Great Marketing Campaigns We All Should Learn From

I got 1,000 subscribers nailing a negative rant to LinkedIn’s church door. But I’ll buck my own trend, and do the opposite and share some positivity.

It's easy to rage against what you don't like. It's how teenagers and their favourite YouTubers define their music taste.

So let's celebrate some top tier marketing, the takeaways for us mere mortals, and what should be avoided while copying them.

I'll write later about why it's counterproductive to take advice from billionaire gurus on how they won the lottery, but despite that, the following successes are still worth emulating:

1.) Sent from my iPhone.

苹果 turned electronics into designer goods. Blah Blah, everyone’s bored of hearing from their cult (sic), but they made all of their products spambots, and got away with it. One to many virality makes your customers your greatest marketing repeaters.

Takeaway Lesson:

Marketing needs more than just the marketing team, break down the siloes and see how product can support your marketing efforts.

Warning!

A.) This doesn't mean you can turn your customers’ into spambots. It works for iPhone cos people are proud to flex their luxury brand. If your vendor name doesn't carry as much weight (hint: it doesn't) then a slight tweak can make all the difference.

Securely sent with External Share for Jira

Buries the advert, and promotes the app's value to both sender and receiver. Before we added the "securely", people were complaining and asking for this message to be removed (we made a premium version of the app, so they had to upgrade for this feature)

B.) Cross departmental collaboration can wield powerful results, so use it sparingly and thoughtfully. As fun as it is to knock down siloes between your teams, some walls are load bearing, and there for a reason. This isn't an excuse to have weekly standups between all of your markers and devs. Schedule meetings sparingly, invite only the people you need, and make sure the calls are sharp, efficient, and to the point. Leave your teams wanting a bit more collaboration, rather than resenting it as "part of your culture".

C.) Also note: if your activation process isn't frictionless, such a lightweight CTA is unlikely to convert.

2.) Stripe's Frictionless Funnel

Y Combinator gives the famous example of how Stripe demoed their app at conferences, and anyone that said they liked it, had it immediately installed on their phones.

Takeaway Lesson:

This will make the Nice Guy marketer’s blush, but why? They just said they like your app. What more legitimate interest do you need?!?

How is this any more intrusive than scanning their nametag badge and spamming them pseudo consentually for the next 4 months with a newsletter about an app they didn't care enough to install?

You have two options at events: relationship building to capture the demand in the long term. Or immediate conversion. If they can't request the app from their phone? Get them to raise a Jira support ticket. This cuts through the usual sales processes, gets their actual work e-mail, makes it easy for them to loop in the right stakeholders, and yet somehow feels less salesy.

If you missed what a Nice Guy Marketer is, check out last week's blog:

Warning!

The key to a good event strategy, is to not give your team comission breath. This works if you have a great product, and a charming patter that makes people want your app. Without that, you're just being pushy and weird.

Don't make your techies cosplay as salespeople, the results are painful for all involved.

3.) The Rest is Entertainment Podcast

I don't watch a lot of TV, but I can't stop listening to this superb podcast by Sky , and watching all the hosts' recommendations. Two nerdy professionals share insights from a lifetime of passionate work in their industry.

It opens with an ad, half of their recommendations require Sky TV Live , but the content is so good, even the ad breaks will have you laughing.

Takeaway Lesson:

Quality Top of the funnel content, capable of going viral organically is an expensive investment. Entertaining content can results in better sales, and could be popular enough to get sponsors to help support the cost. Sales and fun aren't mutually opposed.

Warning!

Don't be a f?ckboi nor a nice guy marketer. Too much focus on immediate ROI ruins your funnel. Being too hesitant to convert makes a leaky funnel built on hope.

Actually deliver enough value that you're not embarrassed to have a clear conversion point.

4.) Wendy’s on Twitter

Social Media sucks. LinkedIn has one of the worst reputations (depite all the hate crime on Twitter ).

So when your team writes "We're so excited to announce our latest feature" and it only gets seen by your employees and their mums, you're wasting everyone's time.

Especially if you feel the need to have a graphic designer, a content writer, the product manager, and then some opinionated middle manager meeting about it.

Brand guidelines shouldn't be rules to use as sticks, but a helpful guide that makes it easier and quicker to publish without having to ask for approval.

It's better they publish stuff that gets engagement, than something that would never risk offending anyone.

So someone didn't like your Tweet. So what? Enough to boycott your app for life? Would their team approve of that as a reason to switch to a competitor? Grow up.

Warning!

Social media is the most at risk of micromanagement and death by committee, so before you let senior technical people start having opinions on tweets, ask them how much time the social media marketing team should dedicate to criticising code.

The great news is: no one sees your committee written posts, so the shame of them is well hidden. Honestly, most people don't have a sense of humour, nor a sense of proportionate risk taking, so this is probably not for them.

