The Winning Secrets to #BestOfTweets, Live from the Arena

2021 was a year filled with uncertainty, but many brands in Southeast Asia rose above the challenge and delivered stellar campaigns that were recognized by Twitter during the #BestOfTweets award ceremony. The event celebrated these brands and their tenacity to continue to push limits during challenging times.

Here’s a quick recap of the winning brands of #BestOfTweets 2021 Philippines Awards.

Leverage Twitter to help drive and convert conversations to consumer action

You may be the brand that plans to use Twitter to encourage people to participate in programs that drive social change, just like Unilever Philippines’ (@UnileverPhils) #Shop2Give campaign that won Best Campaign for Driving Positive Change in Society.

Or you may be a newcomer in the game but aim on making a splash to connect to your audience’s passion points like BYS Cosmetics (@byscosmetics_ph) who won the Best Campaign from a Newcomer Award.

The Southeast Asia Twitter Next team studied winning works across the region and distilled them into 3 tips that will help brands or agencies deliver a knockout campaign.

1. Prepare for the Arena

Understand your battleground. When you are planning for Twitter, it is crucial to understand the medium and how to best use it to your advantage. The #BestOfTweets winners this year showed they have a good understanding of the value of Twitter and how to best use the platform to get the most for their campaigns.

Conversations are Twitter’s currency. The winning brands used conversations to plan for their campaign or to inform marketing decisions. Twitter was used as a litmus test to understand consumers’ preferences and reactions before, during and after campaigns. These conversations also allow the brands to tap into various passion points and gather communities with various interests.

2. Enter the Right Game

Every year, Twitter’s #BestOfTweets awards brands in many categories and each category is unique. The best way to win the fight is knowing which category you are competing in. While the award categories may vary each year, here are some ideas brands can anchor on for their campaigns:

• Leveraging Twitter to Launch something new - Demonstrate how your brand strategically designs a campaign based on Twitter Launch Formula, sequencing a series of Twitter creative formats to perform impact.
• Leveraging Twitter to Connect with cultural moments - The campaign must have a good understanding and tune among cultural moments such as connecting to celebrations like National Arts Month or #FilmIndustryMonth, the audience, and the brand's topic of connection.
• Using Twitter as a purpose-driven marketing tool - A spotlighted brand must leverage the strong belief, authentic voice and use Twitter to take a stand for societal issues and drive impact consistently through the combination of the paid and organic campaign.
• Leveraging video solutions on Twitter at its best - Demonstrate how you embrace the best practice of using a video solution, while also diversifying a mix of video formats to drive an ultimate campaign impact.
• Ideate the campaign that extracts a unique creative value of Twitter - Go deep into human-centric insight through conversation and turn the finding into creative ideation that starts on Twitter and becomes worth talking about.

Practice the Fight and Leave No Tips Behind

After you know the game you anticipate entering, do not forget to embrace the best practice in using Twitter for your campaign. Twitter has the best practice whether you plan for Launch or Connect, including tips to Tweet like a pro for video, image, or even going live.

Here are some of the best practices to consider for your campaigns:

Best Practice for Launch

• Do not launch and forget. Launch and continue by dividing your campaign phase and maximizing results by following a Twitter Launch Formula - Tease, Reveal, Reinforce.
• Feature 3-5 video creatives to drive a bigger launch impact in your launch.
• Aim for a campaign of at least 7-10 weeks to drive higher intent and Favorability.

Best Practice for Connect

• Select the rightful connection moment that resonates with your brand voice, whether an event, occasion, or trend.
• For a moment that you are trying to connect, tell a compelling story with three types of content - hype, participate, and react.
• Drive purchase intent by having multiple formats in your Connect campaign.

Tapping on the experts to refine your campaign

You’re not alone in this journey. Twitter has cross-functional teams to help you become more efficient and effective in delivering your campaign objectives. For one, Twitter Next can help brands and their agency partners to create campaigns that are human-centric and worth talking about. Whether it is planning for launch, connecting with cultural moments, or utilizing influencers, there are experts willing to help you deliver a knockout campaign.

Creating a campaign is not a walk in the park, but we hope these tips will spur ideas and inspiration to help brands create and deliver their own #BestOfTweets campaign this 2022.