional and memorable social media campaign. The power of both paid and organic content was executed well.
Starbucks Unicorn Frappuccino
Starbucks is obviously one of the top-name brands for coffee. And in a caffeine-loving, coffee-posting generation, Starbucks has to come up with creative ways to make its products stand out on social media feeds. One instance where they nailed it is with the Unicorn Frappuccino. They took organic content to the next level with user-generated content that social media scrollers could interact with. Starbucks launched a one-week campaign filled with magic, unicorns, and bright colors.
“Like its mythical namesake, the Unicorn Frappuccino blended crème comes with a bit of magic, starting as a purple beverage with swirls of blue and a first taste that is sweet and fruity. But give it a stir and its color changes to pink, and the flavor evolves to tangy and tart. The more swirl, the more the beverage’s color and flavors transform” (Laurence). Starbucks used our coffee obsessions to its advantage, pushing content to its own audiences. Creating a ‘limited time offer’ created a sense of urgency, and providing essentially free content props, made it fun! Users could create content using the hashtag #StarbucksUnicornFrappuccino.
My Brand Choice – High Noon
As of now, High Noon has had a few campaigns run already. In addition to their ongoing “Sun’s Up” slogan/campaign, they also created the “May you…” campaign in summer 2022 that has run on multiple advertising media. This campaign is not only online, but on print and outdoor advertising. For my own social media task, taking on the social platforms of High Noon Hard Seltzers, I will certainly keep these campaigns and others in mind.
Works Cited
Barnhart, Brent. “Social Media Advertising: How to Run a Compelling Campaign.” Sprout Social, 3 June 2022, https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-advertising-strategy/.
Coleman, Basha. “Paid Social Media: Worth the Investment?” HubSpot Blog, HubSpot, 6 Apr. 2021, https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/paid-social-media.
“How Do You Get the World to Care about Burgers from a Pancake House?” DROGA5, Laurence, Christy. “17 Successful Social Media Campaign Examples to Learn From.” Plann, 17 Jan. 2022,