Instagram & Brands: A Best Practice Showcase close

The platform introduced video posts, sponsored photos and has become the fastest-growing of the top social networks. Moreover, Instagram registers 55 million average photo uploads per day, 1.2 billion daily likes and 150 million monthly active users. Reason enough for brands and businesses to take a closer look at this platform, right?

If you’re not convinced yet, you should probably know that many brands have already jumped on the Instagram bandwagon. 71% of the biggest brands are already using the platform and counting. Brand engagement has increased by a remarkable 350% year over year and today 55% more brands are using Instagram than one year ago. Now, do I have your attention?

Brands & Instagram

The top four industries on Instagram are automotive, luxury, apparel and media, with 9 of the top 10 brands belonging to one of these sectors. Audi, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Tiffany & Co., Ralph Lauren, Luis Vuitton, Nike, Adidas, MTV and Starbucks are the most engaging brands. They [receive 83% of all likes and comments][2], while accounting for (only) 33% of all posts. The average interaction big brands get per post is about 5600 likes or comments.

Instagram Best Practice

Some brands have intensively devoted themselves to Instagram and its audience. They do more than posting photos. They create truly innovative campaigns and aim to offer their followers unique experiences that they’ll love. Have a look at the following brand campaigns and see for yourself.

1. Mercedes Benz

As part of their marketing campaign for the introduction of the new CLA class, Mercedes Benz managed to impress with a huge user-generated content installation. They asked their followers to post photos of what they think represents the word #Untamed. The result was a unique digital photo installation, beyond the limitations of a browser, in a loft in Paris.

2. Burberry

Burberry posted a photo of an invitation addressed to their Instagram followers and invited them to be a part of their Menswear fashion show. The event was then covered live via an Instagram feed on the company’s website.

3. Ford

Ford’s “Fiestagram” campaign was one of the first Instagram campaigns to go viral. It was a weekly contest, where followers were encouraged to post photos tagged with #Fiestagram and that weeks hashtag (#music, #hidden, …). The best photos won prizes and got selected to appear in galleries and on digital billboards all over Europe. The combination of the Instagram contest with a separate facebook app made this campaign truly innovative and a huge success.

4. Nike

Another unique use of Instagram is [Nike’s NikeiD campaign][3]. The idea of designing a shoe yourself is not new anymore, but the way Nike offers that service via a social network is. Followers upload their favourite photo, set it as a background for a Nike model which is then coloured to fit the image.

5. Ben & Jerry’s

Ben & Jerry’s asked their followers to submit photos capturing their euphoric moments and tag them with #captureeuphoria, the name of the campaign. The most popular pictures were recognised by Ben & Jerry’s and got featured in local advertising.

These are just a few of the impressive uses of Instagram. Brands are innovating more and more and are driving traffic from Instagram to their websites, to their Facebook page and vice versa. This way great integrated campaigns are being created.

I guess, after this best practice showcase the significance of Instagram is obvious. It was recently named the fastest-growing app of the year. However, this applies to smartphone apps only. As unbelievable as this may sound: they do not offer an iPad app. We thought that things can’t remain this way and developed an iPad app for Instagram called Flow. It will launch next week and we’d love for you to give it a try!