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Best Marketing Campaigns Summer 2014
This summer was a great season for marketing campaigns. Over the course of the past few months, we have seen some exciting, innovative and groundbreaking campaigns from a wide range of brands.
Share A Coke
The ‘Share A Coke’ campaign returned for summer 2014. Hundreds of the most popular names in the UK were printed on Coca Cola bottles, allowing consumers to ‘personalise’ their purchase. Consumers enjoyed sharing photos of their bottles of popular social media outlets like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, which further fostered brand awareness for Coke.
Beats By Dre (Before the Game)
The ‘Before the Game’ television spot from Beats By Dre is an emotional and exciting short film featuring World Cup superstars like Neymar, Suarez and Van Persie. Even though Sony was the official sponsor of the World Cup 2014, this campaign ensured that Beats By Dre was the brand name that consumers associated with the football tournament. The campaign was so successful that FIFA eventually banned Beats By Dre headphones from the World Cup.
ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
The Ice Bucket started out as a small viral campaign that eventually became one of the biggest digital campaigns ever. It not only raised awareness of ALS but helped to raise millions for research and patient care. For a period of three weeks in August, Facebook and Twitter feeds were full of celebrities and the general public completing the challenge.
Adidas World Cup
‘All or Nothing’ from Adidas was a star-studded affair. Directed by City of God’s Fernando Meirelles, the television spot featured Luis Suarez, Lionel Messi Dani Alves. It also debuted a new song by Kanye West, which generated even more buzz for the brand. The ad was rumoured to cost upwards of £50 million, but Adidas would not confirm the details.
Lady Gaga For Versace Spring/Summer 2014
In April 2014, Lady Gaga became the face of Versace’s Spring/Summer campaign. The controversial pop star is known for her unorthodox fashion sense, so it was quite a surprising pairing – but, it worked. Versace’s goal was to reinvent itself for a young audience, and Lady Gaga certainly helped to make the brand appeal to younger consumers.
What were your favourite campaigns of summer 2014? Let us know!
Our Thoughts On Lidl’s Rebranding
Discount supermarket chain Lidl is rebranding – but not in the way that you would expect. Rather than changing the look of its logo or brand colours, the company is giving its brand message a makeover. The new £20 million campaign from Lidl aims to shift the focus from the store’s low prices to the quality of its products.
Lidl is not often referred to as a brand that offers high-quality produce and luxury brand items. It is the store that you go to when you want to save a bit of money. So, it will take a lot of work to rebrand Lidl’s identity.
Publicity Stunt: Pop-Up Shop
Last weekend, Lidl hosted a pop-up market in Allen Gardens. The store’s fruits, vegetables, meat and baked goods were put on sale as though they were being sold in a farmer’s market. Camera crews were on the scene to capture the reactions of visitors as they were wowed by the low prices and the quality of the food.
This is not a publicity stunt in the conventional meaning of the term, but it has used a unique format to garner a great deal of press for Lidl. Farmer’s market shoppers are frequented by a consumer group that are likely to dismiss Lidl’s products as cheap and low-quality. By appealing to this group, Lidl has demonstrated that the quality of its products can compete with companies like Waitrose and Sainsbury’s – while offering much lower prices.
Television Ad
The footage from the farmer’s market was used to create an advertisement for the brand. It shows shoppers sampling produce from the market and remarking on the great quality. After making their purchases – and being surprised at the low cost – they are told that the items came from Lidl.
The advert takes a more organic approach to marketing, as it does not make reference to a specific product or price point. It is a departure from previous Lidl ads that were more comedic and very product-heavy. Created by TBWA\London, the ad has a high production value that would be expected from a more up-market brand.
Rebranding can help you reinvent your company or product to give it new life and appeal to a new group of consumers. Win Marketing can help you reinvent your brand. For more information, visit our Branding page or call us at +44(0)1509 265890.
15 Years of Change
This year, Win Marketing celebrates 15 great years. To mark the occasion, we’re counting down fifteen things that have changed in the marketing world – one a week for every year that we’ve been in business.
Communications
When Win Marketing first got started, communication was carried out primarily over the post. The working day was scheduled around ‘first post’ and ‘second post’, as marketers’ deadlines were based on mail collection. Invoices, proofs and many other types of correspondence were sent out via post .
Today, all correspondence is carried out over email. While hard copies are sent through the post as backup documents, email is the preferred method of communication between clients and marketers today.
Terminology
During the last 15 years, plenty of new terms have found their way into the vocabulary of marketing professionals. In 1999, you would never have heard the word ‘Google’ used as a verb. ‘Tablets’ were pills; not computers. Twitter wasn’t around, so ‘tweeting’ was something that was only done by birds. The marketing landscape has changed significantly, and the introduction of so many new terms reflects the ever-developing nature of the industry.
