Best use of a Hashtag in Social Media - Shorty Awards

13th Annual Shorty Awards Categories

The Shorty Awards honor the talented agencies, brands, and industry leaders behind the best and most innovative work on social media and digital channels, campaigns, websites and applications.

From the 8th Annual Shorty Awards Best use of a Hashtag

This award honors the most creative and effective use of hashtags across any platform for a specific brand, cause, marketing campaign, product, or service.

See previous winners and honorees here.

Winner

Lush actively supports LGBT rights, but this is a challenge for a global business present in countries with anti-gay laws. While many societies have seen huge progress in LGBT rights, the general public is mostly unaware that 2.8 billion people live in countries where being LGBT is a crime. In June 2015, Lush Cosmetics and charity AllOut joined…

Finalists

MasterCard #AcceptanceMatters

The MasterCard brand is built around the central belief that everyone, everywhere, deserves to live a richer life, and to be accepted for who they are. For the past 25 years, MasterCard has been a brand that has been accepted in more places than any other card. The idea of Acceptance has a double meaning, and as a brand, we were uniquely positione…

#FeelsLikeHome Best Hashtag

At Qantas, there's one hashtag that encompasses all that we feel about Australia, and all that we want our customers to feel from the moment they step up to the check-in counter to the time they step off our aircraft. #FeelsLikeHome is about expressing the people, places, and things that give you a feeling of comfort, familiarity, and ease, becaus…

The goal was to use limited advertising budget to raise awareness and create engagement among those who oppose the fur trade during fur week in New York City. We did not just want to create awareness for our cause, rather, we sought to create dialogue and interaction among potential new advocates at the expense of those who participate in the fur …

Freedom to Marry - Love Must Win

Marriage equality is one of the defining civil rights issues of our time, and one that a majority of Americans support. Over the past 12 years, Freedom to Marry, the campaign to fight for marriage equality nationwide, has led the effort to win marriage in more states, grow public support, and create the climate necessary for the Supreme Court to b…

There's been a sharp increase in consumer awareness and critique of brands' social responsibilities. Not only do consumers want great products and services, but they also expect corporations to be involved in their community and causes.This has become a key driver when choosing brands. Given comparable price and quality, 91% of global consumers ar…

Chevrolet #BestDayEver

In the first quarter of 2015, Chevrolet was suffering from declining brand health measures, lagging behind the three main competitors in opinion, consideration, and in opinion-driving imagery such as "Excellent Quality" and "Dependable." In some cases, these were double-digit deficits resulting in poor "Net Momentum" scores, as reported by Millwar…

M&M’S Red Nose Day Campaign

In 2015, M&M'S launched a movement to raise money and awareness for the first U.S. Red Nose Day, a campaign dedicated to raising money for children and young people living in poverty by simply having fun and making people laugh.

Vikings Hashtag Raids

HISTORY's hit show 'Vikings' had built a strong following over its two previous seasons, resonating among male Millennials for its epic depictions of historic battle scenes.HISTORY needed to find a way to reach a broader, more mainstream audience to increase viewership of its Season 3 premiere. The show specifically needed to find a foothold among…

The Breast Cancer Awareness installation inside advertising agency Havas Chicago's lobby was designed to do more than drive awareness—it was designed to get a reaction. The goal was to start a conversation and, more importantly, inspire action.

Always Unstoppable

How do you continue the phenomenal momentum created by #LikeAGirl?In 2014, #LikeAGirl was one of the biggest digital advertising success stories in the world. It went viral in mere days, sparking a movement that changed behaviour and propelled the Always brand to new heights. The follow-up campaign for 2015 had huge expectations, needing to be eve…

STOMP Out Bullying™ is the leading national bullying and cyberbullying prevention organization for kids and teens. Each October, the non profit releases a PSA to generate awareness for BLUE SHIRT DAY® WORLD DAY OF BULLYING PREVENTION to signify the importance of National Bullying Prevention Awareness Month. In our ever-increasing social world and …

Dove and Twitter #SpeakBeautiful

Dove has been committed to making beauty a source of confidence, not anxiety, for the past 10 years–but over the course of that time, the beauty landscape has drastically changed.Ideas and opinions about beauty are now shared through social media feeds every second—we are, effectively, crowdsourcing a new definition of beauty—but women don't fully…

