If you were faced with overhauling, increasing and maximizing the digital assets of one of the world’s largest companies, where would you begin?

Alibaba’s digital team faced this challenge in 2019, capped by the launch of Alizila, the company’s corporate news site. In addition to that massive undertaking, Alibaba’s team has dramatically—organically—increased the company’s digital footprint in a short amount of time. Its Twitter following has mushroomed from 3,000 to 164,000, and business is bustling on LinkedIn (776,000+ followers), Facebook (305,000+ followers), YouTube (96,000+ subscribers) and Instagram account (86k followers). Content and research partnerships with BCG, Bain, Politico and Quartz further extend the company’s reach online.

Alizila has been a boon for Alibab’s media relations efforts, too. For example, 2019’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival delivered record results, generating $38.4 billion in gross merchandise volume during a 24-hour period. Alizila covered the preparation and events leading up to the festival, provided sales updates throughout the day, and published several stories surrounding the impact of the fest on both international and local merchants. Additionally, Alizila published articles and executive op-eds that detailed Alibaba’s commitment to making the event as much about sustainability as it is about shopping so that media and consumers had context and quotes to reference regarding the company’s initiatives.

Whether it’s reporting on major events such as the company’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival—which generated $38.4 billion in gross merchandise volume last year—or shooting a 20^th anniversary video featuring founder Jack Ma that quickly went viral, Alibaba’s digital team has it covered.

Regardless of channel, the @WeAreCisco digital team’s goals remain the same. Operating with a motto of “Be you, with us,” Cisco deploys employee-generated content to present an authentic view of the company’s culture.

Last year was the year of live video for Cisco. What started with a flurry of successful, employee-driven Snapchat takeovers led to forays into Facebook Live, LinkedIn Live and Instagram Live—which is where the team hit its stride with raw, unfiltered content.

Cisco also teamed up with agency PhCreative to produce a series of videos starring “Cisconians” only—no actors.

Beyond video, the @WeAreCisco team manages the Life at Cisco blog—every post of which is bylined by an employee. The blog had its best year ever in 2019 in terms of visits and pageviews.

In 2019, Cisco also hosted its fourth annual contest designed to create a steady stream of employee-generated content to be used for marketing endeavors. The digital team sought to double the entry goal from 2018 and decided to donate $2 to charity for every post. Cisco’s team exceeded the goal with more 4,000 entries—resulting in a donation of $10,000 to charities championed by its “community hero” employee winners.

Panda Express superfans have no problem saving the breast for last.

The restaurant’s fabled honey sesame chicken breast, one of the brand’s highest performing limited-time offers and most-requested dishes, was the centerpiece of the “Brought to You by You” campaign.    

The honey sesame chicken breast dish returned to stores from Sept. 25, 2019-Dec. 17, 2019. To create buzz for the highly anticipated return, Panda Express teased the comeback with drool-worthy gifs, honey sesame fortunes and personalized thank-yous to fans who requested the dish’s return.

To fuel fan appetites, Panda Restaurant Group teamed with advertising agency Evolution Bureau and PR agency Havas Formula to launch “Put Your Honey Where Your Mouth Is” challenges on Instagram and Facebook Stories, asking fans to prove their delicious devotion with a new challenge each week. At the end of the campaign—which garnered participation from 1,697 followers—Panda dished out 618 free bowls of honey sesame chicken breast.

“Put Your Honey Where Your Mouth Is” challenges included:

• Creating a Honey Sesame Chicken Breast family holiday card
• Adding Honey Sesame Chicken Breast titles to their LinkedIn profile
• Submitting a “happy dance” video
• Performing a love song about Honey Sesame Chicken Breast
• Changing their Facebook name to “Honeysesame Chickenbreast”

Panda even got San Francisco 49ers tight end and self-proclaimed honey sesame chicken superfan, George Kittle, in on the action. Panda partnered with Kittle to promote the challenges on his social media channels and boost excitement about the dish.

This was the brand’s most participatory social media campaign to date, driving an unprecedented rise in conversation and fan involvement. The campaign also helped Panda crush its sales goals for the dish—which ended up selling out early at almost 40% of its stores.

To quote Abraham Lincoln: “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”

Bob Moore, the beloved 90-year-old president and founder of natural foods brand Bob’s Red Mill, embodies the spirit of a life well lived. To honor his health and wellness legacy, Maxwell PR launched a “Portraits of Longevity” campaign on behalf of Bob’s Red Mill. The digital campaign invited fans to nominate an elder in their lives who has defied the odds of aging to make a lasting impact.

