5 of the Cleverest Marketing Campaigns in Recent Times

There are marketing campaigns and then there are clever marketing campaigns. The former may resonate with you, but they’ll rarely stick with you. The latter are memorable and unique. How would you grade your marketing campaigns? Are they clever, or merely average? If you need a little inspiration, check out the following case studies involving five clever marketing campaigns that dared to be different.

1. Atlanta Hawks 'Swipe Right' Night

Last season, the Atlanta Hawks hosted one of the most memorable event nights in recent professional sports history. They called it Swipe Right Night, an obvious play on Tinder -- a dating app that’s popular among millennials (who also happen to make up a large percentage of NBA ticket sales). Here’s how it worked:

The Atlanta Hawks encouraged fans in attendance to swipe right -- the equivalent of telling a potential dating partner that you’re attracted to them -- for the chance to win access to “Love Lounges” populated by other singles. In the days building up to the event, the Hawks also promised to have some of feminist blog Jezebel's most eligible singles in attendance. Bud Light, offering fans the chance to win tickets to other games and events, sponsored the event.

The Swipe Right Night was successful for a number of reasons. First off, it was unique. So many professional sports teams recycle events each season, so it was refreshing to see something totally innovative and new. Second, the event identified and honed in on the target market: millennials. Third, the campaign put the focus on an experience and not a boring giveaway.

2. 'The Dress' Campaigns

Remember the dress phenomenon last February? You know, the one where people got all worked up about whether the dress in a picture was blue and black or white and gold. Well, it sparked a lot of creativity from different companies and is a perfect example of how marketing campaigns have to be relevant and nimble.

Dunkin’ Donuts was one of the winners, posting a great picture of two different donuts -- one blue and black, the other white and gold -- with a caption that read, “Doesn’t matter if it’s blue/black or white/gold, they still taste delicious.” They weren’t the only ones, though. Every brand wanted a piece of the action.

LEGO posted a creative picture of two different LEGO figures that read, “#whiteandgold or #blackandblue? We found a way around science: You can have both! #TheDress #dressgate.” But perhaps the greatest post of all goes to Tide. Recognizing that their brand perfectly aligned with the issue, Tide posted a picture of the two dresses against an orange background that read, “Looks like a problem when you don’t use Tide Plus ColorGuard. #TheDress.”

3. Urban Hilton Weiner Selfie Coupon Codes

Clever is the only way to describe Urban Hilton Weiner’s recent selfie coupon code campaign. At the time, they were a relatively unknown clothing company. Now the brand is frequently discussed in fashion circles. The ingenious marketing campaign worked like this:

Urban Hilton Weiner took to social media announcing that it would offer a $10 coupon to everyone who posted a selfie wearing one of their clothing items, along with campaign-specific hashtag #urbanselfie. The campaign was a major success. Not only did it increase sales, but most importantly, it enhanced brand visibility.

4. British Airways: 'The Magic of Flying'

British Airways leveraged mobile app and location-based technology to create one of the most incredible campaigns in recent memory. The company built digital billboards in highly-trafficked areas that featured a child pointing to the sky. When a plane flew by overhead, the billboard then displayed a text notification that told people the flight number and final destination. It all plugged into the underlying message that British Airways offers “more flights to more destinations.”

5. Always's #LikeAGirl Campaign

Finally, there’s the #LikeAGirl campaign by Always. This campaign questioned viewers regarding their views of young girls. Instead of using the phrase “like a girl” to conjure up negative connotations, the campaign sought to make it a positive phrase. The ad started by asking grown adults and young boys to impersonate phrases such as, “Throw like a girl” or “Run like a girl.” It then asked young girls to impersonate the same phrases. The results were starkly different. Young girls had a much more positive image of who they were.

The ad seemed to work, as it earned more than 55 million YouTube views, 200,000-plus YouTube likes, hundreds of thousands of Facebook comments and shares and more than 40,000 tweets.

