3 Best Digital Campaigns of 2017
A Highlight of the Year’s Best and Most Engaging, Heartwarming, and Inspiring Digital-Advertising Campaigns
Social media and digital marketing have dominated the news in 2017, and not always for the best reasons. In the aftermath of the recent election, we are finally grappling with the vulnerabilities of social media and digital-marketing platforms — in particular, how those platforms can be used for the proliferation of fake news. There is certainly a dark side to the algorithms that determine which news stories appear in our social media feeds, as well as how those algorithms can create opinion bubbles that serve to foster division.
That said, social media and digital marketing also have made us smile and think this year. Two consistent themes among the year’s best campaigns were engagement with social issues and popular culture. This interaction with the larger world represents an industry-wide recognition that consumers are looking for brands that integrate themselves into our daily lives.
Heineken: “Worlds Apart”
Heineken’s “Worlds Apart” campaign was a welcome alternative to the divisive political rhetoric that defined 2017. Created by Publicis London, this digital-video campaign features three pairs of strangers who have very different points of view: a black feminist and a white conservative; a transgender woman and a man who refuses to accept transgender as a valid identity; and an environmentalist and a climate-change skeptic. Each of these pairs is placed in a large warehouse and then tasked with assembling a bar, where they sit and enjoy Heinekens once construction is complete.
The overwhelming response to Heineken’s “Worlds Apart” just goes to show how hungry consumers are for brands that align themselves with honest and authentic engagement with complicated social and political issues.
While the premise is nothing new — people overcoming their differences by being forced to work together — the video goes a step further by showing footage of what one half of each partnership said beforehand about people like their partner. For example, the guy who thinks transgender people are just “not right” also says, “You’re a man, be a man. Or you’re a female, be a female.” This honestly adds a level of authenticity usually not seen in what is often a genre of feel-good advertising.
The risks Heineken takes in this ad — not sugarcoating how people talk about those with different views or lifestyles — make the reward of the video’s conclusion especially cathartic. The video truly went viral (it registered 3 million views in the week after its debut), and its #OpenYourWorld hashtag trended on social media. This overwhelming response to Heineken’s “Worlds Apart” just goes to show how hungry consumers are for brands that align themselves with honest and authentic engagement with complicated social and political issues.
Kellogg’s Eggo Waffles — Stranger Things
On a fluffier note, Eggo Waffles took a moment of unintentional product placement and transformed it into a multichannel advertising partnership with one of the most talked-about shows in recent memory: Netflix’s Stranger Things.
In the show’s first season, the character Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown, develops an obsession with Eggo waffles once she escapes the secret laboratory where she was raised. According to Advertising Age, Kellogg’s was completely unaware of the product placement before the debut season aired, which isn’t exactly surprising — no one at the show could have anticipated that a small-budget sci-fi series with a quirky sense of 1980’s nostalgia would blow up into a true cultural phenomenon.
Eggo Waffles took a moment of unintentional product placement and transformed it into a multichannel advertising partnership with one of the most talked-about shows in recent memory.
But when it came time to promote the second season of Stranger Things, Kellogg’s leveraged the hype surrounding the show’s return to create cross-promotional television spots and creative digital advertising, all thanks to Leo Burnett and the digital agency VML. In addition to an Eggo-branded Chrome extension that blocked show spoilers, Kellogg rolled out nine unique Eggo recipes to pair with the nine new episodes. The recipes include the MADMAX (a Sriracha-soaked chicken tender placed on top of an Eggo waffle) as well as the Pollywog (a layered sandwich made of ice cream and waffles).
Spoiler alert: Eggo waffles again play a very prominent role in Eleven’s diet during the second season of Stranger Things. And while this campaign may not address the social and political issues of 2017, it is a perfect example of a brand collaborating with popular culture to illustrate the enduring emotional resonance of something as small and seemingly insignificant as toaster waffles.
Whirlpool — “Care Counts”
Winner of the Grand Prix for Creative Data at this year’s Cannes Lions, Whirlpool’s “Care Counts” campaign, from DigitasLBi, represents a new kind of storytelling, what one of the Cannes jurists called “story doing.”
According to researchers, students are 20 percent less likely to attend class if they don’t have access to clean clothes, so back in 2015, Whirlpool began a pilot program by donating washers and dryers to 17 schools in California and Missouri, and then the company tracked the performance of students who used the new appliances. The results were dramatic: not only did the students’ attendance rates go up but so did their grades and their participation in extracurricular activities. By 2017, Whirlpool had installed washers and dryers in schools in seven additional cities, including Chicago, Baltimore, and New Orleans.
Whirlpool’s “Care Counts” campaign, from DigitasLBi, represents a new kind of storytelling, what one of the Cannes jurists called “story doing.”
“Care Counts” has also paid dividends for Whirlpool. According to Advertising Age, the campaign earned 340 million media impressions and 12 million views of the campaign video on Facebook and YouTube. In addition, the Whirlpool brand has seen a 220 percent increase in social sentiment. Part of that rise in social sentiment is the brand’s new connection with charity and philanthropy, which is essential to creating brand affinity in consumers, especially millennial consumers. And instead of trying to shoehorn the brand into a philanthropic space that isn’t organically connected to its products, Whirlpool managed to improve its brand’s visibility, and make a difference in the lives of kids, by leveraging what the brand does best: giving every student the confidence that comes with putting on clean clothes.
Photos: Shutterstock
Originally published at www.brittonmdg.com.
