Creative Marketing Inspiration

2020 has seen a creative explosion throughout the world as people have been forced to break out of their shells and try new concepts, in line with the globe’s current state.

The landscape of creative marketing changes as the landscape of the world does, as we have all seen, and with it, so do our favourite creative campaigns.

Some brands manage to get their campaigns so right that we are left praising them a year or even two years down the line. 

Though, when there is a global pandemic and the marketing environment is challenged in such a unique way, brands have to think out of the box in order to capture their audience in a way relevant to the situation.

With this in mind, here are a few of our recent favourite creative campaigns:

• Burger King’s Mouldy Whopper Burger Campaign

One of the most interesting campaigns that have come out of 2020 has to be Burger King’s mouldy Whopper advert. 

Burger King announced that they are no longer including artificial flavours, colours, or preservatives in their famous Whopper burgers. To celebrate this, they created a photo and video campaign around the effects on a 34-day-old Whopper when no artificial ingredients have been used.

The results were that people could see how genuine ingredients attracted mould, whereas preservatives would have left the Whopper edible (ish) for that entire month.

This may seem slightly unrelated to the effects of COVID, but seeing as the world is now focused on a healthier and cleaner lifestyle, Burger King may be onto something.

• The Wild Detectives Bookshop Turned Travel Agency

As most shops had to shut down for the global coronavirus lockdown, businesses that relied 100% on brick-and-mortar trade had to make other plans. 

The Wild Detectives, a US-based bookshop launched a campaign that successfully positioned them in the online world, as both a book retailer and a travel agency.

While their holiday destinations were not physically available for purchase, their holidays for the mind were. The Wild Detectives’ campaign introduced forms of a getaway during lockdown by means of reading books set in exotic locations.

This is easily one of our favourite campaigns this year because of the level of creativity during such a trying time.

• Gillette’s ‘The Best A Man Can Be’ Campaign

As a response to the world’s #MeToo movement, Gillette created a campaign based on their 30-year-old tagline ‘The Best A Man Can Get’.

Even though this campaign was from 2019, it is incredibly moving and holds a very important, very relevant message for men all around the world.

A year later and it is still being mentioned as a favourite brand campaign. The video looks at different men; young and old, going about their day while trying to implement new behaviours in accordance with gender equality, anti-bullying, and feminism.

As the world battles the current pandemic, it is interesting to see how other global problems are dealt with or considered at the same time.

• Netflix And Instagram’s ‘Wanna Talk About It’

In an effort to help people struggling through the global pandemic, Netflix and Instagram launched a campaign called ‘Wanna Talk About It’. 

They held weekly Instagram lives with stars chatting to mental health experts regarding the challenges and struggles being faced during such an uncertain period. Topics such as sleeping troubles, anxiety, social distancing, and self-care were all touched on during these lives.

For many people around the world, distractions and resources such as this would have been extremely useful when there was no other way of physically visiting doctors and therapists, etc.

• Volkswagen And The Last Mile

The famous car company launched a campaign this year called ‘The Last Mile’. This short, animated clip was dedicated to saying goodbye to the famous Beetle car, which was around for 70 years.

For such an iconic vehicle throughout history, Volkswagen’s ‘The Last Mile’ campaign was very successfully received. 

Their Vice President of marketing, Saad Chehab, mentioned that the aim was to create something with as much flair and fascination that the car represented for all those years, in a way to properly say goodbye.

There are so many memorable creative marketing campaigns to rave about, but with the pace at which the world works, many of them can easily get drowned out by the next.

The ones that really do stand out, however, are those that touch on human emotion and the current circumstances of the world.