When a marketing campaign works, it really hits the spot and resonates with the general public. There are plenty of examples of great marketing campaigns and TV adverts in particular where we all know the tunes and the images and recreate them at home with our friends and family. If you’ve ever whistled along to a McDonald’s tune, or walked around saying “Just do It” whenever you’ve seen someone in Nike trainers, you’ll know how powerful advertising and marketing campaigns can be for building a brand.
2020 was a weird year all round for everyone, so marketers had to think outside the box and look at ever-more weird and wonderful ways to get the message across about their brands and to build marketing campaigns that were interesting and got us all talking during a pandemic and different stages of lockdown life. Here, we take a look at a few of the best marketing campaigns of last year.
Love that feeling?
The AA – The Automobile Association. During the whole of 2020 we saw many ad campaigns that were centred around sentimental feelings, making the most of time with our family and loved ones during such a traumatic time. The AA took a slightly different approach and looked towards joy as the primary feeling behind the campaign, and it really worked!
In July last year, as we prepared to come out of the first national lockdown, the AA introduced its brand-new mascot, Tukker. The puppet dog was brought into life to remind drivers and pedestrians of the joyous feeling of freedom that we were soon to return to. In the advert linked to the campaign, Tukker was playing a song on a record player in his bright yellow living room, with a fan spinning to recreate the experience of driving with the windows down on the open road. The campaign was first launched on social media and led to a 74% increase in positive engagement compared with the previous work by the AA. As a quality piece of marketing, they also launched drive-in cinema events throughout the UK, boosting brand recognition and positive engagement even further.
Whassup!
Not all of you will remember the original Budweiser ‘Whassup!’ ad from the late 90s, but it was so popular and so successful that you’ll almost certainly have seen a parody of it, or heard an older family member shout it over to you at some point over the last 20 years! It’s one of those all-time great marketing campaigns and last year, Bud brought it back to our screens. They took the original ad and put new audio over the top of it, with the four men now saying to each other “just quarantining, having a bud”.
Back in the 90s the original ad was a great showcase of how simple and brilliant male friendship can be, sharing their feelings with each other, but since then male mental health has come to the forefront and 2020 saw a big push on campaigns to get men talking. The new bud advert took this general mood of lockdown to make sure that all men know it is safe to talk to each other and to ask your friends if they are ok. They backed the campaign up on social media with #togetheratadistance and the #SavePubLife to help out the hospitality sector, especially pubs and bars that have struggled the last year due to enforced closure and social distancing measures. The new Bud “Whassup!” advert was a creative way to revive a classic in a relevant and modern way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uq7Bm_XQjs
Let’s take a trip with Expedia
One of the sectors that felt the biggest impact of the pandemic was the travel industry. Overnight, international travel was banned, and package holidays wiped out. This has crept into 2021 too, with different lockdowns announced at various stages and a new traffic light system confusing things for tourists about where and when they can travel and whether or not quarantine would be required at both ends of the journey.
Expedia looked to immediately make a mark with a brilliant marketing campaign in 2020, providing the hope we all needed to book holidays after all this is over. ‘Let’s take a trip’ was a brilliant stop-motion film that shows a couple recreating holiday moments at their home, using sheets, cushions, books to recreate scenes of diving into a swimming pool, hike a mountain, order in room service etc. It didn’t shy away from Covid and the fact no one was getting a holiday last summer, but instead showed us the best bits of a holiday and how Expedia will be there to help us have those beautiful moments when the time comes again, in a playful, creative way.
Did somebody say Just Eat?
A ditty that you’ll never get out of your head, an ear-worm for the ages, the 2020 Just Eat campaign starring Snoop Dogg was a standout marketing campaign of last year. It is reported that Snoop was paid over £5m to appear in the new Just Eat campaign but it is surely worth it because orders through the online takeaway service rose an incredible 43% in the third quarter of 2020, and the takeaway sector as a whole has increased its revenues significantly, as restaurants have been forced to close and a good night out for food has become a good night in.
The ‘did somebody say Just Eat?’ concept is a winner right from the off, the type of campaign slogan that is easy to get stuck in your head and sneaks up on you when you least expect it, leading to midweek Just Eat orders because you’ve been saying Just Eat, to yourself! Adding the star power of Snoop Dogg and his own version of the song including lyrics about getting “chicken wings to the crib” and ordering “tacos to the chateau” is memorable, funny and light-hearted at a time when we really needed it as a nation.
Building fresh and innovative digital marketing campaigns with Candy
Candy Marketing is built on fresh ideas and always looking for the most creative and interesting ways to increase brand awareness for our clients. The best marketing campaigns have that something special, but at their core they have a pure understanding of the brand, the target market and the zeitgeist of the moment.
To find out more about Candy and our range of services, please feel free to contact us on 0161 826 0123 or hello@candymarketing.co.uk and we’ll help you put together digital marketing campaigns that speaks volumes for your company and speaks directly to your intended audience.
