Monday, March 28, 2011

Aflac Gets the Last Quack – A Social Media Success Story


We’ve all heard the story: a celebrity tweeted something ugly about the tsunami and earthquake disaster in Japan and was fired. But this wasn’t just any celebrity – it was the very recognizable voice of an incredibly well-known brand, Aflac. The duck is an embodiment of the brand – from the company’s marketing flyers provided to prospective customers to plush ducks given to new customers and successful agents to TV ads to print ads to social media sites to the corporate website.

But when the firing happened, Aflac didn’t blink. The company took a stand and moved forward in a positive manner. It combined the power and reach of social media with the importance of marketing. It launched a campaign to find a new voice for the famous duck. The campaign featured Aflac’s Facebook page and the company’s main website – and the entire ad community took notice.

While the next voice for Aflac’s duck may be someone famous or not-yet-famous, we can thank Aflac for using social media to generate positive buzz around a fun campaign and for continuing the conversation about a product we don’t spend a lot of time talking about: insurance. As a result, there is no doubt who has the last quack in this story.

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