Post Performance Report: Brands already inspiring us in 2024

Welcome to the first edition of the Post Performance Report (PPR). A series where we compile and analyze social media posts and campaigns inspiring us, and break down what makes them so genius. We will unpack how your brand can use these examples to spark your own scroll-stopping creative ideas—while maximizing your budget and doing more with less.

We dig deeper by not just examining the flawless creative execution of every post or campaign, but the business impact, too. We help you envision how social can increase your brand’s awareness, foster community engagement and grow the bottom line.

Here’s our lineup of brands already breaking through, and takeaways you can use to follow suit this year.

Auntie Anne’s: The crown pretzel of community engagement

Auntie Anne’s, the beloved brand behind your favorite soft pretzels, is knotted up in the latest Taylor Swift conspiracy. Why? Because they identified overlap between the Swiftie fandom and their target audience, and they are community engagement experts. They posted a black and white photo with the lyrical caption “Are you ready for it?”, as a reference to speculation that Swift might be announcing the release of her re-recorded album Reputation.

When she didn’t, the brand followed up with the same image, only this time their social team drew on the pretzel to make it look like a clown to show solidarity with the fellow “clowns” in their community.

Within 24 hours, the posts racked up 2.9 million impressions, 4,200 reposts and 28,000 likes, proving how well the Auntie Anne’s team knows their audience.

For another recent example of Auntie Anne’s top-tier community engagement, when the brand noticed a video about their pretzel bucket go viral, they quickly reached out to the creator and reshared it. This unexpected boost on social correlated with an increase in sales by 2,800 units year over year.

The play: As Auntie Anne’s demonstrates, the best community engagement content costs $0. But it does require:

Independence Village Senior Living: Retirees have more fun

Racking up millions of views and hundreds of thousands of likes is not unusual for Independence Village senior living communities. With many viral videos and a late 2023 TikTok advertising campaign under their belt, their team and residents have fun putting their own spin on the latest trends.

Like this recent video of residents interacting with the maintenance team. The post quickly racked up 1.2 million views, 230,000 likes and 787 comments. Like most Independence Village content, this video is wholesome, fun and illustrates the life-enriching culture of their communities.

Our Maintenance Team >>>> 😂❤️ #fyp #seniorlivingcommunity #ivwaukee

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