Maxwell PR set a goal of driving 10,000 website visits to Bob’s Red Mill and to collect more than 100 personal stories celebrating elders whose lives have inspired those around them to be healthier, happier and live with purpose. Both objectives were far exceeded.

To get the campaign rolling, the team:

• Designed a landing page to house a contest entry form as well as Bob’s personal tips for longevity.
• Drove awareness, and ultimately entries, via a targeted paid social media campaign.
• Partnered with 11 social media influencers to share their stories of exceptional elders, while encouraging followers to participate.

Increased contest participation with a chance to win $1,000 gift card and a $10,000 donation to Meals on Wheels America given in the name of the winning nominee. The campaign also shed light on the issue of hunger among American elders.

The month-long promotion netted a total of 720 entries—more than seven times the original goal. The 11 social media influencers used for the initiative created 40 posts, reaching 6.5 million followers, and the campaign generated more than 32,000 website visits for Bob’s Red Mill.

This became much more than a PR initiative. The submissions received were deeply personal and thoughtful. The submissions were so good, in fact, the team decided to award 20 prizes (instead of the originally planned 10) to those who exemplified the theme of longevity.

Twitter can be a noisy place, but it can also be a forum for genuine human flourishing connection.

Cisco, a global leader in IT, networking and cybersecurity, sought to unleash the engaging power of Twitter at Cisco Live, the company’s annual flagship event. The event plays an essential role in improving awareness of Cisco solutions and promoting ongoing loyalty to the Cisco brand.

With this in mind, Cisco crafted a Twitter-centric strategy to maximize engagement for its 2019 Cisco Live event. The objectives were to:

1. Build awareness and generate buzz.
2. Bridge the virtual/in-person experience gap.
3. Encourage and facilitate on-site conversation.
4. Enrich the event experience.

To achieve those goals, Cisco’s team selected seven popular contributors from the 2018 event as “ambassadors” to compete in assisting the Cisco social media staff in responding to event-related tweets. Participants could also tweet to @CiscoLive and receive a personalized digital photo from Cisco’s CEO and the event’s keynote speaker. The team offered entry into a random prize draw after the 100th retweet, which ultimately received over 200 retweets. Cisco also provided LEGO® mini-figurine pieces for attendees to create their own avatars and post images of their creations enjoying the conference. Attendees assembled all 12,000 LEGO® avatars by the second day of the conference, providing great Twitter posts with their mini-figurines.

Through giveaways, authentic conversations and user-generated content, the Cisco Live team tweeted their way to meaningful connections in 2019. Notable accomplishments include:

• Cisco Live received 75,000 total social media mentions (98% Twitter) during the on-site event.
• Attendees created 1,001 personalized photos via Digigraph technology, resulting in 6,004 tracked views and assisting in increasing overall event clicks by 264% from 2018.
• Twitter promotion of 35 attendee blogs sparked further engagement and mutual link sharing.

Cisco’s team even got the event’s hashtag, #CLUS, nationally trending on Twitter for four hours.

Power companies often operate under the radar, quietly providing and maintaining the electricity that sustains our lives and livelihoods. 

Tri-State Generation and Transmission, a not-for-profit power supply cooperative of 46 members that delivers electricity to more than a million consumers across the West, wanted to learn how it was perceived and how it might better communicate with its target audiences. So, Tri-State’s creative team launched its “Brighter, Stronger, Better Together” marketing campaign.

With goals of generating 50 million impressions and boosting website traffic by 100%–not to mention including distinct, location-specific branding for scores of its co-op members—the campaign began with a thorough, four-phases analysis including:

1. An audit of media mentions occurring over the last three months.
2. A competitive analysis designed to analyze how other utilities are positioned.
3. Research examining its current share of voice.
4. A measurement of social media sentiment scores.

Flush with fresh data-fueled direction, Tri-State went on to create more than 350 print ads, 120 versions of broadcast commercials for television and the web, more than 40 radio spots, and 39 custom, location-specific landing pages for 39 of its co-op members. The 12-week campaign also included editorials, earned media coverage, community outreach events and sponsorships.

In addition to successfully collaborating with more than 90% of its members, Tri-State soared past its goal for impressions in digital, broadcast, radio, print and on social media. Social media engagement rose by 61%, positive sentiment shot up by 25% and negative sentiment dropped by more than 300%. Tri-State also reports that the company has doubled the amount of events it co-brands with co-op members.

