20 Successful Marketing Campaign Examples to Spark Your Inspiration
Successful marketing campaigns ensure your company continues to get new leads and conversions. A good marketing campaign raises awareness about your brand and connects with your preferred audiences. It also sets your company up for success, introducing your target audience to your products and services so they can purchase from you in the future.
To get inspired on how to market to your target audience, here are some helpful pieces of information about marketing campaigns and examples of top marketing campaigns from best-selling brands.
What is a marketing campaign?
Marketing campaigns are activities you complete to promote your products or services. The goals of marketing campaigns can vary, and some will be to advertise products for sale, build brand awareness, reconnect with past clients, or even establish yourself as a thought leader and trustworthy business.
Marketing campaigns often include multiple strategies, channels, and messages so they can best connect with the right audience and get the highest return on investment (ROI).
What is the difference between marketing campaigns and advertising campaigns?
While marketing campaigns can include advertising, advertising campaigns aren’t exactly the same as marketing campaigns.
Marketing campaigns are broader than advertising campaigns. Marketing campaigns may include a number of tactics, such as advertising or using social media to connect with audiences. Creating an ad campaign for TV commercials or creating content for a blog could fall under the marketing campaign umbrella.
On the other hand, advertising campaigns are limited to advertising. They are specifically designed for one purpose: To get your products or services in front of your target audience, get leads, and convert them to sales.
20 Best Marketing Campaign Examples
Marketing campaigns can help build brand awareness, convert leads to sales, and ensure your target audience can remember the slogan that makes your business unique. Marketers used clever tactics in these marketing campaign examples and advertising campaigns to connect with audiences and drive sales; impressively, some went viral.
- Old Spice: “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like”
Old Spice is a famous soap and body spray, but making it interesting can be tough. Fortunately, the brand’s marketers discovered that targeting women could help them boost sales among men. Using a humorous campaign, Old Spice claims its highlighted male representative is “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,” cleverly focusing on the “ideal male” as a part of the marketing process.
- Dove: “Real Beauty”
Everyone is beautiful—that’s what Dove wanted to get across in its Real Beauty campaign. Pushing for confidence among women of all colors and sizes (and recognizing their differences) was a massive part of this awareness campaign. It drove sales to $4 billion from $2.5 billion over the course of 10 years.
- Nike: “Just Do It”
Among the most famous marketing campaigns is Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign. This one focuses on how people can push through discomfort and achieve their goals. It talks about overcoming adversity while inspiring its audiences. Targeting the emotions of those in your target market can help you connect in the same way.
- Warner Bros & Mattel: “Barbie”
Barbie is a household name, but its marketing campaign draws attention because of the breadcrumb strategy that took the movie and Mattel’s products to new heights. Throughout the marketing campaign, people got small looks into the movie and new products. By the time they were released, audiences were keen to make their purchases. Sometimes, focusing on making your audience curious can help you sell more when your products or services are ready.
- Hilton Hotels: “Hilton. For the Stay”
Getting people to watch a 10-minute-long ad on TikTok is a challenge, to say the least, but Hilton Hotels made it happen. The advertisement takes viewers around to different influencers and celebrities staying in Hiltons, all while making fun of itself for being such a long ad. The brand offered prizes for sitting through the entire video, giving users a reason to stick around and learn about the brand.
- Tinder: “It Starts with a Swipe”
Tinder’s “It Starts With a Swipe” campaign is its first step toward changing its image. The campaign, which went global, instead promotes meaningful connections (rather than hookups). It became popular because so many of its members actually want longer-term relationships, with 31% of Gen Z members saying that was their goal. By listening to what its users want and addressing those wishes in its marketing efforts, Tinder posed itself for success.
- Netflix: “Streamberry”
There’s something amusing about making fun of your own brand, and that’s what Netflix took advantage of when it was referenced as Streamberry in an episode of Black Mirror called Joan Is Awful. To hang onto the joke and market itself with it, Netflix created a Streamberry website of its own and added real images of its users (reflecting the episode’s theme). The promotional website allows users to take photos of themselves and says those photos “could end up on a billboard,” which is a clever hail back to the episode again.
Today’s audiences want personalization more than ever before, and this kind of engaging, personalized interaction fits the bill.
- Airbnb: “Made Possible by Hosts”
Behind every beautiful Airbnb and every rental room is a host who makes it possible to share their space. “Made Possible By Hosts” was a campaign that showed users new places and what they could experience when staying with hosts. The campaign used user-generated content and reached over 17 million views.
- Coca-Cola: “Share a Coke”
Coca-Cola is a household name and doesn’t really have to do much to stay front of mind for consumers, but it pushed further with the Share a Coke campaign in 2011. Starting in Australia, Coke began printing labels with popular names on them and the phrase “Share a Coke with…”. By doing this, it encouraged consumers to buy Cokes to share with friends with the same names.
- Kellogg’s: “Wow”
When you grab a bowl of Kellogg’s, you may recall its famous marketing campaign and first Super Bowl ad, “Wow,” which hit TVs and streaming devices in 2018. The commercial focused on a new trend, flavor stacking with different Pringles, and showed a unique way to use a popular product.