Clever marketing campaigns are not comfortable from a business perspective. The fact that they’re clever and unique means they stand out. This can either benefit your company or backfire if you aren’t careful. As a marketer, you have to dare to be clever. Use some of the takeaways you’ve learned from these five tips and make a commitment stop developing boring campaigns that follow textbook rules. Instead, start thinking outside of the box and become a true innovator.

by Samuel Edwards

Breaking up Is hard to do: 3 PowerPoint habits to break

It’s easy for all of us to develop bad habits, whether drinking too much coffee or always running late, but it can be much harder to break them! In the corporate world, there is one bad habit that we’d like to see everyone kick to the curb: poor use of PowerPoint. Even the most skilled presenters can do better! Replacing those bad PowerPoint habits with more effective strategies allows you to tell a more engaging story, connect with your listeners, and even change the conversation.

If you’ve fallen into some bad PowerPoint habits, you may feel stuck in a rut with your presentation slides. If you feel that way, imagine how your audience is feeling! Do you notice that people’s eyes tend to glaze over as they attempt to take in your PowerPoint presentation? Can you blame them? The questions becomes, what can you do to liven things up, bring a fresh, new perspective to your presentation visuals, and help your listeners to “get it”?

This week, we’ll address three common PowerPoint habits that you can easily replace with more savvy strategies. Be sure to come back next week when we’ll focus on three more habits in part 2 of our series.


Bad Habit No. 1: Following equations of “X slides per minute”
Have you been asked to limit your presentation to a certain number of slides? Some mistakenly believe that the length of a presentation should be measured by the number of slides you plan to show. That misconception leads people to look for a magic number of slides per minute for an ideal presentation. There is no such thing!

New Habit: Focus on your audience and your message rather than the number of slides. Who are your listeners and what do they care about? Use slides if they help your audience understand or remember what you are saying. You may even want to consider using props or a video to supplement or replace a slide deck. In the book “The HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations,” Nancy Duarte advises, “Don’t worry about slide count. Just make your slides count.”


Bad Habit No. 2: Putting too much text on a slide
We’ve all seen them — slides so chock full of text that there’s no way the audience can even see the words, much less take in the message. In his book “Presentation Zen,” Garr Reynolds aptly calls heavy text slides “slideuments.” If your content can be distributed and clearly understood without a presenter, you’ve created a document, not a presentation. It’s easy to fall into this bad habit when you feel compelled to share everything you know with your audience. This “curse of knowledge” leads to information overload that only makes your listeners shut down.

New Habit: To help “manage your real estate” and make sure your text is visible to everyone in the room, use a minimum of 30-point type on your slides. That automatically limits the amount of text and forces you to pare it down to the key points you want to convey, or better yet, to one idea per slide.


Bad Habit No. 3: Leaving out images
Making your slides text-centric takes the attention off you as a speaker. Have you noticed that people are compelled to read any text that is put in front of them? Wendy Gates Corbett, president of Refresher Training and an expert in designing vivid presentations and corporate training materials, describes the effect this way: “People who can read can’t NOT read.” While your audience is reading your slides, they are not listening to what you’re saying.

New habit: Try using relevant images that convey the essence of your message with only a few key words on each slide (what I call a “glance & grab” strategy). Duarte, author and CEO of Duarte, Inc., suggests asking yourself, “What would I like people to remember … ?” and giving that point visual emphasis. On the left is a typical text slide with bulleted information. The right picture can convey your message to the audience in an instant, without distracting them with words to read while they are trying to listen.

byStephanie Scotti

HOW TO: Hire a Graphic / Web Designer

Hiring designers or developers can be one of the most difficult things for non-technical business people to do. In many cases, it may be necessary, of course, to hire someone to create your website, build custom systems, or design your sales collateral — all the more necessary if you aren't a designer or developers yourself. But how can small business owners hire someone that's right for the job if they don't really understand what goes into that job in the first place?

How can you do your due diligence even when you don't completely grasp the type of thing you might be hiring someone to do?

Here are four tips that will help you hire a graphic and web designers make sure you're getting what you paid for.

