PPB February 2019

BRANDABLE Thinking Outside the Box Companies that rolled out awe-inspiring marketing campaigns in 2018. It’s the Era of Disruption and we’re surrounded by advertising. Advertising has penetrated social media, websites, tele-marketing and especially our inboxes. Billboards continue to dominate our roadways during the commute to and from work. But when a company conjures up a particularly compelling or peculiar (yet effective) marketing campaign, we take notice—especially if it goes viral. Let’s look at some of the noted campaigns in 2018 and the key takeaways we can learn from them. Telsa and SpaceX. To attract customer attention, Elon Musk went the extra mile— or 62 miles, rather, all the way to outer space. Musk combined the efforts of his two booming businesses, SpaceX and Tesla, to bring the first Tesla Roadster to space. The stunt, which was held February 6, 2018, attracted millions of viewers, inspired a heap of news coverage and generated more than 500,000 online conversations. Fans are still able to track the vehicle, which is being “driven” by a dummy, using a website run by NASA. On February 22, a few weeks after its launch, the Roadster was tracked at 2.8 million miles away from Earth, moving at a speed of 7,532 mph. Takeaway: Don’t be afraid to take an idea to the next level and share that initiative across social media. JetBlue . Another aviation effort was made by JetBlue, though with a different objective: to deliver pizza. In efforts to promote its new cross-country flights, JetBlue carried pizza pies on a 2,500- mile flight from New York to Los Angeles as part of its “Pie in the Sky” campaign. Although the initiative was not intended to deliver steaming hot pizzas to the west coast, it successfully showed that JetBlue’s cross-country flights are “as easy as pie.” Takeaway: Look for simple solutions. JetBlue made a campaign out of carrying delicious cargo, yet it still made an imprint. Burger King. The fast-food giant used an unusual approach to draw customers away from its competition—by sending them directly to the source. To promote the relaunch of its mobile app, for a nine-day period Burger King offered its ever-popular Whopper for a penny, but only if customers traveled to McDonald’s first. The app used geo-tagging technology to determine whether customers were near a McDonald’s location, and when a customer with the Burger King app was in the geofenced vicinity of a McDonald’s, the penny promotion would unlock. Takeaway: Be aware of what your competition is doing and remain a step ahead. Arby’s . Fast-food chain Arby’s broke two Guinness World Records last year for having the largest and smallest known advertisements. The advertisements, which were designed to promote Arby’s onboarding of Coca-Cola products in its restaurants, simply said, “Arby’s now has Coke.” The largest advertisement, however, made a sweeping statement, as it spanned 212,000 square feet of Nebraska farmland, while the smallest was carved onto the sesame seed of an Arby’s hamburger bun. Takeaway: Consider nontraditional marketing methods to gain consumer attention. Dove. Personal care brand Dove partnered with Cartoon Network to produce a series of animated advertisements about self-esteem. The animations used characters from Cartoon Network’s show Steven Universe and incorporated language that was applicable to adolescents. Dove’s products were not featured in any of the advertisements— only the title of the campaign, which was “Dove Self-Esteem Project”—but the initiative had positive feedback for the brand. The campaign website also included links to resources about issues surrounding body positivity and self-confidence. Takeaway: Touch on sentiment. Find something that matters to you and makes sense for your brand, and use advertising to spread a useful message, while creating buzz. 60 | FEBRUARY 2019 | THINK