Take Inspiration From Brilliant Marketing Campaigns

People who fail or stagnate are those who are ignorant and who don’t do what it takes to seek out customers in a reward-for-results industry.

It’s inspiring and a great learning curve to see how successful businesses create brilliant marketing campaigns to achieve their goals. While a majority of them are big business, small online businesses can certainly learn a thing or two and implement them into their own marketing campaigns.

Let’s take a look at some brilliant marketing campaigns that caught the eye of online customers:

#1 Zoosk Dating Website: The Heart Friend Campaign 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TD6LEw1zsw

There is a saying that goes: Listen to your heart.

Zoosk, one of the largest dating websites actually made this possible through its marketing campaign. An ad promoting Zoosk shows a single woman named Liz and her heart. Her “Heart friend” is a male Muppet-like puppet … yes Liz’s heart has a male voice, who looks through Liz’s Zoosk account and comes across Ben’s profile. Her heart tries to convince her that she should date Ben.

This ad campaign has gone viral and as of today has more than 14 million views.  Zoosk hasn’t really been around for too long and they launched in 2007. Experts are of the opinion that the video is romantic and represents the brand appropriately. The element of humor and the innovativeness of it all appealed to people.

#2 Warby Parker: Year In Review

This is an entirely different concept, as this is much more than an ad campaign. This campaign is all about showing customers how the year was for the company. The entire review was so well-done that the campaign went viral. It shows everything from the social networking sites used by the employees, the glasses worn by them, including what their employees did in the shower. This highly personalized approach makes the brand likable and human. It brings the existing customers closer and spreads the word about the company.

#3 LinkedIn – Congratulatory Emails

This isn’t an ad campaign but it’s a promotion. LinkedIn touched the emotions of users by sending out different emails of “congratulations” to many users, saying that they are the best or that their profiles are the most viewed or that they have contributed the most. This got the users and media talking and resulted in thousands of shares.

This is a great idea to stroke the ego and keep the morale of the users high. The messages themselves may not have a long-term effect, but it certainly helps create a buzz for a while. Something like this can be done by any marketer, even if they have a list of a few hundred. This tactic can also be employed with the fans and friends on social sites.

#4 IKEA – Facebook Image Tagging

IKEA’s ad agency designed an excellent Facebook ad campaign to promote the opening of a new Ikea store. It used the “Tagging” mechanism of Facebook to IKEA’s benefit.

The company got the store manager, Gordon Gustavsson, to create a Facebook profile and upload IKEA showroom images over a 2-week period.  His Facebook friends were encouraged to tag items in the photos with their names, and all this for a chance of winning the object for free.

As word about the campaign spread, the photos began getting tagged within seconds of being uploaded. In fact, he started getting requests for more pictures. Facebook users used everything from their profiles, newsfeeds, email etc. to let their friends and family know about this. This campaign made the IKEA store hugely popular in a few weeks, with all the major blogs picking up this news.

IKEA’s ad agency said, “Instead of just looking at a banner with furniture, we got people to personally promote IKEA.”

I love this idea and I see it working for many online marketers.  People like getting things for free and this is a great way of spreading word about the company.

#5 Oreo – Superbowl Blackout

During the third quarter of Super Bowl XLVII, there was a power outage at the Superdome for 34 minutes. Oreo were on their toes on all the social media channels and immediately they tweeted, “Power Out? No problem” and along with this was a single Oreo that was lit with a caption, “You can still dunk in the dark.”

Almost immediately, this tweet got thousands of retweets and thousands of Facebook likes.  This sort of real-time responses offer marketers far more than traditional advertising can ever can.

Brilliant Marketing Campaigns: Conclusion

These excellent out-of-the-box concepts tell us marketers how attentive we need to be in our marketing efforts, whether in social media or elsewhere online. We shouldn’t lose out on any opportunity to gain mileage for our business/brand.

Yes, most of the brands discussed here are big, but if you look at their campaigns, similar thinking can be adopted for our own brilliant marketing campaigns too. We know social networking is the way to go and we don’t really have to spend thousands of marketing dollars to gain the attention we seek. Take these ideas and do something that could work for your business.

Have you ever tried anything innovative to create one of your own brilliant marketing campaigns?