6 examples of extraordinarily successful marketing campaigns
We live in the era of consumption. In the West, we are accustomed to being progressively improving the quality of life. We have more and more needs that we impose on ourselves or on society itself.
That’s why the advertising industry plays a fundamental role in our current life system. With advertising, we expand our consumption expectations, and in recent years, through advertising, the innovations that are available to us on the screens of computers reach our home.
Therefore, there is no doubt that advertising is a tool capable of influencing society and is capable of generating a significant impact by moving masses and becoming viral. In this rapid expansion, social networks play a crucial role, since they are handy channels for companies, and besides being economical, they generate considerable benefits.
Next, we highlight several marketing campaigns that have achieved great success and social impact in recent years.
1.- Always – Like a girl
The “Like a girl” campaign by the Always brand was launched for the first time in June 2014 and quickly went viral. Also, it was one of the most popular ads that were aired during the 2014 Super Bowl.
The experiment that showed the ad was straightforward. It consisted of asking a group of children and adolescents, between 5 and 20 years, to do activities such as running, throwing or fighting with someone “like a girl.”
When asked to exemplify these activities, the boys and girls over 13 years old followed the stereotypes that society imposes and ran in a ridiculous way, they threw things without force or decision, and they fought holding on to their hair.
On the contrary, when this same activity was formulated for children under 10 years old, everything was completely different. The girls, who still did not know the negative connotation of the words “like a girl,” ran with determination, threw things with force and fought hard.
The company showed with this great campaign how simple words can have the power to give strength or denigrate someone, and how a single phrase can destroy or affect the perception of a whole gender.
Therefore, we can say that it is a campaign that seeks change and cries out to rewrite the rules and end the absurd generalized ideas of one gender or another.
The vindictive campaign caused such a stir, which it won the EMMY 2015 award as the best ad of the year.
2.- Dove – Real Beauty Sketches
The Dove brand revolutionized social networks with this powerful campaign called Real Beauty Sketches. The campaign started with a revealing data: Only 4% of women consider themselves beautiful. Starting from this base, the company Dove carried out this campaign that inspires women and encourages them to improve their self-esteem.
The company opted to do an original experiment. It was that several women had to describe themselves to a person who could not see them. This person was Gil Zamora, a cartoonist trained by the FBI expert in making robot portraits of people from memories and descriptions.
Therefore, through some questions to know how the protagonists of the experiment looked, the artist was drawing them according to how they were describing themselves. Subsequently, the artist repeated the drawing of the women themselves, but this time according to the description of another woman who was impartial when making the description.
The result was shocking. It was seen the negative view that women had of themselves, and on the contrary, the portrait made from the description of other women showed people much more attractive than the one based on the description of those involved.
The Real Beauty Sketches campaign achieved more than 163 million views on YouTube, making it the most watched ad on YouTube. Also, it won the Titanium Grand Prix at the International Cannes Film Festival in 2013.
3.- Ice bucket Challenge
The Ice Bucket Challenge campaign went around the world. Surely you watched some video on a social network where both anonymous people and many celebrities took part in this challenge.
The challenge began on August 7, 2014. 200 people gathered in a plaza in Boston to do the challenge. The objective was simple; it wanted to draw attention to the public on the disease of the ALS (a neurodegenerative disease that weakens the muscles, causes loss of mobility of arms and legs and makes it difficult to speak, breathe or swallow) to raise money and deal with this disease.
The challenge was simple. It consisted of throwing a cube with ice water to yourself and nominate three other people to perform the challenge and donate ten euros to the cause. The chosen people had to do the challenge in the 24 hours following the nomination, and in this way, continue with the chain.
The social phenomenon soon flooded the internet, in fact, more than 142 million results were created in Google, and in a single week, more than 2.4 million videos had already been shared on Facebook.
One of the keys to this campaign was the large number of celebrities who took part. In fact, people like Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook, was one of the first to participate and nominated Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, who also participated in the cause. Other celebrities such as Beyoncé, members of KISS, Steven Spielberg or Leo Messi also took part.
In just two weeks since its beginning, the ALS Association received donations worth more than 31.5 million dollars and in one month raised more than 100 million dollars.
But some experts showed their concern because they argued that this type of phenomenon hinders the real involvement of people in social causes. Many said that this kind of solidarity campaigns encouraged vague activism, that is, that people took part without really thinking about the problem.
4.- Pepsi – Test Drive
For the announcement, the American driver Jeff Gordon volunteered to disguise himself and to pass himself off as a quiet and shy man who wanted to try a car at a dealership. But when the driver gets in the car with the car salesman, the real show starts.
The video has already more than 44 million visits since it was published for the first time in 2013. It is an excellent test that when you do amazing things that come out a bit of the normal, people want to see and share it.
5.- Old Spice – The man you could smell like
Some experts call this campaign the most successful and renowned of recent times. In fact, it already has more than 52 million visits on YouTube and more than 188,000 “likes.”
After the success of the announcement, the brand did not stop there. They released many other short videos on the internet, where the protagonist called “The man that your man could smell like,” answered dozens of questions, thoughts, and doubts made by different users of Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks. This way this campaign broke a new barrier of interactive marketing since the brand was in continuous contact with users paying attention to what was being said about their campaign, to then make a video with the character responding to all these messages.
According to statistical data, thanks to this campaign, Old Spice managed to increase its sales by 107% in just 30 days from the launch date.
6.- Volvo Trucks
In November 2014, the Volvo brand launched it’s famous The epic Split campaign. The protagonist of this shocking campaign was Jean-Claude Van Damme, a Belgian actor, an expert in Karate.
In the ad, the protagonist had to stand between two moving Volvo FM trucks, with one foot in the side mirror of each truck. The Belgian actor performs one of his most famous acrobatics, opening his legs entirely while both vehicles are circulating and remain in that position during the journey.
The objective of the campaign is to show how reliable the trucks are and the stability and precision they offer. It is a straightforward campaign, but one that impacts a lot. In fact, it already has more than 82 million visits on YouTube.
These six marketing campaigns show the high impact that advertising can achieve and also, that with a few simple ideas, you can do great projects that can become viral.
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