Social Trends - Hootsuite
A multi-platform campaign driving 220+ trials in 90 days for Hootsuite.
Hootsuite is the world's largest social media management platform. The Social Trends is an annual leadership campaign. While the content team researches and writes, the creative team designs the company report that projects social media trends for the following year.
In 2022, as the design lead for this campaign, I was responsible for brainstorming, conceptualizing, and creating its visual identity.
We produced a digital report, toolkits, videos, playbooks, sales enablement materials, blog articles, social, webinars, emails, and an informative microsite.
The campaign generated 130K+ page views, increased engagement by 34% YoY, influenced over $23M in pipeline, and drove significant increases in content consumption and audience engagement.
Role: Design Lead
Tools: Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Figma, Google Slides
The Challenge
The campaign involved a large amount of content, multiple stakeholders, and several campaign channels that all needed to feel connected visually.
One of the main challenges was designing a system that could scale across:
Downloadable content such as the Digital Report
Microsite experiences
Social campaigns
Video and Motion Assets
Webinars
LinkedIn carousels
Email campaigns
Regional and translated assets
The campaign also needed to:
Feel engaging
Remain easy to consume while presenting a large amount of industry research and insights.
Increase report downloads compared to the previous year’s campaign.
Design Approach
Working alongside a Copywriter (Isaac Nikolai Fox), I initiated this campaign by analyzing developments and learnings from Hootsuite’s previous years of the Social Trends report. I also researched other online reports and brainstormed a variety of ideas.
After several presentations to the marketing leaders, we settled on a theme:
"A Departure from the Future."
Visual Inspirations and Design Elements
Movies and Pop Culture: For designing the campaign title, I drew inspiration from movies such as "Back to the Future" and the angled text from the "Star Wars" intro.
B&W with Vector Elements: Combined black and white images with vectors for contrast.
Objects: Flowers, mugs, and planets were used to add familiarity and interest.
Colourful Circles: Colourful circles were used to add depth and movement.
Social Media Elements: Incorporated speech bubbles and social media motifs for a modern touch.
Key Visual
I crafted a visual identity for this campaign that blends elements of space, technology, and vintage aesthetics with inviting colours. My goal was to make the customer the show's star, placing them at the center of the universe.
The "Main Collage" graphic served as the central visual element, unifying the campaign's aesthetic and highlighting the key message.
Palette and Colour Combinations
Inspired by planets, the sun, and space rocks, this bright colour palette features blue, yellow, and brown as the main colours. Orange is the accent colour, while grey and Light Yellow tones are used for muted backgrounds.
This palette offers multiple colour combinations for different use cases, helping the campaign stand out on social media and create a lasting visual impression for users.
Typeface and accessible text
The typeface chosen was Futura PT, whose geometric and modern design aligned well with the campaign's theme and visuals. This typeface, combined with the colours, ensured all the messages conveyed were bold and strong.
Below are examples of the typeface applied on coloured backgrounds, all of which passed comprehensive contrast checks to ensure accessibility.
Microsite
I coordinated the development of a microsite with an external agency, designing the user experience, including information architecture, wireframes, high-fidelity mockups, and UI Design. I guided the agency to ensure the final output was high-quality, user-friendly, and aligned with the campaign's visual identity and company goals.
The microsite aims to inform users about the 5 featured trends and encourage them to download the complete guide report.
Online Report: What to Expect on Social
The 2022 report featured excellent information design throughout its 43 pages, resulting in a 30% increase in guide downloads compared to the previous year's campaign and a significant boost in conversions.
Social Trend 1
Motion Design and Videos
I collaborated with the Motion Design and Video teams to help bring the campaign to life through animated content and video experiences. I designed custom vector graphic elements that supported the storytelling, helping translate complex ideas and research insights into engaging and easy-to-understand visuals across multiple campaign videos.
Summary Video
Social Trend 3
Social Trend 4
Social Trend 2
Social Media Images
Leading with the 'Main Collage' graphic, I designed social media cards, carousels, and paid ads in various sizes for Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Social performance
Important numbers:
70,514 link clicks
17,365 engagements
265 social posts
939 social mentions
61% positive sentiment
LinkedIn PDFs/carousels were top performers
Launch giveaway generated 46.6k impressions and 900+ engagements
Campaign Results
In addition to overwhelming positive sentiments on social channels, the campaign achieved the following results:
$23.6M influenced pipeline
364 demo requests
232 product trials
$6M+ pipeline from email campaigns
$8.3M influenced pipeline from webinars
Microsite Performance: In the first 60 days the microsite received 30,000 unique page views with an average of 5:28 spent on the page.
Website Traffic: In the first 60 days after launch, +100k users visited Hootsuite's site for the Trends campaign.
➔ Guide Downloads: 30% increase in guide downloads compared to the previous year’s campaign.
The campaign successfully highlighted 2022's social media trends, providing valuable insights and tools for Hootsuite's audience.
The visual identity and comprehensive materials helped elevate the campaign's impact, demonstrating Hootsuite's leadership in social media management.