Digital World…A Place to Be

The digital era has changed the way that people communicate. Social media platforms connect people from all over the world and they have influenced the way people interact, entertain and express their opinions. In fact, peoples relationships have been formed into users relationships. This means that face- to- face relationships within the real world tend to be replaced from online relationships within the virtual world.

Due to the evolution of digital communication the success or failure of a company stands on the expression of public opinion through many different online platforms. Thus, companies should take into consideration the importance of building communities on social media in order to reach their clients and find out their interests. PR professionals must pay attention to their customers’ emotions and build loyal relationships with them by promote the conversation and interaction via social media. There are some companies that were adapted immediately to this new era. The year of 2017 was great for digital campaigns. “AirBnB”, “Always”, “IKEA” were some of the companies, which did a great job in social media.

First of all, “AirBnB” said #WeAccept through a campaign during Super Bowl LI, where it stated “we all belong, the world is more beautiful the more you accept”. It sent a powerful political message without being offensive and managed to be effective, timely and now has 4.9 million views. The sanitary brand “Always” renewed its campaign #LikeAGirl-Keep Going to remind girls that they must keep going regardless the chance of failure, because “We only truly fail, when we don’t even try”. The campaign gained 3.4 million views through strong, inspiring messages and strengthened its content by presenting two UK influencers, Alesha Dixon and Hannah Witton to talk about their personal experiences related to failure. “IKEA” brand presented the “Oddly IKEA” campaign, which was very different from what audiences are used to see. In a long video of 25 minutes it presents a room for college students, where one can hear only the voice and see the hands of a woman touching the products and describing their various features with an extremely calm voice. It manages to relax people by “playing” with their senses and have 1.5 million views and a lot of positive comments on Twitter.

The evolution of digital communication occurs and it is important for PR professionals to be up to date in order to achieve their goals. They must embrace online network to build long-lasting relationships with their customers, to monitor the digital word of mouth and notice the competitors’ strategies.

Marina Kritikou