The Best Marketing Campaigns of 2016, Part I
A lot can be used to describe 2016. When it comes to 2016 digital marketing campaigns, that word is “great!” Here’s a roundup of the best digital marketing campaigns chosen by marketing agencies around the internet.
Comedy Central and The Daily Show’s Secret Game
Adhere names this as No. 1 in their Top 10 Influential Social Media Marketing Campaigns of 2016. When it was announced that Trevor Noah would be taking over for Jon Stewart as the host of the Daily Show, Comedy Central unleashed a marketing campaign Google called “ingenious in its simplicity.”
Buying ads under certain keywords and phrases—”Who’s his girlfriend?” “Where’s that accent from?” “What’s his humor like?” for example—Comedy Central featured videos from the upcoming host answering each of them. However, they didn’t announce that they didn’t do any of these videos—they instead relied on the super sleuths of the internet to figure out what was going on and make it go viral.
As Google reports:
“Fans who saw the ads quickly realized that there was a whole series of videos they could track down—and the campaign took off from there. News outlets like Slate, the A.V. Club, and Uproxx reported on the game and got in on the fun, looking for videos and giving readers clues. Fans on Reddit cracked the code and helped each other find all the videos.
All told, the search campaign (in conjunction with TrueView and Lightbox ads that extended the reach of the campaign) generated 38M impressions and 2.8M views. When people clicked through to the videos, they watched them. The average viewer watched more than 85% of each video, amounting to 80 days of watch-time total.”
This digital marketing campaign is not only creative, it taps into the interactive experience many consumers want. Add in a bit of a mystery, and it won’t take long before you got an audience obsessed with learning everything it can.
#SeizetheHoliday from Virgin Holidays
BrandWatch lists this digital marketing campaign from Virgin Holidays as one of their The Ten Best Marketing Campaigns of 2016. The ad first aired during the UK’s hit show “The X Factor” (the show that influenced American Idol), and featured live shots from around the world all in real-time.
As Marketing Week reported before the ad launched:
The campaign involves 90 production crew who will film simultaneous scenes of influencers in their destinations, from riding the Pacific Coast highway in San Francisco to snorkeling in Barbados.
The ad, which has been developed by creative agency AMV BBDO, will be shot ‘right up to the wire” and live edited to fill its 60-second slot. The company has plans to flick to other locations if anything goes wrong but [Claire Cronin, Virgin Holidays vice-president of customer and marketing] says ‘there is only so much you can really plan for with a live ad.’ Instead, she says that the brand will follow the company’s motto “screw it, let’s do it.’
After the ad aired on TV, it was also released on Facebook Live, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and other social media. They combined it with a fun hashtag #SeizeTheHoliday.
The ambitious ad paid off. As Marketing Week reported, “The campaign resulted in 16.9 million impressions from its promoted tweets and 838 web searches per minute at 8.20pm when it was broadcast live during the X Factor.”
This ad campaign was unique, and shows creative ways you can use live video to promote your brand.
Deadpool Marketing Campaign
(Warning: the video below is NSFW. Well, if you’re a marketer, you should be looking at it for work purposes … But maybe put some headphones on?)
It was an R-rated movie with a character few knew about apart from comic book fans. How to get an audience interested in this crude character in a red suit? The geniuses behind the Deadpool campaign came up with billboards, social media and television ads, displays, etc., all featuring adult-themed humor. It instantly said that this wasn’t a typical superhero movie.
The marketing campaign earned the Deadpool marketers a nomination for the Clios Key Art Award for Best Integrated Campaign. It prompted them to make a short video featuring Deadpool explaining how they went about it.
Deadpool’s most recent campaign brings in $300 million worldwide. Not bad for a superhero no one had really heard about before, right?
We’ll have more of the best 2016 marketing campaigns in an upcoming blog. In the meantime, tell us: What was your favorite marketing campaign of 2016?