THE 14TH ANNUAL SHORTY AWARDS

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media and digital. View this season's finalists!
From the 7th Annual Shorty Awards

Sway Group Influences with Massive Sway

Entered in Small Agency

Objectives

Sway Group is a content marketing agency that represents some of the most well-known and rising star publishers across multiple social media platforms generating customized content campaigns and dynamic events. Our Massive Sway network has grown to more than 80,000 influencers from nearly all content verticals – parenting, DIY, food, technology, beauty, fashion, design and more. We connect corporate and agency clients with the right influencers to create compelling content marketing campaigns for tailored, high-impact results.

Sway Group is on the cutting edge of its industry. First to enroll the most expansive network of mom influencers, Sway Group has moved beyond this core network of its origin to engage with food, fashion, dad and millennial publishers as well as developing video and digital advertising offerings.

Strategy and Execution

Sway Group, a female-owned and run content marketing agency, focuses on innovation, superior client service and empowerment of social media influencers. For three years, Sway Group has been revolutionizing the content marketing space with high-quality programs that drive brand recognition, increase clicks (and sales) and elevate their publishers. This innovation has made Sway Group a leader among networks marketing to both agencies and direct to brands.

In January 2014, Sway Group acquired The SITS Girls community (a long-standing acronym that represents The Secret To Success Is Support) forming the Massive Sway network of 80,000 bloggers. This community began as and remains an expert resource for both those new to blogging and veteran bloggers interested in learning everything they can about social media and monetizing their posts. With the expansion of the Massive Sway community, Sway Group has grown into an unparalleled source of opportunities for brands looking to work with online publishers, including targeting capabilities and the ability to drill down by region, demographic, content vertical and social network.

The company also recently received recognition as one of the top 100 women-owned businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area by the San Francisco Business Times and a PR News' Digital PR Award for Best Social Networking Campaign. Recent case studies are listed below.

Ariat

With fashion trends pointing towards Western styling, cowboy boots dominated the fall runways; and Ariat saw an opportunity for sales growth. In order to position Ariat as a high-fashion brand and generate awareness of Ariat's fall boot portfolio among fashion-forward consumers, Sway Group hand-selected national fashion influencers for the campaign to garner exposure and third-party validation, appealing to a style-conscious consumer.

Published blogs from 40 influencers comprised 2,322,512 total monthly page views and 907,111 total unique monthly visitors. The blog tour secured 59,385 total blog post impressions, among key fashion influencers, each sharing stylized photos showing the Ariat boots as an integral element of their outfit. The influencer campaign resulted in high praise from established fashion bloggers across multiple social media platforms, showing the evolution of these fashionistas into Ariat brand ambassadors.

CVS

For the CVS MTV Video Music Awards #LooksThatRock campaign, the client wanted to make a splash with young consumers (women ages 18-24) and help them realize that the beauty looks celebrities flaunt on the red carpet are easily accessible using P&G Beauty products available at CVS stores everywhere. Sway Group hosted a hugely successful 60-minute Twitter conversation with Massive Sway influencers on behalf of P&G Beauty and CVS in conjunction with the MTV VMA's. One hour before the VMA's aired, the Twitter influencers discussed the different looks that rocked the red carpet, alongside P&G Beauty products at CVS. Given the young target demographic and incredibly visual nature of this program, Sway Group hosted an Instagram party in tandem to the Twitter conversation.

Capturing the audience at a time when they were already tuned into their second screens, resulted in outstanding engagement. The conversation generated 17.61 million impressions in the hour prior to the VMA's, 3,721 tweets, 7,231 comments and 115,000 likes on Instagram.

Capital One

In order to drive awareness and generate buzz around the #my360independence sweepstakes, Sway Group selected influencers who encouraged their networks to declare financial freedom during a 4th of July-themed campaign. Through use of the dedicated hashtag, followers uploaded images of what financial independence means to them on their social platforms for chances to win $1,776 from Capital One.

The sponsored post campaign, in conjunction with a Twitter party, garnered 46,552,936 impressions. #Financialindependence trended nationally on Twitter during the party and secured 33.2M impressions.

Time and duration of Twitter party, topic, hashtag and giveaway were all carefully analyzed prior to execution to maximize follower engagement. Financial independence proved to be a popular and engaging topic for followers. More detailed findings from this analysis of Sway Group's recent Twitter parties can be found here: http://swaygroupllc.com/%3Fs=Twitter+party.

Success Rice

The client was challenged with increasing awareness and trial of newly introduced flavor varieties. In order to build brand awareness and promote the client's Pinterest sweepstakes, Sway Group recruited 80 Massive Sway influencers who each posted one blog post on behalf of the client and amplified via their social media channels.

In credit to the quality of the recipes developed and accompanying photography, two of the recipes developed for this campaign went viral. The campaign impression goal of 3M was exceeded by eight times, achieving a total of 23,740,575 impressions.

Media

Entrant Company / Organization Name

Sway Group

Links

Entry Credits