Supercharge your marketing campaigns with this customizable template. In 2020, the company changed its marketing campaign to target a more rational customer who appreciates a little humor. Whether you collect lead information, pre-orders, social engagements, or offer downloads, your data can equip you to expand your marketing efforts as a whole. This step is all about calibrating your marketing efforts and channels to lead your customers to complete your desired goal. This is done through conversion assets like calls-to-action, landing pages, and lead forms. SEO, like lots of content marketing efforts, is usually a long game.

marketing campaigns

Airbnb.org’s new “Home Lives On” campaign, created with R/GA, highlights the resilience of disaster survivors through real stories of comfort, dignity, and community found in Airbnb stays. After all, your audience is critical to your success as a company, so you’ll never go wrong by putting them first. Campaigns set apart certain deliverables from general promotional efforts. The brand became synonymous with pixelated animations and low-quality production.

These campaigns focus on attracting, nurturing, and converting leads and may lean on a variety of other types of marketing campaigns I’ve explored here. I caution you to make sure you understand all the elements of whatever type of marketing campaign you’re launching. A successful ad campaign keeps its audience in mind, and always engaged. Famous Campaigns is a brandzine covering the ideas, campaigns and creative thinking shaping modern marketing. We reach brands, agencies and marketers worldwide through events, daily editorial, social channels and our weekly newsletter. In this guide, I’ll share 11 of the best marketing campaigns of all time and explore exactly what made them so successful.

Whether we like it or not, TikTok is becoming a serious advertising channel for more and more brands. To help you get in the TikTok game, we bring you a selection of the 10 best TikTok ads, with a little background story about each successful campaign. Producing something funny increases the likelihood that your campaign will be shared around, and therefore go viral. The celebrated L’Oréal Because You’re Worth It campaign was initially created to support more than just brand awareness for L’Oréal, but to support women. With over 50 years of campaigning for women’s health and beauty using this slogan, their mission of celebrating and empowering women has been achieved over the years. At Ahrefs, one of the things we promote most often is our Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT) which is free a tool for search engine optimization.

How Does A Viral Marketing Campaign Spread On Social Media Channels?

Duolingo posted “cryptic” announcements that Duo the Owl had “died,” then shared a dramatic video of it being hit by a Tesla Cybertruck. What could have been a downer became a tongue-in-cheek, catchy ad that went viral across social media, with many users remixing and sharing it. Photos and videos of the stunt spread across social media, giving Axe viral visibility far beyond the physical installation. Looking to create a better world, Ecosia launched its “Plant Trees While You Search” initiative, which plants trees for every online search made by its users. This ad campaign positions the brand as an eco-aware online tool that uplifts local communities in more than 35 countries.

Color brand Pantone launched its Instagram and print ad campaign Create Your World to encourage consumers to think outside the box when it comes to color combinations. The campaign showcases surreal, otherworldly landscapes in weird and wonderful color palettes to show what’s possible. Apple’s famous Shot on iPhone campaign originally started to tackle negative comments about the smartphone’s camera. The brand invited photographers and iPhone users to snap pictures with their phones and share them using the hashtag #shotoniphone. Apple then selected the top images and displayed them on billboards in 25 different countries. Follow these email marketing best practices to make sure your email campaigns deliver.

I’ll walk you through each step of the way below, but before going any further, I simply want you to acknowledge everything that goes into a successful campaign strategy. For example, a branding campaign could include video ads, press releases, and guest blogs. SEO is such an integral part of content marketing, so again, HubSpot gets a gold star for being great at SEO content with its Marketing Hub and Breeze Copilot AI tool. Growing your reach and harnessing the power of referrals and recommendations, while getting great content to repurpose in your own marketing. Viral trends like the ice bucket challenge are great for growing your community.

The key to having a well-thought-out and famous campaign is organized planning. You need to be strategic when it comes to releasing a big campaign like the examples we’ve listed. If one of these goes viral, this is how your brand will be remembered. This route can sometimes come with people finding the campaign irritating, as I’m sure we’ve all been annoyed after getting an advert stuck in our heads for weeks.

While goals come first with any good content marketing campaign, I typically use the written word as the foundation of my content strategies. From P&G’s “Thank You, Mom” to Dos Equis’s “Most Interesting Man in the World,” marketing campaigns have a way of sticking with us. I find that the best types of marketing campaigns have a long shelf life — sticking in my brain for years, decades even (Sarah McLaughlin’s tear-jerking “Arms of an Angel” ads for the SPCA, anyone?).

