Here are a few of the greatest marketing promotions ever!
11 - Got Milk?
Campaigns Awon Bwwwwrrrrrr!!!
Who can remember that iconic ad where the poor guy coudn’t win 10k just because his
mouth was full of his peanut butter sandwich?!
Sometimes ad teams are hired to sell sexy new products, cool gadgets, or hip brands.
But sometimes they’re hired to sell milk.
But really though, I’m wondering what the percentage of adults that drink milk is!
Anyways, how do you really get people to drink more of something that most of the world already
knows about?
Ad man Jeff Goodby found the solution with two ingenious words, “Got Milk?”
The tagline’s origin was created as a result of a woman in a focus group saying that the
only time she even thought about milk was when she ran out of it.
Goodby scribbled his response, “Got milk?” and the rest is history.
One of the most effective marketing campaigns was born.
A series of commercials and print campaigns capitalized on that anxiety, none better than
the Aaron Burr bit.
The campaign was effective to remind people to not get caught being outta of milk only
after the cereal is poured.
10 - Budweiser: Whassahhhh Whassahhhhhhhhhh!!!
Beer brands have been doing bro humor forever, and it’s not gonna stop, because c’mon,
who’s the target audience here?!
Few campaigns have done it better than Budweiser’s “Whassup,” commercial with the catchphrase
that set the standard for silliness that works.
The campaign actually had humble beginnings.
It was based on a short film called “True” by Charles Stone the third that featured friends
and their unique greeting.
Later, they turned it into a Budweiser ad that first aired in late 1999, but it really
hit the mainstream after it appeared during the Super Bowl commercials in 2000.
The ad featured a few friends calling each other to see what they were up to.
The commercial really kept played up the fact that dudes can quickly turn up and or turn
down depending on the situation.
9 - Wendy’s: Where’s the beef?
This ad campaign is an oldie, but a goodie.
"Where's the beef?" was, and arguable still is, a catchphrase in the US and Canada.
It originated as a slogan for Wendy's, as they wanted to let people know their hamburgers
aren’t just all bun!
Since the ad campaign has launched, it’s become an all-purpose phrase questioning the
substance of an idea, event or product.
The strategy behind the campaign was to distinguish competitors’ big name hamburgers from Wendy's
'modest' Single by focusing on the large bun used by the competitors and the larger beef
patty in Wendy's hamburger.
In the ad titled "Fluffy Bun", actress Clara Peller receives a burger with a massive bun
from a fictional competitor, which uses the slogan "Home of the Big Bun".
The small patty prompts Peller to hangrily ask, "Where's the beef?!".
One fun fact was that the original commercial was originally supposed to star a young couple,
but the director didn’t find the concept funny and that’s when the iconic elderly
ladies became icons.
8 - Metro Trains: Dumb Ways to Lie How does a safety public service announcement
for a local train company become the juggernaut of awards ceremonies, netting every creative
prize going?
McCann Melbourne’s “Dumb Ways to Lie” tapped into two elements that are loved almost
universally: catchy music and cute cartoon characters.
Add some really black humor into the mix and you get the beginnings of a cult classic.
Deliberately created to promote viral shareability, the ads featured adorable animated characters
graphically meeting their fate in various let’s just call it, “interesting” ways.
The song, recorded by Tangerine Kitty, went viral itself as well.
Within 24 hours of its launch in November 2012, the “Dumb Ways to D1e” song reached
the top 10 chart on iTunes, but the YouTube video was really the big star.
It was also effective: Metro Trains noticed a 21% reduction in accidents and deaths on
its network as a result of the campaign.
7 - Apple: Get a Mac Are you a Mac or a PC?
Back in 2006 ad ad agency TBWA helped Mac launch the “Get a Mac” campaign.
The series of 66 commercials, also known commonly as “Mac vs. PC,” featured comedic actors
John Hodgman, as a Bill Gates lookalike and nerdy-workaholic PC, and Justin Long, as a
Steve Jobs stand-in personifying a hip Mac computer.
The ads were playful and funny, but also aggressively competitive.
However, TBWA managed not only to make Apple the good guy—the kindhearted Mac was always
telling sad sap PC not to be so hard on himself—but they also got people to pay attention and
care about the boring part of computing.
Security, viruses, rebooting and even syntax errors somehow, someway, became watercooler
conversations.
The campaign spawned legions of parodies and memes as people imitated the either/or proposition
through various lenses.
The only people who didn’t like the ads were probably anyone working for Microsoft
at the time.
6 - American Legacy: Truth It’s rare for two agencies to pitch a client
together and collaborate creatively on every part of a campaign.
But that’s exactly what happened when Arnold Worldwide and Crispin Porter & Bogusky joined
forces to help newly formed American Legacy, a national public health foundation.
These two agencies really wanted to take the anti-smoking fight to big tobacco’s doorstep.
The result was, “Truth,” a fully integrated marketing campaign that launched in February
2000 that visualized the effects of smoking.
