Blogger insights this week: Do social media marketing stunts work?

What makes a social media marketing campaign awesome?

It depends on who you ask, but most answers fall into two camps.

One camp is inclined to evaluate the creative way it uses social media to build brand and PR buzz. The other is focused on how the campaign grows customers and sales.

One thing is for sure, between the Super Bowl, the Olympics and Valentine’s Day, marketers have had a lot of social media marketing opportunities. And a lot of opportunities to weigh in on what is awesome and what is meh.

This week I found two interesting posts, one from both camps. I’m putting them in the spotlight and asking you, “Do social media marketing stunts work?” I welcome your thoughts in the comments section below.

Spotlight: The making of great social media marketing

Pizza brands are making social media fun again via Copypress

This post takes a look at two brands’ creative use of social media campaigns. One, Pizza Hut, has partnered with OKCupid to piggyback with Valentine’s Day. Pizza Hut created an account on OKCupid for a contest to find “The One” special fan. The winner of Pizza Hut’s undying love will get free pizza for life. But the winner must prove his/her love socially.

Players (see what I did there?) must submit a video proposal on Vine or Instagram with the hashtag #CommitToGreatness. The most creative proposal wins.

The promotion wins praise for its clever tie-in of Valentine’s, online dating and user-generated video to promote its brand.

Check out the full post to find out more about this and one other high profile social campaign.

That Esurance Super Bowl stunt and finding the real value of social media via Mack Collier

Hold on, writes Mack Collier in this post, clever doesn’t necessarily translate into sales success. He examines the hailed (by some) social media promo by Esurance.

Esurance bought the first commercial following the Super Bowl, saving $1.5 million in its ad budget. The windfall was used as a jackpot drawing for one lucky winner who tweeted the hashtag #EsuranceSave30 within 36 hours of the ad being aired. The promotion created a tidal wave of activity in the form of entries, video views, website traffic and social media buzz.

Based on that, the stunt was lauded as a huge success. Mack warns against a rush to judgment.

Will the traffic create new customer relationships and sales conversions? That remains to be seen. And there’s reason to be skeptical. Turns out Esurance already lost 15% of new followers gained from the stunt.

Read more of Mack’s thoughts on this topic here.

Other blogger highlights from the Web

Top news stories of the week: LinkedIn pulls the plug on Intro app after four months; Klout adds content-sharing platform to woo users to its site; Brands chose Twitter over Facebook for real-time Super Bowl marketing; Plus more news and information.