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Today, brands are shifting toward real stories that embrace setbacks, progress, and most importantly, mental well-being. TikTok challenges and Instagram Reels are the go-to formats, encouraging user-generated content (UGC) to make everyone feel part of the journey. The global weight loss industry is booming, with projections showing it could hit a whopping $360 billion by 2034. Well, it’s the secret sauce driving this growth, with platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube taking center stage.

For example, if you want your audience to trust you, you must create informational, researched-based advertisements designed with their needs in mind. Before creating any promotional material, decide on a campaign’s goal and adjust your language, visuals, and medium choices. People typically view everyday products as necessities rather than luxuries.

​Waitrose’s Christmas campaign, The Perfect Gift, breaks from the usual festive formula with a four-minute mini rom-com starring Keira Knightley and comedian Joe Wilkinson. When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time.

While staying true to its target audience and values, the company planned and funded an extreme skydiving stunt, which took place in 2012. The three-hour livestream — now an on-demand video — included extensive Red Bull advertising, which cemented the brand as a daring, risk-taking company. The combination of high-profile influencers and an upbeat music video created a buzz on social media that translated to increased brand awareness and engagement.

HubSpot is pretty much the holy grail of content marketing — and yes, I’m writing this article for HubSpot, but it’s the absolute truth. HubSpot basically coined the term “inbound marketing,” which is largely content-driven. Language app Duolingo turned its beloved green owl mascot into a social media spectacle.

Its advertising efforts only reflect one aspect of its marketing strategy. I’d also expect to see the brand use email newsletters, social media, and paid search to meet its goal. Marketing campaigns are organized, strategy efforts to promote a specific company goal. That can include raising awareness of a new product or capturing customer feedback. They typically involve a combination of media, including email, print advertising, television or radio advertising, pay-per-click, and social media. They tap into culture with fresh ideas, tell compelling stories, use emerging formats (like https://dribbble.com/hutadigital social video or AR), and inspire audience participation.

One of the most recent fan favorites is the “Just sold my car” commercial. This advert featured a remake of the song ‘Friday’ by Riton & the Nightcrawlers. The song ‘Friday’ had recently gone viral, so jumping on this and making it once again viral (but with your brand), is smart advertising. It’s catchy, fun, and will be remembered when anyone mentions this company. The director for this popular advert even announced years later that it was originally shot down after being told he could never show it. But, when it was presented to the rest of the team, it struck a chord with them and gave an immediate reaction.

Coca-Cola has incredible branding campaigns that are usually targeted at creating unity around a shared interest that bridges all kinds of differences. In its latest campaign, Uber Eats featured Jude Law dodging tired rom-com clichés while still landing in charming, funny scenarios around food delivery. The ad played with film tropes that audiences instantly recognize, using humor and self-awareness to make a straightforward service offering feel entertaining. New bottles included QR codes that let people create personalized video messages and memes.

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Email marketing is one of the most effective types of marketing campaigns because you own the list and don’t have to rely on algorithm changes, and it’s one of my favorites. Along with clear messaging, an ad campaign should be focused on a specific goal, or goals. Your messaging will change depending on the action you want your audience to take.

A great marketing campaign should have great creative assets to match. Whether it’s a sleek website design or an interactive infographic, make sure your design is professional. Not all marketing campaigns require an incremental budget, but many still do. Marketers are continuing to invest more in video elements of marketing campaigns. Obviously, those are some of the more highly produced videos, but you only have to go to TikTok or Instagram to find more great video campaigns that are shorter-form. Or, perhaps you can join your favorite business coach’s livestream workshop, which is another type of video marketing campaign.

Like email marketing, social media allows you to interact directly with an audience who follows your brand. Links (aka backlinks) are one of the most important ranking factors for search engines like Google. And the higher you rank, the more organic traffic you get (generally).

Billboard ads transform everyday spaces into unforgettable marketing moments. The ad’s humorous, self-aware tone diffused frustration and won public sympathy. It showed that admitting mistakes with a sense of humor can strengthen, rather than harm, a brand’s relationship with its audience. Its directness and urgency tapped into patriotism and personal responsibility, compelling millions to enlist. This ad remains a textbook example of how to mobilize action through simple, impactful design and messaging. The iconic “Uncle Sam” poster is one of the most recognizable ads in history.