Brief:

• Women's deodorant brand Secret is asking female Instagram users to share their empowering "All Strength, No Sweat" stories amid four new product launches, per an announcement. The Procter & Gamble brand's panel of judges, including brand leaders and social influencers, will select as many as 10 women whose stories of personal strength will run in a multichannel campaign throughout the year.
• To enter the contest, Instagram users need to log into their accounts and post an image or video of their "no sweat" moment along with a caption that mentions @secretdeodorant and has the hashtags #AllStrengthNoSweat and #Contest. The campaign has four separate entry periods between Feb. 13 and June 30, and winners will be announced March 17, April 17, May 17 and July 2, per the contest rules.
• Secret’s new products include Secret Aluminum Free Deodorant, Secret Body Cleansing Wipes, Secret Clinical Strength Fast Acting deodorant and Secret Clinical Strength Night Treatment. The Instagram contest is part of the brand’s "Women’s World – All Strength, No Sweat" campaign that features stories of "bold, boundary-pushing" women.

Insight:

Secret is the latest brand to run a social media campaign that gives people a chance to gain greater recognition while doing what they do best on Instagram: self-promote their experiences. The campaign has the power to go viral as Instagram users share posts and inspire others to hop on the bandwagon. Instagram has more than 1 billion users and is more popular among women than men. Thirty-nine percent of U.S. adult women said they use Instagram, compared with 30% of men, according to a Pew Research study of social media usage. Instagram is especially popular among women ages 18 to 24, with 71% saying they use the Facebook-owned image-sharing app. However, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest are more popular than Instagram among all U.S. women.

Instagram has become a significant platform for campaigns that recruit everyday users and influencers. Southwest Airlines this month started a campaign to find 10 social influencers to create travel content for the carrier while exploring its destinations, following a similar Amtrak campaign that launched a social media residency program to showcase the diversity of passengers and their train travel experiences.

Secret’s Instagram campaign shows that Procter & Gamble’s brands see value in social media marketing focused on user-generated content in contrast with past criticisms of other strategies on the platforms. Marc Pritchard, P&G’s chief brand officer, in 2016 said his company planned to scale back ad targeting on Facebook because of its limited effectiveness, saying the company "targeted too much" and "went too narrow," according to The Wall Street Journal.