As social media increasingly dominates consumers’ lives, the face of marketing has dramatically changed – but which brands have adapted best?

From Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ slogan coined in the 80s, to Budweiser’s ‘Whassup’ campaign of the late 90’s; genius marketing strategies can transform a brand.

Although television campaigns are still heavily influential, social media has offered businesses an entirely new marketing platform.

Here’s the lowdown on the crème de la crème of social media campaigns that flooded users’ devices in 2016.

It’s impossible to scroll through a Facebook newsfeed without coming across one of BuzzFeed’s ‘Tasty’ videos.

The (supposedly) quick and easy recipes have reaped BuzzFeed 60 million Facebook likes and dramatically increased the site’s visibility.

In fact, the videos have gained such popularity there are now 75 employees working full time on the campaign.

Mark Zuckerberg’s 2015 projection that newsfeeds would transform from photos to videos has become reality – anyone would think he did this for a living.

German food and drink company, Knorr is Unilever’s biggest-selling brand with annual sales topping £2.6 billion.

Their #LoveAtFirstTaste campaign of 2016 played on the age-old relationship between love and food.

The original video was the second most viewed ad of the year on YouTube, featuring single strangers flirting and feeding each other their favourite foods.

If Khorr can make a stockpot sexy, there’s hope still for other unattractive products.

Swedish furniture company, IKEA launched a ‘Retail Therapy’ campaign renaming products after frequently Googled relationship problems.

The witty SEO play spread like wildfire throughout the web, with consumers sharing the flat-pack giant’s retitled products on numerous social media platforms.

Although unlikely to become a marketing trend, the use of search terms charmed consumers and will certainly be experimented with during 2017.

Now with more than 100 million users, Spotify is a music, podcast and video streaming service founded in 2008.

In November of last year, Spotify launched a popular campaign mocking podcasts created by listeners themselves.

The campaign based around data-driven insights included billboards as well as personalised emails and social media ads.

Spotify exploited the impact of localised campaigns, reaching out to users with witty adverts based on playlists streamed in certain countries or cities.

This style of social media campaigning will see increased use during 2017 as marketers have access to ‘hyper-local data’ enabling them to better understand consumers.

Social media also facilitates exposure for charities. Last year, Disney’s #ShareYourEars campaign raised $2 million for the Make A Wish Foundation.

Disney pledged to donate $5 to the charity for each image shared on social media with the hastag #ShareYourEars.

While the concept was simple, its effectiveness has been attributed to the fact that it maximised on what many were already doing – uploading pictures of their children to social media platforms.

Social media is a powerful tool enabling brands to communicate with consumers and 2017 will certainly bare witness to more diverse and novel campaigns.

This style of marketing shows no sign of slowing down, so happy scrollin’ y’all.