Ah, selfies. They have grown into a love/hate relationship with the public. So fun, yet so annoying to those not involved with the particular selfie; the perfect narcissistic relationship with yourself. So, how do you turn this negative into a positive? Can you use this growing selfishness phenomena into promotion for your business or enterprise? In short…yes.

The most powerful stories often have the least words. The World Wildlife Fund executed a compelling campaign to bring endangered species into the public spotlight — by leveraging the selfie social media trends and applicable apps.

WWF launched its aptly named #LastSelfie campaign. It urged Snapchat users to share the photos of its own hauntingly beautiful wildlife images with their friends, turning the message of the selfie into something more impactful.

What makes WWF’s #LastSelfie campaign powerful is how its message and format reinforced each other. “In a way Snapchat is a mirror of real life. The images you see are transient, instant, unique, yet only live for a few seconds. Just like these endangered animals,” a video for the campaign reads. Social was the primary driver of the campaign: WWF used the timed-message functionality of Snapchat as its creative nucleus, but it also asked users to donate via SMS, and share their posts to Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Simple, effective, and yes, it got oodles of people to post and donate.

Some years ago, social would have been the “promotional platform” for those consulate chatter types that lived on another channel — say, the ones always commenting on something and everything and anything — making a blog post about an endangered species — or used something similar for a standalone hashtag campaign. However, times change quickly. There’s no such thing as a social-only campaign anymore; every marketing message is innately social. They don’t scream “Hey, here’s an ad!!”. They’re subtler and look to engage on an educational or emotional level (and, in many cases, both.) And in an age where our aversion to ads is far higher than ever, that’s what people want. If you are marketing to them, do not appear to be doing so…otherwise, they toss you.

The latest collection of responses from what’s arguably the largest opinion bank of CMOs – Duke’s Fuqua School of Business’ CMO Insights Survey — has some telling responses about how chief marketers think about social. Most chief marketers face a common challenge: linking social effectively to their larger marketing activities. But they’re committed to understanding that relationship better, with social media spending poised to make up 20% of marketing budgets by 2021.

Ten years ago, it might have been easier to put social down to being “a passing fancy/millennial thing.” But social isn’t just for millennials — data from the latest Pew Report shows 35% of US adults over the age of 65 now use social media, and 77% of US adults ages 30-49 now use social media regularly.

Bottom line: You need social media now. You are already way behind the train and losing ground fast. Call us at BSG right away to get on track now.