In 2017, we introduced the world to Apple's most passionate + creative users with @apple. In 2018, we focused on diverse perspectives, going deeper into culture, increasing the volume and breadth of stories we told and focusing on integrated storytelling across the Instagram ecosystem. We set out to get to know our global community and better understand the humanity behind their passions. We kept momentum going with rapid growth (4M to 14M followers, +339% within one year) while exceeding the industry average engagement rate by more than 3X*. More importantly, we were able to provide more than 668 people from 70+ countries with the tools and platform to share their unique stories with the during a time when the world needs to see them.

*Source: Benchmark engagement rate of 0.66% based on average of top 20 most followed retail brands. Compiled using public Instagram data pulled via SocialBlade.com on 4/22/19.

Apple wanted to build a destination to elevate the voices of its most creative and passionate users - @apple has quickly become that home. Instead of talking about the products, we focus on unique stories from around the globe to help inspire the community to create and get to know more people, more countries and more languages to understand diverse perspectives. This year our mission was to push the boundaries; challenging our community to reach even greater creative heights and in doing so, continue to redefine how a global brand behaves on social, and the stories they share.

We looked into our audience and their relationship with brands in an age of social-media. The most important insights to emerge from this research was the importance of the journey from “purchase brand” to “usage brand.”

A purchase brand is all about creating desire to buy the product. Focusing on “moments of truth” before the transaction. A usage brand is about what you do with your product after you have it. Focusing on the moments of truth after the transaction: i.e. usage and sharing. It’s less about what goes into your smartphone, and more what you get out of it. Engaged customers of usage brands buy more frequently, spend more per transaction, and are more brand loyal.

The second year running the account, we needed to keep making iPhone a definitive usage brand, so we focused even more single-mindedly on the creative power of the iPhone camera, not its specifications.

@apple is an always on community with content focusing on everyday beauty, coupled with a surprise + delight nature to provide an unexpected take on what you might expect to see in the feed. We focus on the people who make up our brand more than the products you might expect us to be talking about on social. In 2018 we focused on ways to inspire our audience to go and create with tiny nudges encouraging them to get out into the world and make something wonderful.

This comes to life across a variety of editorial pillars:

Briefs: creative call to action focused on a theme to make capturing more attainable

Collections: thematic gallery of moments from the community, edited together to create one delightful compilation

Commissioned: original editorial, allowing creators to elevate their stories to inspire the community

Spotlights: featured photographers from every day to professionals

After making a splash joining Instagram in 2017, our next challenge was to continue rapidly scaling the size of our global community while building on the industry-leading engagement rates we'd seen in our first six months on the platform.

From March 2018 through March 2019, our following grew from 4M to 14M (reaching that total faster than any other retail brand), generating 678M impressions with our posts and earning 46M likes while maintaining a 2.1% engagement rate, more than 3X the average of the top 20 most followed retail brands on Instagram*.

But the community wasn’t just engaging with our posts, more iPhone owners were inspired to participate than ever before — during this period lifetime #ShotoniPhone mentions increased from 2.8M to 7.2M (+255%). This included submissions from more than 100 countries in 45 languages. The best part? All this growth and engagement was completely organic with $0 paid media.