5 lessons from bold marketing campaigns
Marketing campaigns are an opportunity for your brand to stand out from the crowd, capture attention, and connect with your audience.
But they don’t always hit the mark – and, in some cases, can do more harm than good.
It’s important to thoroughly plan marketing campaigns, including audience targeting, placement, and messaging.
It can feel daunting, but there’s a lot you can learn from others.
Here, we’ll look at some of the boldest marketing campaigns (in our opinion) and what we can learn from them.
Lesson 1: Target your audience, so it leaves a lasting impact
What starts as a campaign slogan can sometimes turn into a strategic message.
When a campaign captures your brand’s essence and you thoroughly research your target audience, a campaign can evolve into something much, much bigger.
Campaign: Nike and ‘Just Do It’
Launched in 1988, the phrase was used in Nike’s first major TV campaign, unifying a number of commercials developed by different creative teams targeting different sports. They needed something that would resonate with both top athletes and hobbyists.
And resonate it did.
‘Just do it’ became a key strategic message for Nike, being used in digital and print media to this day – as Davide Grasso, past VP of global brand marketing at Nike states, it’s “still as relevant to us as a brand as it was 23 years ago” (source).
But why did it resonate? And how can you create your own?
According to the agency behind the phrase, Weiden + Kennedy, the goal of the campaign was to target a wide range of people, from athletes at the pinnacle of their sport to your everyday Joe trying to motivate themselves to go out for a walk (source).
The campaign had clear objectives and multiple creative directions based on the target. It then needed a simple but memorable catchphrase to tie it all together. And that’s what they achieved with ‘just do it’.
While their competitors were focused on athletes and aspirational figures, Nike focused on their target audience and how they would feel, planting the seed of a phrase that would carry the Nike strategic message through decades worth of marketing campaigns.
Bonus campaign
Nike are well known for their innovative and inventive marketing campaigns.
Another well-known controversy was their ‘banned’ campaign with Michael Jordan after they paid $1,000-5,000 in fines per NBA game that Jordan wore black and red Air Jordans.
The campaign is still talked about, and the shoe reportedly sold 1.5 million pairs in the first 6 weeks (source).
Figure 1: Nike ‘Just Do It’ Campaign
Lesson 2: Bold campaigns should make you stop and think
Bold campaigns are great for catching the eye but for them to have any type of ROI, you need to get people to remember it.
One of the easiest ways to do that is to convey a message and make people think.
It’s why mildly controversial ads often do well – they provoke a reaction and stick in viewers’ minds.
Campaign: Burger King’s ‘The Mouldy Whopper’
At the beginning of 2020, Burger King unveiled a new, bold marketing campaign that split opinion.
Released as a video and a set of static images, the campaign showed the decomposition of a Whopper over 34 days.
The video ends with the tagline ‘the beauty of no artificial preservatives.’
The campaign marked the roll out of a Whopper with no artificial preservatives, colours, or flavours in the US.
Now, the visuals are quite off-putting and there was some negative feedback at the time – for example, Erik Winther Paisley at The Drum wrote, ‘frankly I don’t think it’s in Burger King’s best interest to associate their brand with rot and decay’ – but it catches the eye and makes you think (source).
While your first thought may be of repulsion, the ad highlights Burger King’s lack of artificial ingredients and fresh, ‘normal’ food.
This is directly in contrast to its competitors.
Do you remember seeing a story about a man in the US who bought a McDonalds burger in 1999, put it in his car boot, and then found it again in 2013 still intact?
Or the ‘last McDonald’s cheeseburger sold in Iceland’ that celebrated it’s 10th birthday in 2019?
In the world of fast food and convenience, it’s often hard to stand out – Burger King found a way to do that.
And it’s reported that the campaign generated over 2 billion impressions for Burger King and helped increase sales by 4% (source).
Whether the ad would encourage you to pick Burger King or not, it provokes a bit of thought and encourages you to consider what you’re consuming.
Figure 2 & 3: Ogilvy/Burger King ‘Mouldy Whopper’
Lesson 3: Addressing issues, done the right way, can be positive
There will always be, at some point or another, a scandal or issue with your business or brand.
It is tempting to ignore the problem and hope it goes away however, the next campaign we’re going to look at used a bold campaign to address an issue and it ended up increasing their brand impression score!
Campaign: KFC and ‘FCK’
In February 2018, KFC faced a unique supply chain problem – hundreds of their stores ran out of chicken.
With 900 stores forced to close, social media was awash with chatter about KFC’s shortcomings and anger over the situation.
