Creative Strategies in Social Media Marketing: An Exploratory Study of Branded Social Content and Consumer Engagement

Creative Strategies in Social Media
Marketing: An Exploratory Study of
Branded Social Content and Consumer
Engagement
Christy Ashley and Tracy Tuten
East Carolina University
ABSTRACT
This study employed a content analysis of the creative strategies present in the social media content
shared by a sample of top brands. The results reveal which social media channels are being used,
which creative strategies/appeals are being used, and how these channels and strategies relate to
consumer engagement in branded social media. Past research has suggested that brands should
focus on maintaining a social presence across social channels with content that is fresh and frequent
and includes incentives for consumer participation (Ling et al., 2004). This study confirmed the
importance of frequent updates and incentives for participation. In addition, several creative
strategies were associated with customer engagement, specifically experiential, image, and
exclusivity messages. Despite the value of these creative approaches, most branded social content
can be categorized as functional. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Social media, which include online channels for sharing
and participating in a variety of activities, represent
an increasingly important way for brands to commu-
nicate with attractive audience segments (Murdough,
2009). Marketers are expected to increase social me-
dia advertising spending to $5 billion in 2014, up from
$4.1 billion in 2013, according to eMarketer (2013). In
a relatively short period of time, marketers have em-
braced social media marketing for a variety of market-
ing objectives including branding, research, customer
relationship management, service, and sales promo-
tions. Of these, most marketers value social media most
for branding (eMarketer, 2013). According to the 2013
Social Media Industry Report (Stelzner, 2013), 86% of
marketers believe social media channels are important
components of their marketing initiatives.
Branded social campaigns provide additional touch-
points to encourage ongoing interaction between the
consumer and the brand story throughout the day,
which can deepen consumer–brand relationships, help
marketers uncover common themes in consumer feed-
back, and persuade consumers to engage with online
content (Murdough, 2009). Thoughts, feelings, percep-
tions, images, and experiences from these touchpoints
form a set of associations with the brand in consumer
memory (Keller, 2009). Marketers have several options
within the social media landscape for branding includ-
ing placing paid display advertising, participating in
social networks as a brand persona, developing branded
engagement opportunities for customer participation
within social networks, and publishing branded content
(known as content marketing or social publishing) in
social channels (Tuten & Solomon, 2013). Brands may
utilize social media marketing as an integrated com-
ponent in a marketing communications campaign, as
an ongoing corporate communications channel, and/or
as a series of microcampaigns specifically designed for
digital exposure.
For instance, the highly acclaimed Proctor and Gam-
ble “Thank You Mom” campaign is an example of an in-
tegrated approach (Berkowitz, 2012). Consumers were
asked to contribute stories (i.e., user-generated content)
on the role of mothers in nurturing child athletes. These
stories were sought out and then shared in social chan-
nels, but ultimately also became the basis for a series
of commercials that aired in broadcast as well as online
(Berkowitz, 2012). Dell has been widely acclaimed as
a leader in the use of social media for ongoing corpo-
rate communications and customer relationship man-
agement (Quintos, 2013). Its social media presence is
characterized by continuity and a focus on business-
to-consumer dialogue. The timing and dialogue are im-
portant because consumers utilize social media to build
social capital and contribute to their psychological well-
being, since social media provides a communication
route for meeting a social need. Lastly, companies such
Psychology and Marketing, Vol. 32(1): 15–27 (January 2015)
View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/mar
© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/mar.20761
15

as Guinness have had success with microcampaigns
with short-term marketing objectives. An example is
the Guinness Shamrock app launched in Facebook to
drive attendance at St. Patrick Day Festivals sponsored
by Guinness.
Though social media are now a mainstay in the
portfolio of communication channels marketers utilize,
little is known about how to approach the creative
message aspects of branded social content in a way
that maximizes psychological engagement. Psychologi-
cal engagement is dependent on consumer needs, mo-
tives, and goals. Customers define the rules of brand en-
gagement and can insulate themselves (Keller, 2009).
Psychological engagement is important because con-
sumers are not passive recipients of information; they
are participants (Schmitt, 2012).
To date, most guidance has been prescriptive with a
focus on industry case studies (e.g., Furlow, 2011). Aca-
demic literature, discussed later in this paper, has fo-
cused heavily on the content prevalent in branded social
content (e.g., Cho & Huh, 2010; Parsons, 2013) and on
the motives and characteristics of consumer participa-
tion in social channels (Hutton & Fosdick, 2011; Kunz
& Hackworth, 2011; Wattanasupachoke, 2011). Brand
managers are left with advice on presence, frequency,
dialogue, and freshness: which channels to be present
in, how often to post, the importance of dialogue, and
the need for fresh content.
