By: Lexi Severini

The saying goes, “words have power” and as purveyors of messaging there is no one that believes that statement more than we do. Whether your preferred platform is Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube or Google + you can rest assured that if you’ve done your due diligence, the intended audience can and will receive your message. However, if the message doesn’t communicate anything of interest, no one is going to listen. For those of you active on Twitter, consider these case studies of companies effectively using custom hashtags to not only promote product, but ‘fuel’ live action events.

Mercedes Benz ‘Tweet Race’ - #MBteamCL

For the luxury auto brand’s 125th anniversary, they decided to launch a socially interactive campaign. Creating a hashtag to represent an event was nothing new so they had to come up with a fresh angle. They opted to host a 2-day real time event where tweets would ‘drive’ Mercedes-Benz vehicles. Let me explain. The cars were essentially being fueled by tweets containing the #MBteamCL hashtag and would drive 1 mile for every 4 tweets that came in. Those interested in watching the progress of the race could tune in on www.mbtweetrace.com. When all was said and done, the campaign reached almost 25 million people on Twitter, generated over 150 thousand tweets and garnered nearly 78 thousand new Twitter followers for Mercedes-Benz. (Mercedes Benz)

The Weather Channel - #TornadoWeek

If you haven’t already checked it out, this week’s Weather Channel site is especially amusing. In honor of their cultishly popular Tornado Week, their interns have created a livestream of a tweet-powered win tunnel. The strength of those gusts depends entirely on you. The more you tweet mentioning #TornadoWeek, the more the man behind the curtain turns the dial. While the week is wrapping up and they are still far from their lofty goal of 1 million mentions, we’re still impressed. 2 points for originality, 3 for entertainment.

So whether you’re fueling a car or parlaying a tornado watch with a severe case of windblown hair, consider what implementing a hashtag campaign like these could do for your company’s overall engagement.