Learn from the best Year in Review campaigns.
Do you know what’s better than having a great year?
Having a great year and then telling everyone about it.
Who doesn’t love a good year-end recap. It’s no secret that the Year in Review campaign is one of the most effective ways to capture your audience’s attention and keep your brand top-of-mind throughout the year.
But you don’t have to be a big brand to do it. In fact, plenty of smaller companies have taken advantage of this powerful marketing technique to grow their business—and you can too.
Year in review campaigns can be fun, inspiring, and they can help your customers remember their past year’s interactions with your brand with fondness. But most importantly, they’re a great way to get people to engage with your brand or business.
When people see a good Year in Review campaign, it makes them want to share it with their friends and family on social media or through text messaging—and that’s exactly what you want!
So how do you make one of these campaigns? What can you learn from the best ones? Let’s look at some of the best examples out there and see what we can learn from them!
We’ll delve into what made these campaigns so successful and what you can learn from them as you plan and execute your own marketing efforts. Whether you’re a small business owner, a marketer at a large corporation, or just looking for some inspiration, this blog is for you.
The best year in review campaigns of 2022
1. Spotify’s Wrapped Campaign
Spotify’s Wrapped campaign is a good example of a Year in Review campaign done well because it is personalized to each user and provides a detailed breakdown of their listening habits over the past year. It includes information such as the user’s most-streamed songs and artists, their total listening time, and how their listening habits compare to other users.
The campaign also includes a visually appealing design and is promoted heavily on the platform and through social media, which helps to generate buzz and engagement. Additionally, the Wrapped campaign includes interactive features such as quizzes and playlists, which further encourage user engagement.
Overall, the Wrapped campaign is a well-executed and successful example of a Year in Review campaign that effectively summarizes and celebrates a user’s listening habits on the platform.
2. Fitbit’s Year in Review
Fitbit’s Year in Review campaign is another good example of a Year in Review campaign done well because it is personalized to each user and provides a detailed breakdown of their sleep, health, and activity habits over the past year. It includes information such as the user’s total sleep time, steps taken, and workouts completed, as well as how their habits compare to other users.
Fitbit’s Year in Review campaign is a hit among its users for one simple reason: it focuses on their achievements. The campaign also includes interactive features such as quizzes and challenges, further encouraging user engagement. In addition, Fitbit’s Year in Review campaign is promoted heavily on the platform and through social media, which helps to generate buzz and engagement.
3. Google’s Year in Search
Google’s Year in Search campaign is certainly a standout example of a Year in Review campaign. The company’s annual videos, which highlight the top search trends and moments of the past year, are known for their emotional and thought-provoking storytelling.
By connecting its core business (search) with the events and trends that defined the year, Google is able to create a compelling and relatable narrative that resonates with its users. The videos also tend to be visually appealing, with high-quality production values and creative use of imagery and music. Overall, Google’s Year in Search campaign is a great example of effectively reviewing the past year and creating a memorable and impactful marketing campaign.
4. Reddit’s end of year recaps
In 2022, Reddit launched a personalized year-in-review campaign that provided users with a summary of their activity on the platform over the past year. This included fun statistics such as the amount of time a user spent scrolling through Reddit content, personalized “trading cards” for each user that highlighted their favorite subreddits and a “secret ability.”
The trading cards were a particularly cute and memorable aspect of the campaign and helped to make the year-in-review experience more personal and engaging for users. Overall, Reddit’s year-in-review campaign was a creative and effective way to engage users and reflect on the past year.
5. YouTube Recaps
As part of its year in review campaign, YouTube Music has introduced a new feature called Recap for its users, which allows them to see their top artists, songs, music videos, playlists and more. In 2022, YouTube Music is enhancing the Recap feature by adding a “Top Trends” stat that will show users which artists they discovered before others.
There is also a new “Identity” feature that creates a personalized “music personality” based on a user’s listening habits. The Recap feature also includes shareable cards highlighting a user’s top songs from each season, which can be personalized with personal images from Google Photos.
- Look-back and Top 9 by Meta
For their year in review campaigns, Instagram and Facebook introduced automated “look-back” videos, called Playbacks, which compiled users’ content from the past year into a video format. Prior to this, Instagram had offered a popular feature called the “Top Nine” which allowed users to create collages of their nine most liked photos from the year. These collages, which were shared by a wide range of users, including celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Ariana Grande, were highly popular and contributed to the popularity of the feature.