1. Seek Recommendations

Any search for designers should start with your peers. Ask your friends and colleagues for recommendations of people they have worked with in the past. Do you like the website of the hardware store down the street from your restaurant? Find out who made it and how much it cost. Did you overhear a business owner at the last Chamber of Commerce meetup mention their new, custom-made web site? Ask them who made it and if their experience with the designer was positive.

Even if you're hiring someone full-time, rather than a freelancer, you can still seek recommendations from your peers and from the job candidate's peers. Niche communities like Working With Rails (a community for Ruby on Rails developers) and LinkedIn allow members to endorse one another. While other sites, such as Dribbble (a community for graphic designers), can give you a sense of how others in the industry view the person you're considering hiring for a job.

Also, don't be hesitant to ask for recommendations from the designer directly. "Don't be afraid to ask for references from a designers' previous clients," said freelance web developer Richard Session. "I was asked this recently by a new client and I think the information they received about me helped put me over the top in winning the contract."

2. Ask Lots of Questions

Asking questions is important for any hiring process, of course, but it's especially important when you're hiring for a position or project you don't quite understand on a technical level.

When hiring a freelance designer, be sure to inquire about each candidate's process. When will you receive deliverables? When will payments be due? How will rights be assigned? Knowing how a freelancer works beforehand and avoiding miscommunication will save time and headache in the long run.

You also want to make sure you understand what tools the person you're hiring uses and what formats your project will be delivered in. If your designer sends you AI files when your printer requires EPS, you'll need to know up front if the designer you've chosen can deliver what you need in the specifications you require. There's also a huge difference, for example, between a site built on a common backend like WordPress and a custom solution created by the developer, said Session. While the latter might offer more flexibility, the former will be easier for a future developer to work with and modify.

Be specific in talking about what you want, and don't be afraid to ask your job candidate to clarify or explain things you don't understand. If he can't explain to you what he's talking about in a way that satisfies you, that might be an indication that you need to hire someone else.

When hiring someone for a full-time position, web developer Daniel Tenner, the CTO and co-founder of Woobius, has a good list of the types of things you should look for. (Though Tenner's article focuses on hiring developers, it applies generally to designers as well.) The chief characteristic you should look for in a new hire is passion. You want to hire someone that's passionate about design or development, gets excited about new technologies or techniques, and does this stuff in his spare time.

3. Learn the Basics

You're hiring an expert for a reason, but it's still important to learn the basics. Knowing the difference between PHP and Ruby (they're both backend web programming languages), or knowing when to use CSS and when to use tables (the former is for front end code on websites and the latter is for displaying tabular data) will go a long way toward helping you hire the right person for the job.

You might never be able to debate the merits of various JavaScript frameworks with your potential hires, and that's okay. But you should be able to understand what they're talking about when they tell you they plan to use JavaScript to animate transitions between images in a slideshow on your site — you should be able to decide if that's something you even want.

There are plenty of places around the Internet where you can learn a little bit about web development or graphic and web design. If you're hiring a designer, for example, you might want to take a look at some beginner Photoshop tutorials. Armed with knowledge of the basics, you'll be better equipped to interview a prospective hire (and your BS detectors will function at a higher and more accurate level).

4. Get Help from Friends

Even with a firm grasp of the basic concepts behind web design and development, it can be next to impossible for a non-technical small business owner to evaluate code or compare quotes from competing applicants. That's why it can be extremely helpful to have a friend or colleague that can act as a mentor and help you pick out quality applicants.

"Get a mentor/advisor in the applicable field if you're at all unsure of what you're looking for," said Kyle Bragger, founder of web design and developer community site Forrst. According to Bragger, non-technical business owners can "benefit from having someone in your corner, so to speak, who's able to help you through the ever-so-important process of finding tech and design [employees]."

Of course, not everyone has access to someone who knows enough about web design or development to sufficiently evaluate a project quote or job application. If you don't have a friend or colleague in your corner that's able or willing to lend a hand, one way to meet such a person is to attend tech meetups in your local area. You may even find someone you'd like to hire for a job at such a gathering and skip the middleman altogether!

by Josh Catone