Direct Mail
15 years ago, direct mail was one of the most effective forms of marketing and advertising. It helped brands reach out to local consumers to create brand awareness and market upcoming promotions. Today, e-shots have replaced mail as the go-to direct form of marketing, while mailers and leaflets tend to go straight into the recycling bin. In an increasingly digital market, consumers are more likely to respond to direct messages that they can access online. Direct marketing is also quite popular via text message, and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter provide brands with direct access to communication with consumers.
Win Marketing’s Branding Story
Every company needs to have a brand strategy that is reflective of their identity and mission to help set them apart from the competition. When Ann started Win Marketing 15 years ago, she gave careful consideration to the name and logo to ensure that the physical branding would reflect her company’s mission of using marketing to help clients build winning businesses.
The Name
Starting out, the original name was ‘Goodwin Strategic Marketers’. The name was not quite catchy enough, and it only really applied when Ann was by herself. As the company expanded, she wanted a name that would represent the team she was developing and the direction that they were headed in.
She shortened down her surname into the shorter and more memorable ‘Win Marketing’. It also represented her positive approach to marketing that helps her clients ‘win’. As a dedicated fan of sport, the notion of winning has always been important to Ann. She has applied it to the mission of Win Marketing, helping her clients creating winning businesses through marketing.
“To be successful in marketing means a genuine win:win scenario for our clients, their customers and ourselves,” Ann says. “If our clients and their customers are happy then obviously we will win in the long run as well”.
The Logo
In the Win Marketing logo, the brand is symbolised by an arrow. This is meant to represent Porter’s Marketing Triangle, which emphasises the importance of having a focused marketing strategy. As such, the arrow in our logo represents Win Marketing’s goal of ensuring that clients are focused and going in the right direction when meeting their objectives.
The logo was developed with lowercase letters to make it easier to read. It also allowed for a strong and simple ‘WIN’ to be placed alongside the word ‘Marketing’.
The Colours
Win Marketing’s trademark purple colour scheme was borne of Ann’s desire to do something different. She recognised that many businesses use red and blue as their corporate colours, and she wanted something unique that was also strong and creative.
Ann was used to seeing a lot of purple in her everyday life, since it was her daughter’s favourite colour. She felt that purple made a statement, helping Win Marketing to stand out from the crowd.
Just like we have done with our own brand, Win Marketing can help you develop a successful brand strategy for your company. For more information, view our Branding page or give us a call at: 01509 265 890.
Perfect Viral Marketing from the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
One of the most successful marketing campaigns that we have seen in recent years is the ice bucket challenge for ALS, a devastating neurodegenerative disease. Thanks to the challenge, more than £60 million has been raised for ALS research and patient services – £50 million more than the total raised last year. So, what has made the ALS ice bucket such a success?
Fun and Easy
There isn’t much that you need to do in order to take part in the ice bucket challenge. You pour a bucket of ice water over your head, donate £10 and nominate three friends to do the same. If you don’t participate in the challenge, then you must donate £100. The results are always hilarious because – who doesn’t want to see their friends doused in ice-cold water? It makes for perfect sharing material.
Sense of Urgency
When you nominate a person to do the ice bucket challenge, you give a 24-hour deadline. If your friend does not comply, then they have to donate £100. We’re not sure where the rules came from, but there are in place to create a sense of urgency and get people donating and sharing. Without the deadline, there would likely be fewer ice bucket videos out there.
Participants Feel Good
There’s nothing quite like feeling a sense of accomplishment, and that’s exactly what the ice bucket challenge provides. Participants can feel like they’ve made a difference for a great cause. They can also identify with high-profile celebrities like David Beckham, Bill Gates and even Homer Simpson. It creates a sense of unity over a good cause.
The Beckham Family’s ALS Ice Bucket Challenge:
Compared to Other Viral Campaigns
You can really see exactly why the ice bucket challenge has become so successful simply by looking at other viral marketing campaigns. We all remember the infamous Kony 2012 campaign, which was everything that the ice bucket challenge is not:
It was expensive, requiring participants to spend £20 on a pack of posters. It was time consuming, as a 20-minute video explained the call to action and participants were called to on to spend the night covering their town with posters. There was little urgency, as over a month elapsed between the time the video was first posted and the time that participants were to ‘Cover the Night’. During that time, viewers found a number of discrepancies, including facts that had been distorted by the campaign and misleading information about where the fundraising money would be spent.
Win Marketing is pleased to support the ice bucket challenge and ALS. We’ve made our donation to the ALS Foundation, and you can do the same at: http://www.alsa.org/donate/.
