2023 has been a great year for witnessing innovative brand campaigns… from relaunching Barbie to football stars swapping Twitter accounts, there’s been a wide range of interesting, creative, and successful campaigns to delve into.
So, as a business owner, what can you learn from these innovative brand marketing campaigns and apply to your business?
What makes a great brand campaign?
Before we dive into some specific case studies, it’s useful to note that all innovative brand marketing campaigns that work have these things in common –
- Creative storytelling
- Tailor to your audience
- Have a strong message
- Use striking visuals
- Convey an emotion
These factors mean your campaign will stand out in a crowded market, appeal to your ideal customers, and be memorable.
But these are not easy things to master… it takes skill and expertise to deliver a marketing campaign, let alone a truly innovative one that’s not been done before.
Innovative brand campaign 1: Barbie Movie
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll have seen the relaunch of the Barbie brand this year and the frenzy it’s caused online.
The brand campaign involved many different aspects.
A large part included partnering with brands like Zara, Airbnb, and Uno for collaborations.
Another was utilising influencer marketing with big names on different social media platforms. There were also lots of shareable memes going around. This allowed them to reinvent themselves to be relevant to today’s world.
By leveraging people and brands that have a similar audience to their target market, they managed to spread the word online and create a real buzz before the movie came out.
Margot Robbie, the main character who plays Barbie, attended press events and red carpet features in different outfits that were recreated from the original dolls.
The main reason the Barbie marketing was so effective was it drew out a key, powerful emotion – nostalgia.
Highlighting memories of your own childhood but reinventing the way it looked helped the Barbie movie hype to span generations, going from Mum who played with the dolls to her daughter.
Innovative brand campaign 2: Sky Bet
Most betting companies have the same sign up offers, so how do you attract people to use your platform?
This is where innovation and thinking outside of the box is needed… and Sky Bet nailed it with a simple shift.
What did they do?
Instead of the usual bet £10, get £20 in free bets, they offered people a free go on Super 6 – “Super 6: Predict six correct scores. Win £1 Million.”
They pushed app installs through Twitter to promote the prize, getting an 8.6% spike in installs after only two days.
This worked so well because not only do people get enticed by the chance to win a million, but they also don’t have to add their credit card details.
The friction is removed so they sign up straight away and don’t think about it.
Then before you know it, they’re a repeat customer.
The chances of winning are actually much slimmer, so the cost to get the new customer is reduced.
Sky Bet prove your innovative brand marketing campaign doesn’t need to be complicated to be successful.
Sometimes the simple ideas win.
Innovative brand campaign 3: Vimto (or ‘vimpto’)
Vimto is a fruity drinks company that often gets pronounced wrong.
So, to poke fun at themselves and as a nod to their customers, they created a billboard with their name spelt wrong – Vimpto.
The ‘P’ was in a different colour, highlighting how many people add this to their name when saying it out loud.
It went viral on social media and had many people laughing at the realisation that they also said the name wrong, but perhaps hadn’t realised it before…
Again, another example that being innovative in your marketing campaigns doesn’t need to be difficult.
This Vimto ad involves their audience, and as a well-known and long-standing brand they had plenty of customer conversations and social listening data to use.
How can you apply these methods to create great brand marketing campaigns for your business?
You may not have brand loyalty or budgets on the same scale as these three examples, but there are certainly lessons from each that you can apply to your own business.
Play on emotions
Nostalgia is one of the strongest emotions out there.
Is there a way you can use this to tell your brand story and bring up memories?
Think of comparisons and situations you can apply that relate to your brand.
Storytelling techniques help to make your message more relatable and emotional.
Keep it simple
Often people mistake innovative with complicated.
Sky Bet and Vimto prove otherwise… what simple shift can you make to change your messaging, make your process easier, or poke fun at yourself?
Combine creative and copy
All great examples used a strong message (that wasn’t complicated) with clear and striking visuals.
You can do the same for your business.
Remember to always identify a core message and tie in your creative with your brand identity and strategy – bringing together the three elements of branding.
Involve your audience
Make it clear what they get from getting involved in the brand marketing campaign and put their engagement front and centre.
Whatever you do in marketing and branding should always be customer-first – they’re the lifeblood of any successful business.
Start creating stand-out brand campaigns for your marketing
Now you can use these simple techniques to start thinking differently about creating awesome marketing campaigns for your brand.
It’s all about thinking about an angle and going with it in a way your audience will enjoy and is easy to understand.
If it’s too sophisticated in the message, you’ll lose people.
At Make a Brew, we can help you to come up with an innovative brand campaign – and also help you to deliver it.
Acting as your on-demand creative director, move your business forward the right way without managing the process yourself.
Get in touch to book a brew and see what I can bring to your business.
