Brands and retailers including Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson and Budweiser leveraged mobile and social in visually focused campaigns during the first half of 2014 for brand-building and driving commerce.

Mobile photo sharing and video have dominated this year as tactics that marketers are building into social media campaigns. Additionally, many of the noteworthy campaigns this year move away from Facebook and Twitter towards newer platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest.

These are the top ten mobile, social campaigns from the first half of this year, in alphabetical order. The campaigns were chosen based on creative, tactic and execution. Results for the marketing efforts were not given.

Adidas Group hones in on socializing fitness via mobile
Adidas Group continued its mobile social run with a new platform for the Reebok brand intended to serve as a hub for athletes as well as a bluetooth-enabled Adidas soccer ball that links to a smartphone. 

Users of Reebook?s new Fitleague application receive updates on Fitleague-specific workouts, and informative articles pertaining to their own fitness, training programs and goals. The newly launched Adidas miCoach Smart Ball is a soccer ball that analyzes its movements through the air as well as foot touch points of impact to coach users to take better kicks, passes and shots.

Anthropologie hosts Pinterest contest to gain inspiration for summer
Lifestyle brand Anthropologie hosted a Pinterest contest to promote the discovery of new trends among home and decorating platforms for the summer by incorporating style insight from its fans.

Naming it a #PinToWin challenge, contestants were asked to pin inspiring ideas for all types of summer gatherings. Winners received $500 toward Anthropologie dining and entertaining products.

Pinterest, serving as an innovative source of inspiration and creativity, is useful for brands searching for fresh marketing tactics and ideas. Anthropologie will inherit the pins of its participants and use them to recreate new products to stimulate sales both in-store and online.

Budweiser?s innovative Twitter voting scales up World Cup sponsorship
Budweiser leveraged a new Twitter voting mechanism as part of its 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil promotion, enabling fans to view side-by-side player photos before casting their vote for each game?s top athlete.

The 2014 FIFA Man Of The Match was sponsored by Budweiser, with the winner determined by fans, who can cast their votes on FIFA.com or by tapping the #ManoftheMatch Tweet from @FIFAcom to display a custom Twitter Card featuring the side-by-side player photos. The program marked the first time FIFA World Cup fans have had the opportunity for social media live voting and is a pivot away from a mobile application offered by Budweiser last year that was integrated with Facebook for tournament voting.

Coach takes Instagram promotion offline at Polaroid Fotobar
Leather goods maker Coach partnered with retail brand Poloraid Fotobar to promote an Instameet in New York June 14, where professional and amateur photographers shared their Coach New York stories. 

Coach selected top Instagram photographers to participate in the making of a collaborative image story and printed the photos taken on site through Polaroid Fotobar's mobile print shop. Coach also encouraged its followers to contribute and be a part of the story making on Instagram. 

Dove focuses on friendship to extend Real Beauty via greeting cards
Dove extended the reach of its ongoing ?Campaign for Real Beauty? via a partnership with digital greeting card company Open Me to land an emotional plea around friendship for a female audience.

Seeking to re-engage the audience in the debate over the definition of beauty Dove?s ?Beauty is? native ads on mobile prompted women to create and send an e-card to a friend in celebration of things that are beautiful aside from physicality. The campaign tied in nicely with how Facebook is already used to express support and kudos for friends.

At the start of 2014 the brand teamed with Flipboard to create content to support the relaunch of its Advanced Night Repair serum. The featured content found on Flipboard appealed to new consumers through the app?s innovative sharing and consolidating capabilities.

Adding user-generated content is a marketing must for the future, and catching up to this trend will help brands solidify their place as digital pioneers and address both global and local markets through social media, which is perpetual challenge for all brands.

How Kraft is driving real-time relevancy with Pinterest ads
With Pinterest already the biggest source of referral traffic back to Kraftrecipes.com, the Kraft brand is one of the first to take advantage of Pinterest?s new Promoted Pins as a way to reach its customers with the right content at the right time.

With the launch of paid Promoted Pins, which debuted with a handful of big brands such as General Mills, Nestlé, Expedia.com and Gap attached, Pinterest is taking its potential as a marketing platform to the next level. The visual storytelling capabilities offered on Pinterest are appealing to these brands as they continue to invest more heavily in digital marketing yet are still trying to find the strategies that help create deeper consumer connections.

Johnson & Johnson?s Listerine drives real-time engagement with global social media
Johnson & Johnson?s Listerine brand launched its largest global social media campaign, delivering real-time content in several languages during the FIFA World Cup as well as mobile-specific ad targeting on Twitter and Facebook.

The mouthwash brand had two news rooms staffed with sports experts and illustrators in New York and London who will be tasked with delivering recaps from the biggest matches. The ?Power to Your Mouth? campaign also included content designed with the mobile user in mind.

Michelob Ultra drives YouTube views through augmented reality, takeover ads
Anheuser-Busch?s Michelob Ultra?s ?New Year?s Evolution? campaign took advantage of the fact that video watching is moving primarily towards smartphones and tablets with an effort to get the word out about branded YouTube content.

The brand bought a takeover ad within the Weather Channel?s iPhone app and loaded a piece of marketing collateral with augmented reality that both linked backed to Michelob Ultra?s YouTube page.

The brewer created about 30, 15-second videos for YouTube that encourages consumers to try something new this year, such as trying a new food at a restaurant.

Michelob Ultra?s campaign is noteworthy because it highlights the investments that alcohol marketers are putting into multichannel campaigns.

P&G?s Braun churns out sweepstakes from Olympics-themed photo-sharing
Procter & Gamble?s Braun wanted to take its sponsorship of track speed skater J.R. Celski during the 2014 Sochi Olympics digital with a mobile and social campaign.

The brand partnered with the mobile photo-sharing app Snaps. Pictures of the athlete and branded graphics were added to uploaded photos that could then be shared on social media.

In addition to the sports-themed graphics, branded images could also be overlaid on top of images. 

P&G is consistently a big sponsor of the Olympics game, but with consumers in the U.S. watching the televised games from afar, P&G leveraged mobile and digital to better connect with fans.

The shaving brand?s campaign is also unique in that it uses a third-party app versus a branded one.

Toyota taps Vine to highlight children?s imaginations and its own innovativeness
Toyota tried to boost its positioning as an innovative brand with a Vine campaign that showcased the artwork of children from around the globe addressing the topic of futuristic transportation. 

The first-of-its kind program brought another dimension to the annual Toyota Dream Car Art Contest, which for the first time was fused with mobile social. The contest reflects the global scale of submissions, which topped over 660,000, allowing for worldwide exposure to the ideas of children, and aligns with the company's guiding philosophy of innovation through next generation thinking.

While social analytics are already being applied to better understand brand sentiment, effectiveness of campaigns and messages, and to identify trends and challenges, brands are yearning for more granular ways to clarify where consumers stand in the purchasing cycle.

Final Take
Caitlyn Bohannon, editorial assistant for Mobile Marketer, New York