- California Milk Processor Board: “Got Milk?”
Growing up and living in the United States, it was hard to miss the California Milk Processor Board’s “Got Milk?” campaign. It ran for around 20 years and helped boost milk sales by 6%. It showed people, such as popular celebrities, with milk mustaches, all while going into the benefits of drinking milk.
- Heineken: “Worlds Apart”
Heineken is a global beer brand, but it needs to promote itself to stay relevant in each of its target countries. The Worlds Apart marketing campaign did that by connecting that no matter where people are, they are all part of a global community. The brand invested time into studying research and analytics to build its message and connect.
- Apple: “Shot on iPhone”
Apple has some of the best camera technology on the market installed in its iPhones, but not everyone understands how to take advantage of it. To show off its high-tech features and why consumers should buy it, Apple took photos sent to it by its own users and blew them up onto a billboard.
- Google: “A Year in Search”
Google’s “A Year in Search” is a global marketing campaign. It started at the end of 2009 and shows how much consumers use the search engine over the course of the year. It showcases top topics and how integrated Google is in its users’ lives. Bringing people together and making a positive connection can boost your brand, too.
- Kay Jewelers: “Every Kiss Begins with Kay”
Since 1985, Kay Jewelers has used the phrase (and jingle) “Every Kiss Begins With Kay.” It’s clever because it plays on the spelling of “kiss” and the name of the company. It’s also a simple phrase, and the addition of a song with it makes it memorable. Sometimes, tried and true brand recognition techniques work, and that’s reflected in Kay’s marketing.
- GoPro: “GoPro Awards”
GoPro Awards was a unique marketing campaign because it featured user-generated content to connect with a much larger audience. The campaign has run a few times, with over 77 million impressions in 2018. The latest, the 2023 contest, had over 42,000 submissions.
- Red Bull: “Stratos”
Red Bull has always been associated with stunts, and it was no different with the Stratos Mission. In 2012, the brand sent Austrian skydiver Flix Baumgartner up into the stratosphere, where he promptly free-fell and parachuted back down to the ground. The campaign got over 60 million impressions.
- Pepsi: “The Pepsi Challenge”
Back in the 1970s, Pepsi connected with its target audience with the Pepsi Challenge. It had people try Pepsi and Coke in a blind taste test, determining which they preferred. Raising awareness in this way led to Pepsi gaining 25.6% of the soda pop market by 1985.
- Domino’s Pizza: “Piece of the Pie Rewards”
Nearly everyone loves a good pizza, and Domino’s took advantage of that with the Piece of the Pie rewards program. It was sent to over 310 smartphone users and engaged users with its rewards program app. The rewards program gives back to customers with 10 points per dollar on orders of $10 or more. With sixty points, users score a free pizza.
- De Beers: “A Diamond is Forever”
Diamonds were not always the stone of choice for engagement rings, but De Beers created the age of the diamond with its “A Diamond Is Forever” campaign. It also focused on how much someone should or shouldn’t spend on a diamond ring based on income, something that persists in social behavior today.
12 Types of Marketing Campaigns
If you’re ready to market to your preferred audience, you can do so in one of several ways. Here are some types of marketing campaigns to get you started:
- Brand Awareness Campaign
With a brand awareness campaign, your goal is to get your brand in front of your audience. You might create interesting videos or launch ads to talk about your story.
- Brand Development Campaign
Growing your brand and building awareness goes further with a brand development campaign. Use ads that create an emotional connection, and you’ll stay front of mind.
- Product Marketing Campaign
A product marketing campaign is usually related to the release of a new product and focuses on why people need to buy your product.
- Social Media Campaign
Heading onto social media gives you the opportunity to connect with your audience, where it spends much of its time. You get free engagement opportunities, which can help you grow your audience organically.
- User-Generated Content (UGC) Campaign
With user-generated content campaigns, you use your audience’s content to promote your brand. It saves you much-needed marketing dollars and builds social proof.
- Content Marketing Campaign
A content marketing campaign generally focuses on providing your audience with helpful, entertaining, relevant content. It may not have the primary intention of selling a product, but a strong call-to-action is typical.
- Email Marketing Campaign
Email marketing is a good way to connect to those who are on your email list. It’s a low-cost option and gives you a direct link to your customers’ inboxes.
- Paid Marketing Campaign
Paid marketing campaigns require you to pay per click or per impression while placing ads in front of a target audience.
- Acquisition Marketing Campaign
An acquisition marketing campaign focuses on growing your business by engaging current customers and finding new customers.
- Affiliate Marketing Campaign
Affiliate marketing allows consumers to make money from your sales. When they share the products and you get a sale, they get a cut of the sale.
- Rebranding Campaign
Rebranding campaigns help you realign your business. You can use it to change your brand’s imagery and motto, goals, and purpose.
- SEO Campaign
An SEO campaign attempts to boost your position on search engines and draw in more organic traffic by adding SEO keywords to your website and building social proof.
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