Top 3 Digital Marketing Campaigns of All Time - Why They Worked

Digital marketing campaigns should always strive to go through the screen and elicit certain emotions from your audience.

After all, how else can someone connect with your content if they don’t feel anything from it? Branding your business through marketing is important, but it can be hard to understand how to do so without the proper examples.

Top 3 Digital Marketing Campaigns

I’ve compiled a list of the top 3 digital marketing campaigns based on the amount of attention attracted and reception. I’m going to break down each campaign, as well as the key reason behind their success: emotion. As you’re going through the list, keep emotion top of mind as you learn about how these brands were able to successfully connect with their audience and reinforce their brand.

Dove’s “Real Beauty Sketches”

Dove Beauty is known for its inclusivity and representation of women from all races and sexualities. Dove’s branding is something familiar to the American public, but how did this branding stick so well? One big factor was Dove’s successful 2013 marketing campaign “Real Beauty Sketches”.

Dove’s campaign began with a video uploaded to YouTube wherein a group of women were told to describe themselves to a sketch artist. The artist created two versions of his drawing: one that matched the woman’s description and the other that depicted how he saw that woman. The goal of the video was to emphasize how women tend to see themselves as opposed to how others see them.

Coinciding with the video, the campaign used the hashtag #RealBeauty to promote their video across social media platforms. After the campaign’s launch, Dove’s sales boosted from $2.5 billion to $4 billion for that year. Dove’s branding has also become synonymous with the representation of women. Following the success of the video, Dove began putting an emphasis on the story they wanted to build around their brand. Further campaigns like their 2015 Speak Beautifully and their 2016 Beauty Bias campaign emphasize this branding. Their current website reflects this development to this day.

Gillette’s “The Best Men Can Be”

When you think of a shaving razor, most of the time you’ll be thinking of Gillette. Gillette is a razor company mainly marketed towards young men and actively promotes the emotional and mental support of men from a younger demographic. Their current branding reflects progressiveness and inclusivity within the male community. Although this may be the case today, their messaging began with their 2019 campaign, “The Best Men Can Be”.

Gillette’s campaign began with a short film published on YouTube entitled “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be”. The video touches on sensitive topics that are taboo regarding men, such as bullying, toxic masculinity, and sexual harassment. The film goes on to question the development of men, and challenging men to do better. Gillette’s original slogan, “The Best a Man Can Get”, became “The Best Men Can Be” in this campaign video. The film also announced Gillette’s incentive to donate $1 million annually for three years to different foundations and charities that supported the positive growth of young boys.

The campaign acted as a complete revamp of Gillette’s branding. Upon the video’s release, it was met with instant social media attention. Although the video received both positive and negative reception for its progressiveness, the campaign succeeded in changing the branding of Gillette and inspired future marketing campaigns that promoted Gillette’s progressive image.

LEGO’s “Rebuild the World”

It goes without saying that LEGO is one of the most iconic brands of all time. Even just thinking about LEGO invokes the image of their colorful building blocks and hours-long playtime. LEGO’s branding is very well recognized in this way. Up until 2019, LEGO was not committing to extensive marketing campaigns. Their marketing had been completed through traditional means like digital ads and billboards. However, LEGO’s storytelling and specific branding were not worked with until their “Rebuild the World” campaign.

In partnership with French agency BETC, LEGO launched their campaign with an ad published on YouTube. As opposed to depicting the LEGO bricks that consumers are already familiar with, LEGO decided to portray their ad as a real-world story. In the ad, a hunter chases down a bunny through the streets of a colorful town. Using toy-like props, obstacles get in the way of the hunter such as a firefighting squadron and a dragon. The ad ends with the hunter ready to take down the rabbit, when all of a sudden the real-world setting and characters are replaced with LEGO versions of themselves.

The “Rebuild the World” video received 11 million views upon uploading. The video’s storytelling purpose was to depict how children view LEGOS as a part of real life, instead of just toys to play with. It’s about the perception that children have with their toys, something that not many adults can understand or have forgotten about. The campaign acted as a way to build on the story of LEGO. LEGO was already a familiar brand, but the campaign helped to guide the audience towards feelings of either nostalgia for older consumers or inspiration for its younger audience. The campaign also launched toys that depicted certain characters and props that were in the video, something that is still up on their website.

The Key Takeaway

These marketing campaigns each served their own purpose within the brand’s image. For example, Dove’s campaign served to start its branding journey toward inclusivity. Gillette’s acted as a complete revamp of their slogan and acted as a building block for their branding. LEGOs served to better tell their story while building on their already well-known reputation. These campaigns were successful in their own ways, but a key component to their success is one thing: emotion.

Throughout each of these campaigns, they elicited an emotion from the audience that struck a powerful chord. Dove and Gillette were similar in that they touched on real-world issues that consumers could relate to. LEGO took a more light-hearted approach to match its branding but appealed to older and younger demographics through its connection to the real world.

Eliciting the right emotion from your audience that coincides with your brand is essential in creating a successful marketing campaign. Having that human touch when promoting your brand is what makes audiences connect with what you’re making. If there’s anything you’re going to take away from these campaigns, it’s to SHOW your audience how to feel instead of TELLING them!