Although everyone in the TrackMaven office is well aware, I have a confession to make…I’m a Directioner.

The sweet, sweet voices of Zayn, Louis, Niell, Liam, and oh, Harry completely enrapture me. Even though their voices may be confined to my headphones, they make me want to jump out of my chair and dance around the office.

image via Wonderland Magazine

After taking a deep dive into Instagram with the Fortune 500 Instagram report, we noticed some pretty interesting things besides what we covered in the report and one case immediately stood out to me — Office Depot and One Direction. Office Depot teamed up with One Direction in launching a school campaign to create bully-free schools. Exclusive school supplies, Youtube videos, Facebook posts, tweets and Instagram posts all showed their 1D+OD Together against bullying.

While looking at what has been released with the campaign so far, their Instagram postings have received the top engagement levels in comparison to other postings on social media channels.

Where is Office Depot finding success with One Direction beyond post-it notes, dry erase markers and pens (actual favorites of mine) in their Instagram postings? What filters are they using? Are they using hashtags? Who is their target audience? Overall, what does the average number of interactions look like for them?

In Office Depot’s Instagram account they have 2,967 Followers and have a total of 383 posts. The 1D+OD Instagram postings have the golden combination of filters and hashtags, which increased interaction levels and honed in on their target audience.

Instagram Study: 1D+OD

Filters

Office Depot has used the Normal or No Filter for majority of it’s pictures, much like the other Fortune 500 companies, but looking at some of their 1D + OD Instagram postings show different choices in filters.

One of Office Depot’s top pictures with over 515 interactions was filtered with the Normal filter. It featured other celebrities like Darren Criss and Lucy Hale all with the new 1D+OD school supplies. This photo had 2.53 times as many likes and comments as their average.

Another post that received top interactions shows fans gazing up on projected images of One Direction .

Mayfair was used as the filter for this photo and it received a total of 467 interactions. Mayfair is the filter from the Fortune 500 that gains the most interactions on average with 23.044 interactions per 1,000 followers.

Hashtags

With the Fortune 500 Instagram Report we found really interesting pieces of data on the usage of hashtags, how many gain the most interactions, and how the correlate with the number of followers an Instagram account from the Fortune 500 has.

Interactions by Hashtags (>1k followers)

Interactions by Hashtags (<1k Followers)

When applying hashtags to their posts, Office Depot understood the levels of interactions that hashtags harnessed seen through their 1D + OD campaign.

This post shows the schools supplies that buyers can buy with their partnership with One Direction and it received over 767 interactions! It actually was filtered with Hudson; however, the post has 6 hashtags following with the findings the 4-6 hashtags produce higher levels of engagement.

Taking a look at their other 1D + OD posts, each contain a number of hashtags improving the interaction levels and discovery of the posts by One Direction fans on Instagram.

Interaction Levels and Target Audience

On average Office Depot receives a total of 57 interactions per post. However, the posts with One Direction received nearly 10x more than their average. The examples above show that using the optimal filters and hashtags dramatically improve interaction levels. Of course it could be the combination of using the One Direction heartthrobs as well.

Most of this campaign took place at the time of back to school, when students, presumably at the age demographic that is hypnotized by One Direction, were buying their school supplies. All presenting the perfect time for the the 1D+OD campaign to take place.

The 1D+OD shows the idea again that Instagram is, in fact a social discovery platform, the Directioners couldn’t find these Instagram photos, unless they first follow Office Depot, without the hashtags and then engage with a post with an interaction without the stunning effects of a filter.

Now all of these things beg for the questions if marketers should hire pop sensations for their Instagram campaigns? Maybe, I’d probably have a hard time convincing Allen that we would need thousands of dollars to get One Direction for an hour. It’s not an entirely plausible route, especially if your audience really doesn’t care about Harry Styles. However, picking a topic that aligns with your product and engages your audience is an actionable technique that can be implemented into Instagram. Especially if you are using the lethal combination of hashtags and filters. (I really think the Mayfair filter brings out Liam Payne’s eyes)

Lastly, trick question: What’s the Best Song Ever?