Do you want to measure your social media success like a pro?

Just imagine a marketing campaign that was so clever that your customers and your non-customers would spend their own time and money making things to help promote your product.

Such a campaign exists.  It's Innocent's Big Knit and I think it is the smartest marketing campaign ever.

Here's how it works:

Innocent is a soft-drinks company that were the first to take bottled smoothies to a mass-market in the UK (certainly, the first company whose name is associated with bottled smoothies). They were independent, they are now part-owned by Coca-Cola.

They also were one of the first to introduce the touchy-feely tone of voice on their products: eg "hi we're innocent and we don't like putting bad things in our botttles". Everyone seems to be trying to do it now (Five tone of voice lessons from Innocent); but with Innocent it totally fits their brand values.

So how do you sell more smoothies in winter (when it's cold so not obviously smoothie weather)?  You put cute little bobble-hats on your bottles.  Not just mass-produced hats but each individually knitted to create hundreds of different styles.

How do you manage that?  You create an army of knitters who will happily buy their own wool, spend time knitting hats and then pay for the postage to send them into you.  How do you create that army?  You do a charity tie-in, so you give a donation to charity for each bobble-hat sold.  The charity in question is Age UK, that supports people in later life, and one of their big campaigns is around keeping older people warm over winter.  It ties in perfectly.

And the bottles look amazing on the shelves.  Next to rows and rows of standard plastic bottled drinks, who isn't going to pick the one with a cute, individually made, knitted bobble-hat on?  Yes, it's a tad-more expensive, but that money goes to charity.

And all Innocent has to do is receive the knitted hats and put them on bottles (and give some money to charity).

I think it is a perfect campaign: it created so much positive buzz around Innocent; didn't cost them a lot and engaged their customers (and non-customers) in a really practical way.

Innocent has grown from a three-man operation to a multi-million pound business in a short space of time, so they must be doing something right.