Humanity has come a long way from traditional tools to stay afloat. In this digital age, brands, both old and new, have managed to surface above the competition by creating experiences in the form of creative content and multichannel strategies.
Take a look at some of the decade’s most successful campaigns and the lessons you can learn from them.
1. Keep Your Content Short but Sweet
Take the case of Old Spice’s campaign “The Man your man could smell like,” produced by a small team (four writers, a camera crew) and one shirtless actor.
You may like: Six of the Best Ways to Grow Your Youtube Channel Fast
The campaign centers on the actor Isaiah Mustafa addressing the viewer in 60 seconds or less in confident, rapid-fire monologues that promote the benefit of using Old Spice products. According to the Nielsen Co., sales of Old Spice Body Wash rose 11 percent over the past twelve months.
2. Use Social Media to Activate Mass Media
Old Spice’s team knew that a successful campaign couldn’t be run by the company alone, and the fans were the fuel to make campaigns work.
Old Spice had an endless supply of material to pump out. It asked fans to come up with the content for the company’s YouTube videos or response videos, which have been viewed more than 40 million times.
3. Good Design Creates Better Visibility
Even the best campaign only gets noticed if it stands out. It has to rise above the ocean of all the other competing formats from advertisers and content producers.
From the product’s packaging down to the campaign’s publicity materials, it has to catch the attention of the right prospect and have them engage in it.
To start with, it’s vital to team up with a good supplier of personalized packaging to come up with something that speaks about the brand and the image it wants to build.
Offering curated product experiences such as subscription boxes that are well-designed will help you speak to your audience in a way that creates impact—both in sales and in your target market.
4. Respond to Your Users Real-Time
“No one expects to ask a question and then be responded to. I think that’s where we broke through,” one of the writers behind the Old Spice campaign said. In a brilliant move and much to the surprise of the fans, the brand answered tweets through custom YouTube videos.
5. Keep Your Market Engaged
And sometimes, the product doesn’t even have to exist yet for it to gain fans. Take the case of Heinz’s Mayochup campaign, the campaign that harnessed the power of Twitter and got one billion impressions in 48 hours.
The Heinz brand team leveraged a Twitter poll, asking if it should release a mayo-and-ketchup condiment in the US. It specifically asked for 500,000 yes votes to bring the product to life. It got everyone talking about Heinz Mayonnaise by using Mayochup as a gateway.
Instead of using a simple tweet to drive conversation, Heinz raised the stakes. To ignite more discussion, the tweet came with a visual of the Heinz Ketchup + New Heinz Mayonnaise and how it would end up as Heinz Mayochup.
Heinz hit the ground running on April 11, 2018. On April 16, Heinz created another call to action when it asked fans on Twitter to come up with an official name for the product. The brand then issued a press release to officially announce Mayochup’s imminent US launch.
6. Drive Deeper Engagement through Data
Spotify Wrapped, the music streaming site’s end-of-the-year campaign, draws on data to tell quirky stories from users’ listening habits from the past eleven months. The campaign is a perfect blend of data and creativity, all wrapped up in brilliant executions.
@Spotify @spotifyartists Stop it! You're making us blush…☺️☺️☺️☺️#2017Wrapped pic.twitter.com/DW7I49ERi8
— Marianas Trench (@mtrench) December 14, 2017
It comes with an individual event, in which Spotify subscribers receive their personalized listening data from the year and encourages them to share their habits. This not only facilitates the discovery of even more songs but also brings more listeners to the app.
The marketing campaign also graced billboards across the world, and it’s predictably hilarious, with anecdotes like an ad featuring Ariana Grande and her 2018 hit “God Is a Woman.” About 28,802 people created playlists called God Is a Woman. Nine titled playlists God Is a Man.
Making a buzz with your marketing campaigns is not an easy feat. It may take trial and error, and it will test your creativity and ingenuity. Learn from both successes and mistakes.