George Takei & #BoycottIndiana

On March 24, 2015, George Takei became aware of a new bill – SB101 – that the governor of Indiana had indicated he would sign. SB101 gave business owners the right to refuse service based on proprietors' religious beliefs. The bill, entitled "Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA)," was hailed by some as necessary to protect religious liberty, p…

Taco Bell #liVeMAs at the VMAs

Taco Bell set forth to reinforce its presence in the QSR sector, proving that food is not just fuel but an experience that matters at the 2015 VMAs. With a goal of weaving in Live Màs messaging through a program grounded in social across multiple touchpoints, MTV was tasked to bring the campaign to life through a unified message that fed fans' liv…

The #62MillionGirls Yearbook

Due to a wide range of cultural and economic barriers, 62 million girls worldwide continue to be denied access to education, simply because they are girls. In March 2015, President and First Lady Michelle Obama launched the Let Girls Learn initiative to address this global crisis. While the initiative was welcomed in international development and …

Nominees

#DrinkGoodDoGood – Bringing Awareness and Produce to Food Deserts

What was once seen as a reflection of narcissism, selfies have now become a symbol of selflessness, thanks to the #DrinkGoodDoGood campaign. Just ask the selfie-queens themselves, Ellen DeGeneres and Kim Kardashian, whose do-good selfie sparked an Instagram trend that took the nation by storm and confronted local food deserts head on. Nearly 24 million Amer…

#DrinkUpAshanti

Drink Up is the Partnership for a Healthier America's consumer campaign to encourage people to drink more water more often. Drink Up Ashanti was designed to showcase the power of water by demonstrating its effect on an artist and song. In a first of its kind effort, we "dehydrated" Ashanti's new single ("Let's Go") by creating four versions of the song and …

#GronkIsMyCoPilot

As the city's largest airline, JetBlue continues to invest in Boston – building its offerings from Boston's Logan International Airport and cultivating meaningful relationships within the local community.To showcase its deep roots in New England and its commitment to the city at its core (as well as its rabid sports fans), JetBlue added another professional…

Our objective was to create a trending hash tag that would promote Hank's brand new single "Are You Ready For The Country" featuring Eric Church. We wanted to take full advantage of our national TV appearance (opening the 2015 CMA Awards to 14 million viewers) by featuring the hash tag #HANKandERIC on Hank Williams Jr.'s guitar. The hash tag would then take…

#HaloFeeditForward

Despite large retail partners and a passionate following, Halo premium pet food was largely unknown. What defines the brand is a commitment to the idea that nutritious food can transform the well-being of pets—which is why this purpose-driven brand donates 1.5 million meals to shelters annually to help shelter pets become healthier and more adoptable.Initia…

#HaveUFoundtruTV

Summary:#HaveUFoundtruTV was a real-time brand awareness effort that anticipated, then capitalized on a specific cultural moment. It was built upon a single Promoted Trend, Promoted Tweets, custom content, and an in-house creative team staffing a social media war room for 48 hours.The opportunity:Every March, sports fans searched for the schedule of games o…

truth is a non-profit brand that combats teen smoking. Smoking is being re-glamorized in pop culture. There's been a rise of smoking in movies and in video games, and emerging tobacco products like hookahs and little cigars are getting a lot of attention. So we needed to get people talking about smoking as an issue. Smoking is an issue. It's still the numbe…

When you and 30,000 of your closest friends arrive at South by Southwest Interactive, the excitement and anticipation are quickly followed by panic and FOMO. With more days, more attendees, more speakers, more sessions, and more caffeine every year—how do you get the most fun and value out of your experience? Where do you even begin?As a boundary-breaking m…

#SaidNoSchoolEver

Hefty is the only trash bag that supports Box Tops For Education, one of America's largest school earning loyalty programs. By simply clipping Box Tops coupons from hundreds of participating products, families can earn cash for their school to purchase books, field trips, playground equipment, etc. So far, America's schools have earned over $600 million fro…