Health care websites are often as complex and perplexing as the U.S. health care system itself. 

Children’s Health of Dallas, one of the largest U.S. pediatric health care systems, had a similar issue with an outdated, cluttered and cumbersome website that was not meeting its three million yearly users’ needs.

The Children’s team set out to modernize its website design, expand the filter functionality, streamline and condense content categories—and dramatically improve the site’s search function.

The results have been a soaring success. After testing the new site:

• The majority of users said the experience was “better than expected.”
• Users applauded the site’s mobile-friendly navigation.
• Website visitors were able to use filters to precisely narrow down search results.
• Misspelled queries by users returned the results they were trying to find.
• The digital team reduced queries with zero results by 89.7% (from 39 in the month prior to launch to four in the month after launch).
• Mobile search refinements shrank by 16.23%.

Throughout the relaunch process, the Children’s digital team aspired to make life better for children by enabling users to swiftly find vital information.

Creating a website for Alibaba, the world’s largest online and mobile commerce company, is as daunting as it sounds.

That was task before Alibaba’s team with the launch of Alizila, the company’s corporate news site. The goals of Alizila were three-fold:

1. Inform and drive accurate and full media coverage of the company.
2. Be the authoritative source of what’s happening at the company for the investor community.
3. Serve as the destination for brands, retailers, partners and potential international employees who want to understand Alibaba.

The sprawling, robust brand journalism venture has become a leading source of information about Alibaba as well as the China marketplace through its “China Insights” and “Gateway to China” sections of the website. Thanks to exponential social media growth and content partnerships with BCG, Politico and Quartz, Alizila has seen sessions on the site nearly triple to 3.3 million and pageviews increase 114% to 4.4 million year over year.

The Alizila team is fueled by world-class journalists who report on industry insights, produce original research and shed light on Alibaba’s unique company culture. As traditional media outlets dwindle, Alizila is filling a crucial information gap and becoming a trusted hub for a wide range of global audiences.

Pool owners are locked in an eternal struggle against the elements.

LEWIS, a powerhouse PR agency with 27 offices worldwide, was tasked with introducing pool owners to Fluidra’s latest pressure-side pool cleaner, the Polaris Quattro Sport™. Positioning Quattro as a powerful protagonist eager to defeat pool villains, such as acorns, leaves and algae, the team launched a video with a goal of generating at least 1,335 rebate downloads.

LEWIS’ creative team worked closely with Fluidra to create a 15-second video aimed toward pool owners and potential buyers. The piece featured dramatic narration befitting a superhero flick and closed with a custom URL that provided a rebate offer. Using a clever combination of audience building, persona creation and precision ad targeting on YouTube, Google search, Google display, Facebook and Instagram, 2,619 rebate downloads were attributed to the campaign’s efforts—nearly double the initial goal.

Beyond exceeding the rebate download goal, LEWIS’ campaign also netted more than 62,000 landing page views and saw a 49% lower cost-per-lead compared with other rebate campaigns running concurrently on Facebook and Instagram.

How, exactly, do vaccines work?

It’s a question that merits clear, science-backed explanation in this age of conspiracy theories and misinformation. To help the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases dispel myths and fake news swirling around lifesaving vaccines, PR giant Porter Novelli created a “How Vaccines Work” campaign (pre COVID-19).

To address common vaccine questions and concerns, Porter Novelli developed three, 60-second animated videos offering reliable, scientifically-grounded information in a format ideal for on-the-go parents, as well as complementary 6-second “bumpers” to reinforce the full videos’ messaging and prompt views of the next video in the series.

The videos surpassed the agency’s goal to receive 20,000 engagements across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram by 330%. The video series also surpassed the goal to receive 2 million completed video views through YouTube, Facebook and Instagram by more than 95%, and they’ve remained as a constant presence on CDC social channels and a popular series on YouTube, garnering more than 3.6 million views across all three videos.

In 2019, AT&T identified an opportunity to engage with the esports community, a group that it already was connected to through its internet offerings, and a niche that it prized for its unapologetic passion and drive.

The company partnered with Cloud 9, NBA 2k League and ESL Mobile Open to position itself as a “highly-involved” brand. The team hired three esports experts and used social listening to engage in authentic conversations around ongoing esports events. AT&T also worked with influencers onsite at esports events like IEM Chicago, DreamHack Atlanta and others to drive brand awareness and engagement.