These types of year-in-review features are well-liked by users and provide an engaging and nostalgic way to reflect on the past year.
Tips to make your Year in review campaign a success
If you’re planning a year-in-review campaign, here are a few tips to make it a success:
1. Set clear goals
When planning the year in review campaign, it’s important to be clear on your goals. Do you want to increase brand awareness? Do you want to drive more traffic to a specific landing page? Do you want to increase sales by a certain percentage?
Knowing exactly what you want to accomplish will help guide your strategy and ensure every decision is made with the end goal in mind. Whatever your goal is, make sure it’s specific and measurable so that you can work toward achieving it.
2. Highlight key achievements
A year-in-review campaign is a chance to showcase your top achievements of the past year, but it’s important to choose your highlights wisely. This could be anything from major product launches and partnerships to community engagement and social impact initiatives.
Choose a few key achievements you want to showcase and provide details and context for each one. Consider what your audience will find most interesting or valuable, and be sure to provide details and context for each highlight.
3. Use engaging visuals
A year-in-review campaign is a great opportunity to use visual media, such as photos, videos, or infographics, to tell your story. Using high-quality photos and videos can help set your campaign apart from others out there—and give it a more personalized feel.
You can also use animations or GIFs if they fit with your brand’s aesthetic and appeal to your target audience.
4. Provide value to your audience
While a year-in-review campaign is a chance for you to share your achievements, it’s also important to consider what your audience will find valuable. This could be information about new products or services, behind-the-scenes glimpses of your company, or tips and resources related to your industry.
For example, if you run an online store that sells women’s clothing, you may want to use this opportunity to highlight some of the most popular items from last year. This could be an opportunity to showcase some of the designs that were most popular with customers or even offer some insight into why these designs were so well received by consumers.
5. Incorporate social media
Year in review campaigns are often shared on social media, so be sure to include social media elements in your campaign. This could be social media posts, hashtags, or interactive elements like polls or quizzes.
6. Use social listening
Social listening is the process of monitoring and analyzing social media conversations to understand what people are saying about your brand, industry, or competitors. By using social listening as part of your year in review campaign, you can gain valuable insights that can help to make your campaign more successful.
Here are a few ways you can use social listening to enhance your year in review campaign:
- Identify key themes and trends: Social listening can help you identify key themes and trends within your industry or your target audience. This information can be useful in selecting the content for your year in review campaign, as you can focus on topics that are most relevant and of interest to your audience.
- Determine what resonates with your audience: Social listening can also help you to understand what types of content and messaging resonate with your audience. By analyzing social media conversations, you can get a sense of what topics are being discussed and which ones are receiving the most engagement. This information can be used to guide the content and messaging of your year in review campaign.
- Engage with your audience: Social listening allows you to monitor and respond to social media conversations in real time. This can be a valuable tool for engaging with your audience during your year in review campaign. By responding to comments and questions, you can build stronger relationships with your audience and show that you value their feedback and input.
- Monitor and track the success of your campaign: Social listening can also be used to track the success of your year in review campaigns. By monitoring social media conversations and engagement, you can get a sense of how your campaign is being received and what is working well. This information can be used to adjust and optimize your campaign for future years.
7. Measure campaign success
To determine the effectiveness of your year in review campaign, it’s important to set clear goals and track your progress. This could include metrics like website traffic, social media engagement, or email list sign-ups.
Wrapping up
We hope this guide has helped you get started on your own Year in review campaign or has at least given you some good ideas for how to make your next one even better!
The best Year in review campaigns are ones that have a clear goal, and have a strategy for reaching that goal. They understand the medium they’re using, and how to make it work for them. And they use their data to inform everything they do—from the content they create to where they spend their marketing dollars.
Leverage Radarr’s social listening tool to create the perfect Year in Review Campaign
Radarr is the perfect partner for brands looking to create meaningful year in review campaigns. With Radarr’s social listening tool, brands can create a campaign that reaches out to their audience and gets them talking.
Radarr’s social listening tool will help brands find the most important topics, events, and moments that happened during the past year. Brands can use this information to craft a campaign that aligns with what their audience wants to see in their year-end review.
Radarr’s year in review tool is a game-changer for brands looking to do meaningful, data-driven campaigns. It helps you identify the most important moments of your content year and then uses those moments to create customized messages that can be shared across social media channels.