Industry publications tout the need for branded so-
cial content to be interactive and experiential (Stelzner,
2013), but Hutton and Fosdick (2011) found that the top
three social activities online are passive in nature, sim-
ply involving content consumption. Perhaps the hesita-
tion to design interactive social content is due to con-
cerns that interactivity could be too taxing, increasing
the cognitive burden of processing a brand’s message in
an environment where the consumer is trying to protect
cognitive resources. From a figure-ground perspective,
the interaction or conversation tends to be in the fore-
ground, while the brand content that prompts conver-
sation remains in the background (Pask, 1976), which
may result in different processing of brand messages in
a social media environment.
In addition to the interactive aspect, social me-
dia has an interpersonal aspect, so normative and in-
formational influences may work for, or against, the
brand, depending on consumer engagement (Mangold
& Faulds, 2009). Consumers strategically choose the
brands they will discuss in online communications to
construct positive self-images (Schau & Gilly, 2003).
Brand marketers care about these brand choices be-
cause identity theory suggests that a brand commit-
ment connects an individual to stable set of self-
meanings, which produces consistent lines of activities,
such as purchase behavior (Burke & Reitzes, 1991).
Self-expansion theory suggests consumers communi-
cate with and about brands due to overlapping iden-
tities and parasocial relationships with the brands.
Brands can suffer if consumers feel the relationship
is one-sided or the brand does something that is not
consistent with the consumer’s identity (Huang &
Mitchell, 2014). Information about relationship brands
is processed at a higher level of abstraction and re-
lationship brands that violate norms are prone to
greater punishment from consumers (Schmitt, 2012).
How should brands design social media messages to
consider the effects of consumer identity and social cog-
nition on consumer responses?
Unfortunately, although marketers receive advice
regarding the execution of message delivery in social
media, they receive little guidance on how different
message strategies will affect processing, engagement,
and, ultimately, important brand outcomes such as
brand equity and loyalty. Can the creative message
strategies utilized in advertising translate to branded
social content? Existing literature suggests activity on
social networks must be user-centered vs. message cen-
tered, so how can a brand effectively get its message
across to the consumer while gratifying the consumer’s
needs (Chi, 2011)? Marketers will benefit from under-
standing whether the creative appeals common in tra-
ditional advertising campaigns apply to branding in so-
cial media and, if so, what message strategies are most
effective in achieving consumer engagement.
To begin to address this gap in the literature, an
exploratory study of the use of creative strategies in
brand-sponsored social media efforts was conducted.
Using a sample of global brands ranked in brand eq-
uity and brands recognized for excellence in social me-
dia engagement, branded social content was analyzed
in order to answer the following questions:
 Which social media channels are being used by top
brands that have been recognized for their social
media efforts?
 Which types of message appeals are they using in
their social media efforts?
 How do the tools, strategies, and appeals each
company is using relate to customer engagement
with social media?
The manuscript aims to answer each of these ques-
tions. Doing so, it contributes to the literature on cre-
ative strategies by exploring relationships between the
use of different types of message appeals and consumer
engagement in the context of social media. The rest of
the paper is structured to include a review of relevant
literature, methods, and findings. Finally, the paper
concludes with directions for future research.
Branding with Social Media
Social media may serve as a channel for many market-
ing activities including customer relationship manage-
ment, customer service, buyer research, lead genera-
tion, sales promotion delivery channel, paid advertising
channel, and branding. Regardless of the goal, informa-
tion about the brand must be relevant to the consumer
if you want the consumer to engage with a brand in
self-relevant ways (Schmitt, 2012). As noted, marketers
16 ASHLEY AND TUTEN
Psychology and Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar

categorize social media as a branding channel first and
foremost (eMarketer, 2013). As such, branded social
media activities can be used to increase brand aware-
ness and brand liking, promote customer engagement
and loyalty, inspire consumer word-of-mouth commu-
nication about the brand, and potentially drive traffic
to brand locations on and offline. These branded so-
cial activities rely on social networks and may involve
activities such as ongoing business-to-consumer dia-
logue, socially published branded content (e.g., white
papers), engagement experiences (e.g., Office Max’s Elf
Yourself), and the social presence and participation of
a brand persona (e.g., Travelocity’s Traveling Gnome).
The 2013 Social Media Industry Report noted that
marketers may seek increased opportunities to ex-
pose target audiences to the brand message, increased
traffic to brand Web sites, improved search rankings,
and more loyalty among customers (Stelzner, 2013).
