Thanks to Fuel Lines for spotting Forbes’ recent article on the world’s best buzz-generating social media campaigns. It’s a fascinating list, which I’ve repeated below, and it’s worth reminding ourselves how much ground we’ve covered as a marketing profession. So many of these successful campaigns started out as a test, a pilot, a trial to see what might happen. And they’ve proved time and again that an imaginative thought coupled with the right timing and sometimes the simplest of executions can deliver devastating results.
My personal favourite? “Blendtec: Will it Blend?” Perfectly on brand, brilliantly simple, very low cost, and completely unforgettable. 
Forbes’ list of the 20 best-ever social media campaigns:
- “The Blair Witch Project”
- Blendtec: Will It Blend?
- Old Spice: “Smell Like a Man, Man.”
- Burger King: “Subservient Chicken”
- Pepsi Refresh
- VW: “Fun Theory”
- OfficeMax: “Elf Yourself”
- Evian: “Roller Babies
- Ikea: “Facebook Showroom”
- Hotmail
- Whopper Sacrifice
- Target: “Bullseye Gives”
- Vitaminwater
- Smirnoff: “Tea Par-tay”
- The Dark Knight: Why So Serious?
- Quicksilver: “Dynamic Surfing”
- Cadbury: Gorilla
- BMW: “1 Series Graffit Contest”
- Bing/Farmville
- CareerBuilder: Monk-e-Mail