This weekend has once again witnessed a retail boom, with brands capitalizing on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. With so many customers to engage with, which brands stole the show when it came to social media marketing, and which have been some of our favourite campaigns to date?

2015 has officially been named as the most “social” Black Friday so far, with several campaigns breaking social media records. This year and according to analysts at Spredfast, there were over 1.4 million tweets posted mentioning Black Friday in the seven weeks prior to the day, up from 1.2 million in 2014. With online and in-store shopping expected to rise by 3.7% this year, a strong social media presence and campaign has been a crucial part of brand marketing. This year, Kohl’s was once again named the most mentioned brand on social media, occupying approximately 10 percent of all online conversation surrounding Black Friday. Their classic campaigns such as sweepstakes continued to perform well, with customers encouraged to retweet the brand’s product promotions on Twitter in order to win prizes. As a result, the #Kohlssweepstakes campaign generated 112,000 mentions on the site, taking the number one spot.

And Kohl’s also presented one of our favourite social campaigns during Black Friday last year too, with its week-long Twitter Trivia contest. The clever aspect of this campaign was the way in which Kohl’s initially jumped on the hype surrounding the movie, “Frozen”, prior to the shopping season, as the company had noticed a huge amount of popularity generated from associated tweets. The brand partnered with ABC and Disney during the American Music Awards before Thanksgiving in order to live-tweet themed content surrounding the film, establishing brand association. From there, Kohl’s let the social conversation continue before launching its Black Friday campaign featuring more imagery and content related to the film. This was a great way for the brand to build up a highly engaged audience prior to their campaign, resulting in a huge response to the trivia contest, and a 39% share of voice during the retail week.

But some of the most memorable Black Friday social media campaigns have taken advantage of other channels aside from the usual Facebook and Twitter. One of our favourites in previous years was from tech brand Best Buy, who utilized Vine for their Black Friday marketing. The company encouraged fans to create Vines, displaying their time spent queuing on the day. The campaign used the hash tag, #VineInLine, so users could share these to Twitter and their other social media channels.

This year, we also loved the work of outdoor brand, REI, who, in a reverse move, decided to launch an “anti-Black Friday” campaign, shunning the retail frenzy. On the day itself, the company closed all of its stores so that employees could take time off to pursue their outdoor hobbies, and turned to social media to back conversations against consumerist culture. REI used a newly created hash tag, #OptOutside, to support their campaign, and urged followers to use this too, which led to them being crowned one of the most mentioned brands this year.  In addition, the brand’s site was “blacked out” with a takeover screen, with visitors still able to browse and shop, although transactions weren’t processed until the following day. The full #OptOutside campaign also comprised a microsite, www.optoutside.rei.com, and was created in partnership with agencies, Venables Bell & Partners and Edelman and Spark. The specially designed site is particularly eye-catching, featuring an array of landscape photography, the company’s brand values and social media content, as opposed to products or deals. The site also displayed a numeric counter, showing the number of people who had engaged with the #OptOutside hash tag on Black Friday.

Did you notice any particularly great examples of brand marketing this weekend? And which seasonal retail campaigns have been your favourite in past years? We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please tweet to us @PracticeDigital and share your comments on our Facebook page.