Customer engagement is another common objective; a
study in 2012 found that 78% of marketers report using
social media to enhance customer engagement. Cus-
tomer engagement is behavior-based, extends beyond
purchase, and has a brand or firm focus (Doorn et al.,
2010). Customers may engage along five characteris-
tics including valence (value), form (type of resources
utilized), scope (temporal and geographic), impact, and
customer goals for engagement. (For a thorough review
of the concept of customer engagement, the reader is
encouraged to see Doorn et al., 2010.)
Marketers must define their own customer engage-
ment behaviors (CEBs). In social media, engaged con-
sumers participate and share. Participation may be
passive involving simply consuming the social con-
tent or active including such behaviors as submitting
consumer-generated stories (Hutton & Fosdick, 2011).
Social media outlets provide a context for new kinds
of identity performance, and brands are a part of the
performance (Merchant, 2006). Thus, consumers may
share their own opinions and/or share the branded con-
tent with their network. Consumer response to social
media is typically measured by noting whether the con-
sumer links, bookmarks, blogs, refers others, clicks,
friends, connects, subscribes, submits an inquiry or
idea, and/or buys the brand (Falls, 2010).
Among these consumer behaviors, those that result
in a brand mention shared to the person’s network,
called influence impressions, are among the most de-
sirable (Li & Bernoff, 2008). Influence impressions are
simply word-of-mouth communication, a form of earned
media, shared via social channels. The earned media
in the form of word-of-mouth communication that can
accrue to brands using social media marketing repre-
sent a valuable outcome for brands. The average net-
work size among social users, the ease of spreading
information within and across social networks, and the
credibility associated with information shared peer-to-
peer contribute to the perceived value of social word-of-
mouth communication (Kerr, Mortimer, Dickinson, &
Waller, 2012; Porter & Golan, 2006; Trusov, Bucklin,
& Pauwels, 2009). Branded social content can be used
like advertising to influence consumer brand attitudes
and also provides consumers with content to share with
their own networks. In other words, good content may
trigger the audience to engage.
Developing Effective Creative Social
Content
Brands may be floundering in digital space because the
number and lack of familiarity of each of these options
make it challenging to develop creative that would be
effective in social media environments (Sheehan & Mor-
rison, 2009; Wilson, Guinan, Parise, & Weinberg, 2011).
From their analysis of strategies across 1100 compa-
nies and interviews with 70 executives who managed
social media, Wilson and his colleagues (2011) identi-
fied a trend where some social media efforts become an
experimental free-for-all that rarely result in the de-
sired outcome. Yet, research such as that from Martin
and Todorov (2010) suggested brand marketers think
about developing social media based engagement op-
portunities that keep customers connected to a brand
story throughout the day. Developing branded social
content that accomplishes these objectives can be diffi-
cult. Sheehan and Morrison (2009) identified four cre-
ativity challenges that brand marketers face: (1) the
challenge to effectively use social media, (2) the chal-
lenge to grow marketers with creative vision, (3) the
challenge to involve consumers in telling their own sto-
ries, and (4) the challenge to reinvent the mass media
model. They described engagement as a consumer re-
lationship that recognizes that people are inherently
social and look to create and maintain relations not
only with other people, but also with brands. So, mes-
sage strategies may not only aim to selectively combine
information that was previously considered unrelated,
but also help make innovative connections and rela-
tionship between individuals. When brand marketers
adopt an engagement perspective, the brand’s messag-
ing shifts from a transactional perspective to an inter-
actional perspective where the brand becomes a part
of the consumer’s own identity. Sheehan and Morri-
son (2009) point to the need for creativity in the de-
velopment of brand messages that can be effectively
delivered in social as well as traditional media while
encouraging consumer engagement in order to produce
desired brand outcomes.
In 2009, Altimeter Group, a leading consultancy
in digital media, and Wetpaint, a social content host-
ing company, sought to address this gap with a study
entitled Engagementdb: Ranking the Top 100 Brands
(2009). Using the most valuable brands listed in the
Business Week/Interbrand Best Global Brands report
on global brand equity, the Engagementdb study found
that branded social activity was positively correlated
with financial performance. Its measure of engagement
scored brands on marketer activities, specifically pub-
lishing content, building a network of friends, convers-
ing within networks, and updating brand profiles across
CREATIVE STRATEGIES IN SOCIAL MEDIA 17
Psychology and Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar

multiple social media channels including social net-
works, blogs, branded communities, and social publish-
ing sites (e.g., YouTube).
