THE BEST MARKETING CAMPAIGNS OF 2021

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Let me start by saying…

Merry Christmas!

I hope you all had the most amazing Christmas, overindulged to the max and most importantly had some time to sit back and relax.

Seen as how it is still “Christmas Break” and the New Year is on the horizon, I thought I’d put a twist on this week’s Growing Viral.

Instead of breaking down one company’s marketing strategy, I’m going to break down my favourite marketing campaigns for 2021 - what a year it’s been.

In no particular order (but with a little bias) the best marketing campaigns of 2021…

ALDI – ‘Free Cuthbert’:

I did say in no particular order, but honestly, this is my favourite by far. ALDI has absolutely killed it this year with their marketing. Their Christmas advert was a massive hit with “Kevin the Carrot” becoming a household name - the ad was named UK’s favourite Christmas ad.

That was a mere splash in the water compared to the huge success of their ‘Free Cuthbert’ ad.

No idea what I’m talking about?

Let me give you a quick rundown.

It all started when Marks & Spencer launched legal action against Aldi, claiming the discounter’s Cuthbert the Caterpillar Swiss roll infringed the trademark for its Colin the Caterpillar cake.

Aldi decided to take a very simple approach, with the intention of getting the nation on its side. The supermarket cleverly launched a campaign around the hashtag #FreeCuthburt which all started with a simple tweet.

Cuthbert became the talk of TV comedy panel shows; memes, parodies and memorabilia were made; and hundreds of people joined the debate on social, with user-generated videos racking up more than 30 million views.

Aldi estimates the organic reach generated by the campaign equated to more than £5m worth of media spend, pretty impressive given it didn’t spend a penny.

Have you ever seen a company benefit so well from being sued?

I certainly haven’t.

FTX - Taking Over Sports

When it comes to a tough marketing task, bringing a Crypto exchange mainstream is certainly up there.

FTX didn’t just succeed - they killed it.

If you’ve been reading Growing Viral for a while you’ll know a lot about this one (See the breakdown here).

FTX took one of the best approaches to make their company a household name I have seen.

They identified their target market perfectly, recognised that the sports world had an almost identical audience and quickly made huge inroads to involve FTX in the industry.

They started bringing the most well-known sports stars into the brand through an ambassador programme. The most notable of the bunch would be the one and only Tom Brady.

Just take a look at some of the other stars involved with the brand:

• Steph Curry - Plays basketball for Golden State Warriors, widely regarded as the greatest point guard of all time.

• Shohei Ohtani - Best Major League Baseball Player ESPY Award 2021.

• Kevin O'Leary - World famous investor, best known for his role on Shark Tank.

• Trevor Lawrence - First-round draft pick and Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback.

• Gisele Bundchen - One of the most successful models in history.

• David Ortiz - 3x World Series Champion, 10x MLB All-Star.

• Udonis Haslem - 3x NBA champion and current Miami Heat captain.

• Mercedes AMG F1 - The world-renowned team includes the likes of Lewis Hamilton, Valterri Bottas.

• TSM - A hugely successful US ESports team.

• Major League Baseball - The largest baseball organisation in the world.

However, this isn’t the only inroad in sports that FTX have made.

This year FTX signed a $17.5 million deal with U.C. Berkeley for the naming rights to their football field - now known as the FTX Field - marking the first-ever cryptocurrency collegiate sponsorship in the nation. (Source)

This is but a drop in the water compared to their $135 million purchase of the naming rights to the home of the Miami Heat - now known as the FTX Arena.

The rest of the campaigns on this list are great.

This one is by far the most impressive!

Sony - Tube Takeover 

When launching their PS5, Sony decided to make a big splash and boy did they do just that. They gave one of the biggest Tube stations in London - Oxford Circus - a whole new look with PlayStation shapes throughout.

The work by PR agency Red Consultancy and MediaCom also included takeovers at Mile End, Lancaster Gate, West Ham and Seven Sisters, where scenery and characters from gaming franchises appeared.

PlayStation took two iconic symbols, the PlayStation iconography and the British icon - that had never been changed in such dramatic fashion - to create a moment that no onlookers could simply pass by.

The results of the campaign?

• 84 pieces of coverage including Shortlist, Metro, UniLad, Mail Online, Evening Standard, ITV News and Good Morning Britain - delivering 986m+ media impressions.

• It was the lead story on Reddit with a reach of over 40 million.

• Over 34k accounts (106 million impressions) shared the visuals on Twitter in the first 24 hours.

• On PlayStation’s owned channels, the announcement generated 9 million organic impressions.

• The activation had the highest levels of social media engagement ever seen in a TfL commercial partnership. Despite unforeseen restrictions imposed due to Covid-19, the campaign managed to achieve over 3.2 million impacts across the five stations, with 1.8 million passengers at Oxford Circus alone.

• The mass awareness generated helped PlayStation have the most successful UK console launch of all time. Over 2 million people signed up to retailer ‘Register Your Interest’ pages for PS5.

• A truly spectacular creative idea, executed perfectly and drove huge amounts of buzz around the launch online.

More importantly, this signalled to the wider market that the brand was the major player in the console space.

Xbox could never.

Duolingo - Taking TikTok By Storm

TikTok has been the talk of the town for the last year with everyone and their dog jumping on the platform.

It started as a platform that influencers would utilise for extra exposure. However, brands quickly realised they could benefit from that added exposure. We’ve had some real success stories for brands on the platform, none better than Duolingo - a language learning app.

If you don't know the power of TikTok by now then it's time to strap in!

Here's how it went?

Their account was created in February 2021 with 0 followers.

Fast forward 10 months to today and they have passed the 2 million followers mark with 32 million likes & a 19% engagement rate.

This means they have more followers on TikTok than all their other social platforms combined!

So, what is their success strategy?

Humour, authenticity and keeping with the trends.

Easy to say, harder to do!

Weetabix - ‘Beans on Bix’

I may have a little bias with this one - I’m a huge fan of Weetabix - but you can’t take away the simple genius behind it.

The campaign was Marketing Week campaign of 2021 as well going mega viral on socials. Take a look at these analytics stats:

• 37,000 retweets

• Quoted 68,800 times

• 130,000+ likes

• Brand awareness increased by 40% compared to last year.

All in all this campaign cost just £5000 which makes it one of the most cost-effective campaigns of the year also.

This campaign truly had it all:

• Shock factor: Let’s be honest no one expected to see beans on Weetabix anytime soon and as a passionate Weeabix eater myself I have very strong opinions on the idea of putting beans on Weetabix.

• Fueled engagement: When we are passionate about something we are more than happy to share our strong opinions online. This certainly caused some strong opinions - heavily polarising.

• Showed versatility of product: Beans on Weetabix certainly isn’t for everyone, you’d be surprised at how many people loved the idea. Although the post was definitely aimed at being controversial it did highlight that your Weetabix isn’t just to be eaten with milk, there are various other ways and methods to enjoy the beautiful gift that is Weetabix.

Marketing campaigns that bring your users together are great.

Weetabix showed here that breaking them apart can be just as effective.

These were my favourite campaigns from 2021. I hope you enjoyed reading through them as much as I enjoyed writing about them.

Thanks to everyone who has been reading Growing Viral in 2021. There’s many more to come in 2022!

Again, thanks for reading Growing Viral this year.

Happy New Year to you all!

Don’t forget to subscribe to get next week’s breakdown straight to your inbox!

I’ll see you next Sunday!