The team was able to capture 650 positive interactions from the niche gaming community with playful conversations online that resulted in messages like “Switches to AT&T now that I know they are Halo fans.” Online interactions were then translated into in-person meetups at AT&T’s booth at esports events.

What should you do with all those holiday leftovers?

That’s a crucial consideration for a company in the bone broth business, such as Oregon-based Pacific Foods. To help promote Pacific Foods’ products and increase brand affinity, Maxwell PR created a “Leftovers Upgrade” campaign to help fans get creative with Pacific’s pantry staples.

The campaign, which launched a week before Thanksgiving in 2019, featured giveaways—including $500 gift cards and prize packs loaded with Pacific Foods goodies. The initiative also shared holiday feast ideas and delectable, “choose-your-own-adventure”-style videos that generated customized recipes based on personal preferences. The interactive videos demonstrated creative ways to repurpose Thanksgiving leftovers with ingredients users might already have on hand. Styling of the videos featured clean, white marble countertops to keep the focus on the food, with most shots being filmed top-down to provide instruction and clear views. To provide seasonal context and subtle branding, Maxwell included nods to Thanksgiving with small pumpkins and pops of green to match Pacific’s signature color.

To extend reach and encourage sweepstakes entries, Maxwell deployed Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest ads featuring images of final recipes created from leftovers and copy featuring a call to action to click through for a chance to find new recipe inspiration and enter to win Pacific products and $500. Additionally, the agency boosted the Facebook, Instagram and Twitter posts announcing the sweepstakes to relevant audiences.

The wildly successful campaign garnered more than 63,000 sweepstakes entries for the gift cards and prize packs, 95,000 video views and 46,000 signups for Pacific Foods’ e-newsletter. That, in addition to giving a delicious second act to innumerable Tupperware containers full of forgotten stuffing, is quite the accomplishment. 

When it comes to live event engagement online, Twitter rules the social media roost. However, it takes no small amount of tactical tweeting to grab attendees’ attention.

Cisco, a global leader in IT, networking and cybersecurity, sought to unleash the engaging power of Twitter at its annual flagship event, Cisco Live in 2019. The event plays an essential role in improving awareness of Cisco solutions and promoting ongoing loyalty to the Cisco brand.

Cisco crafted a Twitter-centric strategy to maximize engagement and the result was a digital masterclass.

Through Lego mini-figure giveaways and user-generated content, the Cisco Live team tweeted its way to successful social media traction and interaction, including these highlights:

• Cisco Live received 75,000 total social media mentions (98% on Twitter) during the on-site event.
• Attendees created 1,001 personalized photos via Digigraph technology, resulting in 6,004 tracked views and assisting in increasing overall event clicks by 264% from 2018.
• Cisco’s team promoted 35 attendees’ blogs on Twitter, which sparked a link-sharing reciprocation frenzy.

Cisco’s team even got the event’s hashtag, #CLUS, nationally trending on Twitter for four hours.

In 2019, AT&T’s social media and community management team, along with its agency partner TruePoint Communications, was tasked with raising the number of positive interactions across all social media channels by 15%. For the team, it was a commitment to authenticity and the key traits of personalization, creativity and tenacity that allowed them to transform the negative to a positive.

The team started by creating content for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to reach a diverse audience in a relatable format. It was also important to respond to users in real time. That required careful social media monitoring and careful escalation of issues that could turn into a crisis.

The team also focused on interactions with other accounts with verification or high follower counts and fielded surveys to evaluate their brand presence online.

On the question of their engagement with users’ social media posts, the team got a 100% satisfaction rating and 98% of users ranked their brand as “likable.” The team also responded to a wide variety of crises with satisfactory results over the course of the year.

After an analysis of current health care staff revealed that many key nurses were set to retire in the next five years, the nation’s largest public health system NYC Health + Hospitals knew it had to act.

The nonprofit set out to boost nurse recruitment by focusing on the exciting possibilities of a career in nursing in New York City, and by highlighting diversity and mission of the organization—as well as raising the morale of current employees.

The campaign created a NURSES4NYC website, produced three short documentary videos, designed a new brochure and flyers for the campaign and launched a $25K paid digital advertising campaign on Google search, Facebook and Instagram.

On social media, efforts resulted in 4.1 million impressions and 22K clicks to the NURSES4NYC website. For the videos, 2.3K watched on Twitter, 4.0K watched on Facebook and 2.4K watched on YouTube for a total of 8.7K views.