Brands were categorized into one of four cate-
gories based on the number of social channels used
and engagement scores. The scope of social media
channels was limited to blogs, branded social net-
works/communities, content distribution to other sites
(e.g., ShareThis), discussion forums, external social
network presence (e.g., Facebook), photo sites (e.g., In-
stagram), innovation hubs, ratings and reviews, Twit-
ter, and YouTube. Executive involvement was also
counted as participation in a channel. Engagement was
captured using 40 attributes that counted not only par-
ticipation in these channels but also how the brands
participated.
Companies generally received full credit for engage-
ment if corporate resources were allocated to manag-
ing an ongoing presence and the brand actively par-
ticipated with the channel. Companies received partial
credit if consumers or affiliates developed or managed
the channels. A quantitative score was assigned to each
brand based on the breadth and depth of its investment
in social media channels, and the brands were catego-
rized in four quadrants: mavens (many channels, high
engagement); butterflies (many channels, low engage-
ment); selectives (fewer channels, high engagement);
and wallflowers (fewer channels, low engagement).
Mavens, the most engaged brands, were very active
in more than seven social media channels as part of a
robust strategy that included a dedicated team focused
on social media and makes social media a core part of
the market strategy. Butterflies used seven or more so-
cial media channels but lacked engagement, possibly
due to a lack of resources for ongoing brand participa-
tion across social channels. Selectives used six or fewer
channels but engaged customers deeply in those chan-
nels. Wallflowers used six or fewer channels and were
not active on those channels, earning below-average en-
gagement scores. The final report ranked the top 100
brands based on their engagement scores and showed
evidence that social engagement scores correlated with
financial performance.
The Engagementdb report is valuable in providing
a lens through which to consider the relevance of so-
cial media marketing for brand management, partic-
ularly as it relates to financial measures of success.
However, as developed, the results of the report are
limited. First, the Engagementdb report did not as-
sess the relationship between brand social engagement
and brand equity valuations. Second, because the re-
port viewed engagement from the brand marketer’s
perspective instead of capturing and valuing the con-
sumer activities that result from that engagement, it
is not clear whether socially active brands were suc-
cessfully generating brand benefits including increased
awareness, liking, word-of-mouth communication, and
loyalty. Third, the report did not investigate the nature
of the brand messages. The report suggests that high
levels of brand activity across several social channels
correlated with financial performance but provided no
insight into the creative strategies that may enhance
engagement or other desired brand outcomes.
The Engagementdb report is certainly not the only
report that seeks to provide prescriptive guidance for
brand marketers, but it is representative of the preva-
lence of information focused on brand presence and
activity over content characteristics including creative
strategy. This study seeks to address this gap. There
is some value to communicating with target audiences
in social spaces. How best can brands create engaging
branded social messages?
Creative Strategies for Branded Content
Creative strategies are the executional factors and mes-
sage strategies used to bridge the gap between what the
marketer wants to say and what the consumer needs to
hear. Creative strategy encompasses both message con-
tent and execution and includes the notion of designing
communications in a way that increases the likelihood
it can produce the desired effects in the target audience
(Laskey, Day, & Crask, 1989). Brand marketers have
a high level of interest in creative strategies because of
their importance to advertising results. Creative strate-
gies can enhance the receiver’s motivation, opportunity,
and/or ability to process information from an ad (MacIn-
nis, Moorman, & Jaworski, 1991). Identifying creative
strategies aids practitioners in identifying options and
comparing their effectiveness.
Consequently, researchers have proposed typologies
of message strategies (e.g., Frazer, 1983; Laskey, Day,
& Crask, 1989) and executional factors (Johar & Sirgy,
1991). A plethora of studies have evaluated the psy-
chological and brand outcomes associated with various
creative appeals (Schmitt, 2012). A thorough review of
the vast literature on creative strategies is beyond the
scope of this paper; but a basic description of creative
message strategies in branded communications is in-
troduced as a foundation. Content analyses of commu-
nications have also considered source effects in addition
to message content; at this point, source effects will be
considered in later work (Ang & Low, 2000).
At the simplest level, creative strategies can be
distinguished as primarily emotional/transformational
or primarily functional/informational (Aaker & Norris,
1982). Beyond distinguishing the emphasis on ratio-
nal information vs. emotion, creative strategies can fo-
cus on benefits that are unique to the brand (unique
selling proposition), superior for the brand (preemp-
tive, comparative), or undifferentiated in the product
class (generic). They can focus on matching the brand
to consumer aspirations (image), insights and expe-
riences (resonance, experiential), and feelings (emo-
tional including love, sexual desire, fear, guilt, and
joy/humor). Functional messages are thought to be pro-
cessed rationally while transformational messages ap-
peal to the psychological characteristics of the target
audience (Laskey, Day, & Crask, 1989). Beyond this
18 ASHLEY AND TUTEN
Psychology and Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar