Dyson, the technology company founded by the renowned, quintessentially British inventor James Dyson, just gets social media.
In recent years Dyson have used sites like YouTube and Facebook to great effect in their efforts to garner hype for their new products, and they've demonstrated a good understanding of how social media can be used successfully by businesses.
Take Dyson's revolutionary bladeless fan air multiplier. A breathtaking product, it was marketed online in a fittingly smart and modern way. The fan was announced in October 2009 and released in June 2010. In the months between, the company teased the public through social media in a number of ways.
In October, Dyson began to release videos of the fan being revealed to focus group subjects, all of whom had the same dumbfounded yet impressed reaction. "Oh my god", "what is it?" and "how does it work?" were the unanimous questions, all of which Dyson cleverly left unanswered.
The videos didn't make it immediately clear to the viewer what kind of product was being unveiled, but it was made obvious that it was something very unusual. They were watched by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide and sparked discussions between viewers on how the fan might work.
Dyson's job was done, so you might think.
Dyson disagreed. In May, with less than a month till release, another video was uploaded to YouTube. This film was a recording of Dyson staff ingeniously placing a series of fans to create an assault course that a balloon would navigate without human interference, prompting comments from the public such as "Dyson has just made Sonic the Hedgehog a reality".
It was this 2-minute-8-seconds clip that went truly viral and captured the imagination of the public. It even gained the release additional attention in the media, the popularity of the video becoming news in its own right. At the time of writing, it had over 1.8 million YouTube views.
Add to the mix well populated Facebook pages for each country Dyson operates in and frequent appearances from the popular man behind the company and it's clear why the business has a reputation for good use of social media.
As a brand, Dyson are famous for being innovative and producing quality, well researched and environmentally friendly. Their social media strategy is one of the reasons these connotations look set to remain in the future.
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