Twitter #CreativeFavorites: @GeneralElectric and @VaynerMedia use Vine to inspire the next generation of scientists

Thursday, 4 September 2014

We regularly feature innovative campaigns and the creative agency teams behind them here on the Twitter Advertising blog. We encourage you to help us identify the best candidates and submit Twitter campaigns that deserve to be honored.

The summary (in 140 characters or less)

@GeneralElectric inspires a new generation of scientists by hosting the world’s first #6SecondScience Fair with @VaynerMedia.

The brand

@GeneralElectric is one of the largest and most recognized brands in the world. While some might think of them first as appliance and light bulb manufacturers, GE boasts a global team of innovators focused on pushing the boundaries of industrial technology.

When it comes to telling GE’s story, the brand makes technology and innovation accessible to all. In partnership with @GeneralElectric, @VaynerMedia launched a unique and whimsical campaign born from a single, successful Vine experiment that inspired thousands to celebrate all things science.

The agency

@VaynerMedia is a social-first digital agency that focuses on storytelling across social media platforms. The partnership between @GeneralElectric and @VaynerMedia rests on a shared ideal: testing and learning quickly can lead to great and early successes.

The strategy

@VaynerMedia crafted a Twitter and Vine strategy based on a simple, yet powerful idea: create widespread enthusiasm for science through something easily created at home. The idea for the #6SecondScience Fair came to life when @GeneralElectric posted a science project on Vine using the hashtag #6SecondScience. Much to the surprise of both brands, users began to create their own experiments. @VaynerMedia quickly saw an opportunity to scale the conversation to engage a wide audience of science enthusiasts on the platform.

Last fall, coinciding with students returning to school, @GeneralElectric introduced the
#6SecondScience Fair: a week-long celebration of science on Vine with supporting content across Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Pinterest and Facebook. Given the remarkable ability for Vine influencers to drive engagement and reach within the platform, @VaynerMedia’s sister agency @GrapeStory tapped a group of talented Vine producers to add their own twist to the experiments and invite users to share their own.

“Vine turned out to be the perfect canvas for the campaign because it forced users to be extremely creative in a focused and quick way. We were stunned by the brilliant submissions.”

Kelly McCarthyManaging Director of @VaynerMedia

The creative

The first #6SecondScience Vine video that inspired the campaign used common household materials — milk, dish soap and food coloring — to create a simple, yet riveting experiment. Since it was first published, it has remained among the best-performing pieces of content across the entire Vine platform, with more than 835,000 loop counts.

“Due to the successful performance of the video and natural behavior we observed on Vine, we knew the creative ideas would scale and encourage a large audience to share their own #6SecondScience experiments with us,” McCarthy said.

The official campaign started with @GeneralElectric Tweeting followers and asking them to share their own science projects using the hashtag #6SecondScience.”

@VaynerMedia engaged several Vine influencers to create eye-catching Vine videos, tapping into their large follower base to drive reach and scale.

The campaign struck such a powerful chord that fans began sharing their own #6SecondScience experiments almost immediately. Here’s an example:

@GeneralElectric realized they had created a movement when they received hundreds of
submissions from users around the world in just a few days and witnessed the amount of effort fans put into creating these science experiments which they shared with the brand.

The results

#6SecondScience inspired tremendous engagement and creativity, including 600+ user-generated Vine videos. @GeneralElectric added 40,000 new Vine followers, garnered 5,000+ hashtag mentions and 254,000 engagements across their social platforms. But for @GeneralElectric, it wasn’t just about the numbers. It was about engaging a new audience who shared a passion for science.

As @VaynerMedia account director, Brandon Resnick recalls, “We were expecting to get simple experiments back, and the intricacy of people’s work far exceeded our expectations. The hashtag made the prompt to users extremely clear but also open to interpretation. The campaign represented the perfect intersection of brand, audience and platform.”

With this activation and others like it, @GeneralElectric is also a proponent of paid targeting to amplify content to users who are more likely to take action. “Through experimentation, we saw we could get more high-value dialogue around subjects important to GE using Promoted Tweets,” said Resnick. “This allowed GE to join the right conversations, from invention and material science to 3D printing, so we can tell GE’s story in that moment and beyond.”

Is your agency breaking new creative ground on Twitter? Submit your campaigns to be featured as one of our #CreativeFavorites on the Twitter Advertising blog.