The push encouraged rebellion and, for the first time, made it cool to not smoke.
Instead of making a public service announcement, the agencies set out to build a brand.
While other public service announcements were trying to scare smokers by showing death,
the idea for ‘Truth’ was to push against the lies of big tobacco companies.
The campaign was the first real ‘gloves off’ attack on the industry, and one of
the best examples of subverting the traditional paid media approach to get the word out.
Is it because of this particular campaign that the percentage of high school kids smoking
has consistently gone down after its peak in 1997?
5 - P&G: Thank You, Mom Hey, everyone has a soft side, and this ad
campaign hit close to most people’s hearts as everyone came from a mom.
This emotional tear-inducing award-winning ads was exactly what was needed to get consumer
goods giant P&G in front of the world-wide audience during the Olympics.
The new ad was shot on four continents and featured local actors and athletes from each
location - London, Rio de Janeiro, Los Angeles, and Beijing.
It focuses on one mother in each location raising a young athlete and all the work that
goes with it.
It shows those great moms waking their kids up in the morning, making breakfasts, driving
their kids to practice and supporting them with encouragement.
The tagline for the ad is ‘The hardest job in the world is the best job in the world’.
There were even many follow-up ads after this one reached a huge success.
Though the spots focus on sport and Olympic athletes, the ad campaign was universally
loved for its underlying message about love and support.
4 - Old Spice: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like
Before Old Spice’s genius marketing campaign launched, seriously, how many dudes were wearing
old spice out there?
The marketing agency hired to do the campaign figure out that women were making the majority
of body wash purchases.
They realized a lot of men were just using their wife or girlfriend’s body wash and
this really wasn’t good for Old Spice sales.
So, they had to speak to women without alienating men - something Old Spice had never done before.
The challenge turned into an ad, and later a campaign basically revolving around the
slogan "Man Your Man Could Smell Like", played by actor Isaiah Mustafa.
Who can’t remember seeing on TV the Old Spice guy progresses through various extraordinary
situations in exotic locations and costumes?!
The campaign transformed the image of Old Spice being used by weathered old men to a
young and hip dude who’s amazing at pretty much any situation.
What makes this campaign truly mold-breaking is how well it connected with fans with its
Twitter response videos.
Mr. Mustafa recorded them, successfully maintaining his ‘paragon of manliness’ while shooting
personalized video responses to Old Spice fans on Twitter.
3 - Dos Equis: Most Interesting Man in the World
This classic beer campaign broke the mold for beer ads.
Rather than featuring 20-somethings, Dos Equis aged up, making a star out of gray-haired
journeyman actor Jonathan Goldsmith.
In the campaign, he plays the debonair “Most Interesting Man in the World,” who’s pretty
much become one of the most revered ad characters of the century.
Or as one ad suggests, “If he were to pat you on your back, you would list it on your
résumé.”
You know what, if this dude actually existed in real life, I wouldn’t disagree with that!
The ad agency decided to pick an older protagonist so that younger guys wouldn’t see him as
a threat or as a reminder of accomplishments they hadn’t achieved yet.
The campaign was based on a research showing that the greatest fear of young, male bar-goers
was to be thought of as boring.
I’m not gonna disagree with that sentiment either!
2 - Nike: Just Do It Just Do It.
I think a better question to ask is who DOESN’T know that this slogan is a trademark of Nike.
The founder of Wieden and Kennedy agency, Dan Wieden, credits the inspiration for his
"Just Do It" Nike slogan to Gary Gilmore’s last words: "Let's do it."
The "Just Do It" campaign allowed Nike to further increase its share of its North American
domestic shoe business from $877 million to $9.2 billion in worldwide sales in just a
short period of 10 years!
The campaign embodied Nike's image as an innovative American icon associated with success through
the combination of pro athletes and motivational slogans emphasizing sportsmanship and health.
Are there any other shoe companies with just one iconic slogan that lets people immediately
know which brand someone’s talking about?
1 - De Beers: A Diamond Is Forever Did you guys know that in the US, the popularity
of diamond engagement rings declined after the first World W@r, and even more so after
the Great Depression?
Although diamond rings have been around since the middle ages, it was typically reserved
for basically anyone that’s of nobility, that or they were balling outta control.
There was actually a time when girls would rather have had a washing machine or a new
car for their engagement.
Diamond rings were considered wasteful, like throwing money down the drain.
When diamond prices crashed during the depression and engagement rings going out of style among
younger couples, De Beers knew it had to do something.
In 1938, diamond cartel De Beers began a marketing campaign that would have a huge impact on
engagement rings.
A copywriter for ad agency N.W.
Ayer jotted down four words of copy for a long-time client right before she went to
bed.
That’d be the phrase, ‘A Diamond Is Forever’, and that’s how it was born.
Annnnnnd that’s why these days, for any dude looking to get married he’s expected
to spend 2 months of his cash flow on a diamond engagement right.
THANKS DE BEERS.
Here’s what’s next!