#TBThanksgiving – Celebrating 30+ Years of Turkey Talk-Line Wisdom

For more than 30 years, Butterball has provided turkey expertise to holiday cooks. Nowadays life has become more complicated than ever, so Butterball sought to inspire cooks to look back at nostalgic holiday memories and share what they find special about Thanksgiving. Throwback Thursday (#TBT) dominated social media in 2014 – it was the fourth most popular…

Every year, over a million children die of pneumonia and other respiratorydiseases around the world. That's one child lost every 35 seconds.Pfizer and GSK have a pneumonia vaccine. However, they price the vaccine so that the countries that need it most can't afford it. And the countries can't even negotiate because the pharmaceutical companies are completel…

Bench #LoveMyHood Global Social Media Campaign

Global street wear brand Bench were going through a period of change, reclaiming the creativity, energy and diversity that made them a worldwide name.They were seeking to reposition the brand around technical apparel and wanted to use their core product, the technical hoodie, as the showpiece product to do it with. They had an ambition to create brand buzz …

Best Use of a Hashtag: #Fargoals

Couples have #RelationshipGoals, Taylor Swift has #SquadGoals, but how about the citizens of Fargo? In order to build awareness for the second season of the acclaimed hit series, we wanted to create a hashtag that would remind viewers of the show's darkly humorous tone and encourage creative fan participation. With #Fargoals, we capitalized on a popular soc…

Brooks #thankyourunning ignites a global gratitude movement

The competitive set for running shoes is packed. Brooks Running, the Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, had a formidable challenge. How could the brand, loved by a loyal segment of hard-core runners, outpace deep-pocketed Nike and Asics and create ownership over the one of the biggest and most important days in the sport - National Running Day (NRD) - and the k…

Community for Yahoo

The Assignment: Take a show that in spite of an enthusiastic fan base, has changed networks, platforms, air-time, and even characters, and deliver an audience that is engaged, invested, and tuned-in beyond the pre-roll to keep advertisers, Yahoo Screen, and Sony Pictures TV happy.

High-Five. Give $5. Save Big Cats.

For World Lion Day, National Geographic asked the public to "High Five. Give $5. Save Big Cats" - to create a worldwide virtual high-five chain using social media and the hashtag #5forBigCats to raise awareness across social media about the plight of big cats in the wild and funds for big cat conservation. Our hope was to raise $20,000.

JetBlue's Soar With Reading

Launched in 2011, JetBlue's Soar with Reading (SWR) program is designed to encourage kids' imaginations to take flight through reading. The program's goal is to get books into the hands of kids in need. As an issue that is important to crewmembers, customers and the community, JetBlue's is working to help foster a love of reading from an early age.JetBlue f…

Panini America #WhoDoYouCollect

As the world's largest manufacturer of officially licensed sports trading cards and collectibles, our objective was to create an all-encompassing rallying cry to punctuate our social media posts and our accompanying national television spots. That was inclusive of all athletes and could be aspirational in our creative execution. We selected #WhoDoYouCollect…

Sherwin-Williams Social Media Aggregator Tool

Content created by consumers and influencers is as critical a component of the Sherwin-Williams social media presence as our own branded content. Why? Because we can't tell our story without theirs. As a result, we needed a unique tool—one capable of capturing and aggregating DIYers' inspired choices, finished projects and overall successes that we could, i…

Show How You're #AuditorProud

The auditing profession's greatest asset is its people. High quality human capital is critical to producing the high quality audits on which our capital markets depend. In the summer of 2015, the Center for Audit Quality (CAQ), under the direction of its Governing Board, kicked off a multiyear talent initiative to enhance the attractiveness of the auditing …

Smashburger's Sin City Survival Tips

With the release of the Sin City Burger (American cheese, fried egg, apple wood-smoked bacon, haystack onions and smash sauce) nationwide, Smashburger launched the #SinCitySurvivalTips campaign. The objectives of the campaign were to build awareness for the Sin City Burger, gain appeal amongst the Millennial generation and have 2,000 submissions. Smashburge…

About the Shorty Awards

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media.

Millions of people participate in The Shortys to recognize individuals and organizations producing great content on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, TikTok, Snapchat, and the rest of the social web.

winners will be announced in may. follow us to be notified!