Just let your employees use their personal social media accounts, and don't try and manage nor police something you don't understand.

5.) Fck Oatly

If you've ever looked for criticism of a corporation (the champagne socialist with a podcast here has) there's a range of sources: the conspiratorial with tin foil hats, anarchists with molotovs, or those trying to hide their bad reputations under a mountain of SEO spam.

But Oatly have conveniently curated all their worst criticism and scandals of the last decade, onto their website.

https://fckoatly.com/

Takeaway Lesson:

If you're in a public space, you're going to get involved in some dramas. You can't please all the people all the time, be clear on who you are, and unapologetically own it.

If you pretend to be someone else, that's exhausting, and disingenuous catfishing.

Being genuine is a great way of recruiting people that you're likely to get along with too.

Bonus points if you have a sense of humour, and can have fun with it!

Warning!

Maybe not as much fun as Remie Bolte , Boris Berenberg ?? or I... Though we make it look easy, there's no need to make life any harder. We do it because we can't stop ourselves, despite the drama and damage it does to our reputations...

6.) The not so humble Bumble

Like every insurgent competitor, Bumble had to make a lot of noise to displace the PayPal Mafia and Saudi government funded Tinder.

They paid student actors to shout out in lectures,

"Oh no, I matched with my professor!"

They put signs up saying the use of Bumble was banned on campus (it wasn't).

They tried a lot, and the world heard about it, and they rapidly grew, because they knew they couldn't compete with Tinder's stickiness and deeper pockets.

Takeaway Lesson:

Bumble tried a lot of things to catch up, not just on the marketing side, but on making the experience better for their female customers too (a crucial part of a two-way marketplace) with notoriously high churn rate.

There's free press out there for you. Since social media ate the press, it's never been easier to get coverage. Especially if you're bold and prepared to write the blogs for them.

Have opinions, don't try and please everyone, experiment, be prepared to fail.

Think outside the box. How to get people talking about you?

I have ideas, but you'd probably want to play it safer...

Warning!

Bear in mind, not all of Bumble's gambles were winning bets. They used to run experiments on their users. Most apps with A/B testing of UX and features do this, but Bumble would inform the press, and this got them caught up in the anti social media backlash of the last decade.

To be honest, it probably helped them more than it hurt them, but bear in mind, the price of taking risks is having some failures!

Don't let the fun police anywhere near these campaigns.

"Someone might not like something"
Is the death of all creativity, and anyone caught saying it should be yeeted as far away from the marketing department as physics (and the HR department) will allow.        

7.) Colin Kapernick's Nike Ad

I think enough has been said on the topic. Some MAGA Boomers didn't like it. Good. Nike didn't want to be associated with them. Know your audience and speak to them. Don't try and be a Nice Guy pleasing everyone. Ruffle some feathers, in an age of corporate cowardice, take a stand, and use good stock photography.

8.) Spotify Wrapped

User-generated content is a superb idea worth doing well.

When Samsung sponsored the Olympics, the iPhone had everyone taking photos of their kids doing sports for the Olympics 2032

#LegoIdeas let people suggest sets they wanted lego to make, and then they actually made them!

Crowdfunding has changed the way B2C products are funded (I have a great idea about a time travelling Dungeons and Dragons module if anyone wants to join me)..

Takeaway Lesson:

When attempting user generated content, making it easy, fun, and interesting for people to share is key to a succesful grassroots movement. B2B enterprise sales is more like political campaigning than direct sales, so this is a good skill for a marketing team to develop.

Warning

I see people half assing it, and a LinkedIn poll is a poor substitute!

If you're big enough? Try employee generated content for starters. Note, this won't work if you're policed your employees social media accounts, they will just block you.

User generated content is a superb way of engaging with your customers, getting them to share with their connections, and give your marketing team a break!

Kidding! It takes loads of work of both product and marketing to do it right. But just engaging in a dialogue on social media, rather than monologuing is a step in the right direction.

9.) David Icke's "And the Truth Shall Set You Free."

He starts off writing coherently about everything that is wrong with a privatised banking system, and then chapter 2 is all about lizard people speaking to him telepathically across the universe. This is the perfect false flag psy ops exercise by the powers that be to discredit all criticism of nationalised banks.

Sorry, I ran out of steam some time ago, and just wanted to see if anyone read this far. If you did, please reply Lizards! in the comments, and we'll know we see the real truth ;).

Seriously though, if you want to hear my deepest conspiracy theory, ask me about that over a beer! They're listening!

We're done!

Urgh, these lists are exhausting to write.

What did I miss? Any of your favourite campaigns?

Do you prefer my negative rants?

Let's see whether the light or dark side of the force performed stronger.