Four effective marketing campaigns consumers really remember
In a crowded consumer market when most goods and services are available from multiple vendors, success in marketing is not just about making your product stand out from the crowd, it's often also about crushing the competition in the process.
With increasing dependence on email and digital marketing campaigns enabling a move towards a more personalised approach, there are still great lessons to be learned from the greatest marketing campaigns of all time. Understanding why such campaigns succeeded and why they captured the imagination of the public can help craft campaigns that resonate far more deeply with your target audience.
Walkers Crisps
When crisp company Walkers signed up Gary Lineker, the much-loved striker who had played for Spurs, Everton and Barcelona, as well as representing England on numerous occasions, they could have simply used the power of his celebrity to push their brand. Instead, they decided to cast him as a villain, in direct contrast to his real-life nice guy image, and in doing so, created one of the best-known and most-loved marketing campaigns of all time.
It's a partnership that has lasted more than twenty years and continues to feature Lineker and an array of famous faces. One particular part of the appeal of this series of advertisements and one that all those involved in marketing can learn from is the importance of reflecting the changing nature of the world around you. This is the reasons that, while Gary Lineker remains the main star, the supporting cast changes according to whomsoever is most fashionable and desirable at the time the advertisements are running. This has allowed the campaign to stay fresh while still being instantly recognisable.
Barclay’s Football League
Football is a nation favourite, with many sports fans looking to buy tickets to the next games, hoping to see their sporting heroes and team triumph in the football league. With such a swell of popularity and excitement then, it’s no surprise that many companies, businesses and corporations are looking to use this as an opportunity to promote their products or services to their key demographics. Having their company’s name dotted around the football stadium is a sure-fire way to bring in interest and lead to sales, so which industries make use of these effective marketing campaigns?
The online gambling and gaming industry has been successful by focusing their services at such sports games, because their target market, and those who would enjoy what they’re offering, is exposed to the company’s name. Thanks to their strong presence in football games across the country, betting shops in the UK have always enjoyed extremely strong brand recognition, and many are now leveraging this into similar success in the online world. As an example, the male audience could easily name the top UK betting shop franchises off the top of their head, and due to the catchy jingles played throughout daytime TV and games, many stick in a person’s mind.
By focusing attention on Bingo and other fun games, online casinos can drive traffic towards their sites where players then encounter a host of other games and opportunities to further pique their interest.
De Beers Diamonds
It's a universally accepted notion that, in the Western world, when a man proposes to a woman, he presents her with a diamond engagement ring. It's also generally accepted that, when it comes to working out how much to spend on such a ring, a ballpark figure of two months' salary is deemed the minimum acceptable amount.
What may be surprising is that it wasn't always this way. At the end of the Second World War, sales of diamonds were plummeting in the wake of the Great Depression. De Beers held a monopoly on the precious stones and was looking for a marketing campaign that would boost sales, in particular, motivating men to buy rings.
The result was one of the most famous advertising slogans in the world: A diamond is forever. It resulted not only in enormously boosted sales for the company but also created the concept of an engagement ring itself, something which had simply not existed prior to the campaign. Nowadays the diamond engagement ring is still as popular, with people entering competitions to gain the perfect ring for their partner.
While some of the most successful marketing campaigns have ridden on the back of an existing industry, the De Beers example is one of the few that actually created the industry in the first place. By creating the notion that no marriage is complete without a diamond ring, De Beers ensured that every person pledging marriage felt compelled to purchase one.
The lesson here is that you should not be concerned if the market or need for your products or services does not currently exist because, with the right marketing campaign, you can create one.
Nike: Just Do It
Back in the 1980s, Nike was a relatively small company that mostly sold its shoes to marathon runners. At the time, it was being vastly outsold by rival corporation Reebok, but then Nike launched the "Just Do It" campaign and everything changed.
Sales grew from around $800 million in 1988 to $9.2 billion a decade later. The campaign succeeded because it tapped into the feeling everyone experiences when it comes to the time to contemplate getting some exercise. You may not feel like it, but if you just do it, you will feel better.
Whereas Reebok continued to market itself to those who considered themselves to be athletes, Nike turned its attention to the growing craze for aerobics and general fitness, targeting people of all ages, genders and fitness levels. As a result, the brand soon grew to be something more than just workout gear - wearing it was a statement of your intention and a way of showing you were in tune with latest fashions.
The marketing lesson is that you should always be thinking about your products in terms of the problems that they can solve. If you can consistently convey the benefits they bring to consumers through your marketing, you are far more likely to be successful.