Brandwatch reported that on just one day there were 53,000 mentions of KFC running out of chicken with hashtags like #ChickenCrisis and #KFCCrisis becoming popular (source).
KFC, and design partner Mother, decided that the issue needed to be addressed and the way to do that was to secure two ad placements in The Sun and Metro newspapers.
While the visuals only appeared in the two newspapers, the campaign prompted more than 700 press articles and TV discussions, and 219 million social media users were shown the ‘FCK’ image, this meant that over three months, the campaign generated an earned reach of more than one billion (source).
Not bad for two print ads!
The ad, though print focused initially, resonated with all users both on and off-line due to its accessible and ‘human’ approach. The image was both highly shareable and relatable – a good few disgruntled customers probably uttered the expletive themselves!
The accompanying text was written in plain English with an apologetic tone but with a focus on the resolution and work behind the scenes.
KFC’s brand impression score dropped by nine points during the shortage, from -2 to -12, but returned to -1 after the campaign which Amelia Brophy, YouGov’s Head of Brands, said underlines the success of its brand recovery (source).
Figure 3: YouGov BrandIndex. *Attention: % of respondents who reported hearing anything positive or negative about a brand over the previous two weeks. **Impression: whether respondents have a generally positive or negative feeling about the brand
Now, something like this wouldn’t work for everyone but it offers a powerful lesson in brand accountability and knowing your audience.
Figure 4: KFC ‘FCK’ Campaign
Lesson 4: Bold campaigns can help you differentiate
In a world where we’re all competing for the same audience, it can be difficult to stand out and get your values across (read more about that here).
This is where being different could help you.
If you can portray your values and call out to your ideal customer, whilst standing out against competitors, you’re on to a winner.
Campaign: Apple and ‘Think Different’
In 1997, Apple was struggling to compete with the giants of the time, IBM and Microsoft.
Steve Jobs was back as interim CEO and needed to turn things around.
At the time, IBM were promoting their ThinkPad with the strapline ‘Think IBM’ and Apple’s agency ChiatDay knew that presenting an alternative slogan, aligned with Apple’s core values, would highlight the difference between the two brands (source).
That’s where ‘think different’ was born.
Alongside images of Buzz Aldrin, Jim Henson, and Rosa Parks, the campaign highlighted Apple’s focus on creativity, innovation, and challenging the status quo.
It turned it into an aspirational brand, rather than just another computer option – the products became a representation of the person using them.
Figure 5: Apple ‘Think Different’ Posters
Lesson 5: Always, always, think of the audience
With all these bold, experimental campaigns out there it can be tempting to take a risk yourself however, this can be detrimental.
All the campaigns we’ve looked at so far had one thing in common: the marketing campaigns were consistent with their brands and targeted to their audience.
It’s important to make sure that you are always marketing to your audience.
Campaign: Dettol’s ‘when ordinary soap just won’t do’
First appearing online in 2015, Dettol created an ad that seemed to depict a person who had just stabbed someone with the tagline ‘when ordinary soap just won’t do’.
Now, we get the idea behind the ad however it doesn’t seem to have been created with their audience in mind – unless they were targeting a niche audience of criminals?!
The campaign faced harsh criticism and it’s pretty hard to find much information about it, but why did it fall so flat?
Dettol’s audience, as with most household brands, is made up of families, homeowners, and the general public.
You would hope that most of their audience wouldn’t be able to relate to murder, which makes the ad irrelevant to most of their audience.
Anything household and family focused is also going to be seen by children and young adults, prompting many to label the campaign as inappropriate.
It serves as a stark reminder that relevance to your brand and audience is critical – a bold idea can backfire if it doesn’t align with your brand values or demographics!
Figure 6: Dettol Controversial Ad
Final Thought: American Eagle’s ‘Sydney Sweeney has Great Jeans’
It would have been difficult to miss American Eagle’s latest marketing campaign.
Starring blonde haired, blue eyed Sydney Sweeney, the ad focuses on her jeans and her genes.
It’s been widely reported on and has caused a fair amount of controversy.
But, whether you think the ad is overly-sexualised and discriminatory, or the ‘hottest ad out there’ as President Trump called it, the campaign has got people talking (source).
In fact, the sales of the ‘Sydney’ jean have been above their estimates, with the style selling out (source).
So, it’s worth considering, is a little backlash worth the boost in sales?
Bold marketing campaigns walk a fine line between brilliance and backlash
When executed with insight, creativity, and a strong connection to your audience, they can spark conversation, humanise your brand, and leave a lasting impression.
But, without that planning and strategy, bold campaigns just add to the noise.
The key lessons from these case studies:
Know your audience, stay true to your brand, and be intentional.
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