The NBC social team is all about romance – although Cupid might disagree, since the team honored Saint Valentine with some less-than-amorous #RejectedCandyHearts…
Leading up to Valentine's Day 2014, the hashtag #RejectedCandyHearts began to trend worldwide, thus serving as a springboard for hysterical NBC content. The network's comedy darlings Parks and Recreation, 30 Rock and Community created custom images to announce their own #RejectedCandyHearts ideas. Each heart featured an "affectionate" message or quote based on episodic content or longstanding jokes from the series.
Posts from NBC pages were featured in several "Best of #RejectedCandyHearts" roundups. Uproxx declared "The clear gold star goes to Community's social team for sharing these delightful rejects…" and praised @parksandrecnbc, too. And MediaPost featured NBC's #RejectedCandyHearts as a strong example of brands using hashtags correctly, declaring "… NBC joined in on the joke, tweeting out rejected candy heart concepts that played off their own brands while participating in the larger conversation."
Though #RejectedCandyHearts is no longer trending, the NBC social team once again proved they are the internet's biggest fans by giving viewers the best Valentine's day gift of all – a chance to tweet and laugh along with their favorite TV show.
NBC's social team constantly scours the internet for opportunities to engage fans in meaningful and relevant ways. #RejectedCandyHearts showcased an example of how brands can jump into trending conversations without "going corporate" and still maintain their unique brand voice.
NBC's #RecectedCandyHearts posts garnered strong engagement from fans of the shows. On Twitter, three posts from @parksandrecnbc earned over 33,000 engagements and nearly 250,000 impressions, while three @nbc30rock tweets saw an average engagement rate greater than 7%, more than double the average engagement rate tweets received during the previous three months. Social teams dream of organic results of that level, but what's even more impressive is that the NBC team achieved those numbers using content made in the moment.
