Top Marketing Campaigns over the Years

2016 – What a year. A lot of strange things happened; things that were good and some not so good and most importantly outside of the norm. However, breaking the norm is what digital marketing is all about and this time brands went all out.

The best marketing campaigns of 2016 were experimental, embraced cause marketing, collaborative marketing, live video, data, and consumer insights. Here are the top 5 that stood out for us:

“Deez Nuts” by Frontier Airlines
This promotion came at the right time with Deez nuts appearing all over the internet and the airline saw the opportunity and snatched it up. “Deez fares are nuts,” the company said on their website and in emails. We obviously can’t speak to the impact on website traffic and sales generated by this campaign, but we can say that the promotion gained a lot of press and deal slashing airline. And of course, who doesn’t like cheap flight tickets?? That is surely something to go nuts over.

The great thing about this marketing campaign is that they included an email campaign with it.

“The Dress”
Do you remember when the internet lost its mind over the colour of a dress? Was the dress blue and black or white and gold? People chimed in across multiple social media platforms and national news stations to voice their opinion on why the dress was a certain colour combination. And the most amazing part was when brands jumped on the dress colour bandwagon. From Dunkin’ Donuts to Lego and yes, even Oreo Cookie, until Adobe finally settled the debate with a scientific explanation that the colours are indeed BLUE and Black.

“Straight Outta Compton”
The meme that took the world by storm. If you have on social media recently, you’ll have noticed the stream of black and white profile pictures declaring “Straight Outta… (Somewhere).” Beats by Dre created the Straight Outta Compton meme to promote the new movie about the rise of rap group N.W.A and the meme inspired people to fill in the blank with their hometown in the signature design. Within a few days of the site’s launch, over 6 million people created memes and over the course of two days, #StraightOutta was retweeted more than 15 000 times per seconds. People and brands couldn’t help but relish the opportunity to get a little creative and silly.

“Oreo’s Lights Out Super Bowl Moment”
Whether you are a football fan or not, you may remember a moment of darkness during the third quarter of Super Bowl of 2013. The power in the Superdome went out for 34 minutes, causing advertisers to quickly think on their feet. And one of the best and quickest response was Oreo. Oreo came out with a clever ad “Power out? No problem,” with a dimly lit image of a lone Oreo and a caption, “You can still dunk in the dark.” The message caught on almost immediately, gaining nearly 20 000 retweets and more than 20 000 likes on Facebook.

“De Beers: A Diamond is Forever”
But our ultimate favourite ad created by a brand goes to De Beers Diamonds.
De Beers’ “A Diamond is Forever” the most memorable slogan of the twentieth century. But the campaign, which proposed (pun very much intended) the idea that no marriage would be complete without a diamond ring, wasn’t just riding on the coattails of an existing industry .

What are your biggest and favourite ads of all time?