Social Media Marketing: A Case Study of Apple's iPhone Campaign

This report analyzes the 'Shot on iPhone' campaign, a social media marketing strategy employed by Apple to showcase the camera capabilities of its iPhones. The report examines the campaign's implementation across various social media platforms including Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, detailing how Apple leveraged each platform to engage users and promote its product. It explores the campaign's objectives, which included demonstrating the high-definition camera quality, and its execution through user-generated content and curated galleries. The report provides an overview of the campaign's success, highlighting the significant user engagement and brand visibility it achieved. Furthermore, it includes an executive summary, background information, observations from social media, and a reflection on the campaign's effectiveness. The study also provides insights into the use of social media in marketing, its impact on corporate branding, and statistical data on social media usage in the UK to contextualize the campaign's reach and influence. This report, available on Desklib, offers valuable insights into effective digital marketing strategies and case studies for students.

Running head: SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGNS
SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGNS
Name of Student
Name of University
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Field notes
Field entry
In the present date, social media is widely used for various purposes such as for leisure
activities, gaining information, connecting with people or for organizing a campaign or other
social activities. As per the researchers, it was found that in the present date Facebook has 2
billion active users globally. The number of active users of Youtube is 1.5 billion as of January
2018. The social media sites such as Instagram, Twitter are also prominently used all over the
globe.
A campaign known as "Shot on iPhone" has been trending for number times on the social
media platforms. Apple launched this social media campaign for the first time in March 2015 to
advertise the features of iPhone cameras worldwide. The campaign was a huge success all over
the world. More than 24 countries and 70 cities participated in the campaign by sharing their
iPhone clicked pictures in their twitter handle, Facebook and Instagram with the hashtag "shot on
iPhone" (Rowles 2017). The purpose of this case study is to analyze the importance of social
media in corporate branding. The main objective of the campaign is to demonstrate the high
definition camera of the iPhones. In "shot on iPhone" campaign, Apple and the media labs

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shortlisted around 77 pictures for displaying in their wall gallery (Sturken 2017).
Figure1: One of the images from the 77 chosen pictures of the “shotoniphone” campaign
Figure 2: Some of the images from the “shotoniphone” campaign

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Apple, with the help of this campaign well demonstrated how its camera is unique from the rest
of the other products in the market. They started their first campaign of “shot on iPhone" before
the launch of iPhone 6.
Other entries
First observation- Twitter
Apple launched it's iPhone 6 in the month of September 2014. Other than having updated
hardware, one of the most distinguished features of this model is its high definition camera. In
order to market this product, Apple initiated the campaign of Shot on iPhone. It is observed that
the within a short span of time twitter was seen flooded with the hash tags "Shotoniphone".
Figure 3: People posting on Twitter with the hashtag "shotoniphone"

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Figure 4: Twitter post for the shot on iPhone campaign for the launch of iPhone 7.
People participated with great enthusiasm in this campaign demonstrating the features of the
Apple's camera. In the very first campaign, Apple was mentioned 6.5 million time in the twitter
and it was found that 95% of the mentions where due to the online campaigns (Chavaglia and
Filipe 2015). Apple selected number of photos for their world gallery clicked by people who are
not a professional photographer. Apple having 1.68 million followers on Twitter has successfully
implemented its world gallery campaign on Twitter. Starting from celebrities to business
professionals, the youth have taken the twitter handle with the storm. It is observed that the
Apple continued this campaign even in the consecutive years to portray there newly developed
models worldwide (Neto and Filipe 2016).

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Figure 5: Number of followers of Apple Inc in twitter
iPhone 6 is incorporated with new sensors that could take images with high clarity and precision
(Treem and Leonardi 2013). The campaign was all about to focus on what the camera can do
rather than focusing on what the device as a whole can do.
Figure 6: Screenshot of the world gallery campaign tweets flooding the twitter.
Second Observation- Instagram
In the year 2017, Apple Inc created an official Instagram account. Instagram being a platform
for the passionate photographers, this will attract a number of individuals to the Apple's world
gallery campaign. Apple took to Instagram for sharing their videos and images related to their
campaign. Currently, this Instagram handle is known to have 4.3 million followers. Apple
already shared 134 posts till date all related to their shot on iPhone campaign.

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Figure 7: Screenshot of the official Instagram handle of twitter
In order to be a part of this campaign in the Instagram, one has to post their clicked images from
their iPhones with the hashtag "ShotoniPhone"
Figure 8: Screenshot of some of the shared posts of the campaign on Instagram.
Apart from sharing of images, Apple also took interviews of some of the renowned artists and
posted the interviews as the voice track for the video galleries. In each of the Instagram post, the
photographer's description regarding the picture is also posted in the description.

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Figure 9: Screenshot of an Instagram post of the campaign
In order to gain more attention of the Instagram users, Apple decided to create themes for the
campaign such as self-pictures, setting themes as per the trends thus portraying diversity across
the world. This was the objective of the company to capture the diversity across the world with
the help of its phone’s camera, thus defining the high definition of its phone’s camera (Montalvo
2016).

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Figure 10: Screenshot of the Self-series pictures posted on the Instagram.
Third observation- Facebook
Apple also took to Facebook for expanding this campaign. Currently, Apple has more than 11
million followers on Facebook. Extending this campaign to this platform has enabled wider
access.
Figure 11: Screenshot of the Facebook profile of the Apple.

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In the Facebook handle Apple shared number of posts related to the shot on iPhone campaigns.
The videos and photos which are posted got millions of views and shares, thus making more and
more people aware of the campaign.
Figure 12: A screenshot of the Facebook post of the " shot on iPhone" campaign.
The campaign even got trending on Facebook, number of blogs and posts regarding this
campaign were shared by individuals and groups all over the world. In the present date,
Facebook has more than 2 billion users, thus posting articles and pictures related to this
campaign have gained much attention among the social media users (Phua, Jin and Kim 2017).
People became more aware of the campaign from the posts shared on the Facebook. People also
took to Facebook for sharing their pictures clicked with iPhone. People shared the world gallery
pictures on their Facebook account.

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Figure 13: Screenshot from Facebook, a world galley picture from the "shot on iPhone
campaign. The campaign was widespread in 70 global cities because of the trending stories in the
Facebook (Stelzner 2014).
Figure 14: Screenshot of the various Facebook post related to the "shot on iPhone" campaign.
Reflection
As per the observations from the various social media platforms, it can be said that the
Apple's strategy of marketing its iPhone with the help of the shot on iPhone campaign was

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successful. The Apple Inc extended this campaign for marketing its subsequent models as well.
The brand image of the Apple Inc has been instrumental in making this campaign successful in
various social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.