The objective was to raise awareness for Jack Link's in a creative way through organic engagement on Twitter. We felt that Twitter's strength, as a platform, lies in its ability to take the pulse of what's relevant in any given sphere, at any given moment. This versatility was crucial to keeping Jack Link's content as fresh as possible, and it's why the platform was chosen when Epic Signal was tasked with increasing consumer and fan engagement. Information and shared experiences can be digested, reacted-to, and then added-to with nearly no delay; this was required for a reactive campaign, and was the driving idea behind Epic Signal's creative process.
Due to Twitter's fast-moving and topical nature, the crux of the campaign was to react to real-time trends. By monitoring trending topics, we were able to identify and quickly produce simple creative for the campaign that would engage a larger audience. We ended up focusing primarily on "celebrity beefs,"a platform-specific phenomenon that typically plays out publicly and can be identified very quickly using community monitoring. Dozens of big Twitter "beefs" occur every year -- for example, Taylor Swift's fight with Nicki Minaj, or Drake's with Meek Mill. We wanted a unique way for Jack Link's to join trending conversations and entertain people in a culturally relevant way; the Twitter beefs were an obvious fit.
In anticipation of these viral online squabbles, we came up with the idea of creating bags of "Twitter Beef Jerky" to playfully tweet out in customized response each time a "beef" erupted.
Our standout moment was when musician, Azealia Banks, began a beef with Zayn Malik of One Direction. Her comments resulted in her suspension from Twitter and prompted our "Twitter Beef Jerky" creation for the #AzealiaBanksGotSuspendedParty.
Jack Link's #AzealiaBanksGotSuspendedParty Twitter Beef generated more than six thousand likes and five thousand shares, earning more engagements than Oreo's extremely successful "Dunk in The Dark" real-time tweet. The Jack Link's tweet was also re-posted across several verified social media accounts (including Worldstar Hip Hop's Twitter, which boasts 1.6MM+ followers, and The Shade Room's Instagram with 6.4MM+ followers), generating over 26,000 additional engagements in total. What began as an off-the-cuff idea meant to make fans laugh turned into a real-time success that, ultimately, produced a lot of positive attention and solidified the Jack Link's brand as topically relevant, light-hearted and relatable. The surge in activity helped Epic Signal to effectively accomplish Jack Link's goal of significantly lifting engagement across its social channels.
