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G
F
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O

A LOOK AT THE TOP 10

MOST
REMARKABLE


MARKETING CAMPAIGNS EVER.

remarkable
: worthy of being or likely to be
noticed especially as being
uncommon or extraordinary.

remarkable
: worthy of being or likely to be
noticed especially as being
uncommon or extraordinary.

REMARKABLE
Is rare.

REMARKABLE
Is powerful.

REMARKABLE
Is inspiring.

REMARKABLE
Is

uNCOMMON.

EXTRAORDINARY.

LIKELY TO BE NOTICED.

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Seth godin

Author, Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

Got it?

Good.

Now learn
from the best.

THE TOP 10

MOST REMARKABLE
MARKETING CAMPAIGNS

EVER!

#10

#10 Whopper sacrifice

Brand: Burger King

Creative Partner: Crispin Porter & Bogusky

The OMFG! Factor:

Sacrifice ten Facebook friends. Get a free Whopper.
Sounds simple enough, right? But what made this campaign particularly
remarkable is that it challenged the very nature of the platform on which
it played out, and tapped into the essence of how social networks have
changed our ideas of what friendship means.
Whopper Sacrifice (a Facebook app) launched in early 2009 with little
fanfare and almost no media supportand lasted only 10 days before
Facebook shut it down on the basis of user privacy violation (the app
notified friends when they were deleted). Sure, they gave away 20,000
free Whoppers. But the infamy and buzz they gained? Priceless.

Steal this:
Use a really, really, really simple call-to-action.
Dont be afraid to push the envelope.

#9

#9

True blood: revelation

Brand: HBO

Creative Partners: Campfire

And Company

The OMFG! Factor:

What made the marketing campaign for HBOs first season of True Blood so
remarkable was the way it was woven into the mythology of the show itself. Vials of a
mysterious red liquid with messages in a dead language were mailed to goth and
horror bloggers, leading them to a vampire-only website called BloodCopy.com.
Videos featuring real vampires debating whether or not they should reveal
themselves to an unsuspecting human populace were leaked. An outdoor poster
campaign promoting a new beverage called TruBlood (available for sale at
www.trubeverage.com) and featuring PSAs supporting equal rights for vampires
appeared in major metro areasnone of which ever mentioned the TV show.
By creating a complex back story about a synthetic beverage that enabled vampires
to live among humans, HBO and their creative partner, Campfire, were able to tap
into an existing community of horror aficionados and organically build an audience
that made True Blood one of HBOs most anticipated and successful show debuts.

Steal this:

Find the niche audience that is super-passionate about your product

or mission, and explore ways to intrigue, inspire, & deeply entertain them.
Invest in really good story-telling.

#8

#8

The REFRESH project

Brand: Pepsi

Creative Partner: TBWA Worldwide

THE OMFG! FACTOR:

After 23 years and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on Super
Bowl ads, one of the worlds biggest brands broke new ground in
2010 by opting out of the Super Bowl and pouring 1/3 of its
annual marketing budget into a cause-driven social marketing
campaign called The Refresh Project. The Refresh Project
featured a pledge from Pepsi to hand out more than $20 million
in grants to do-good projects in six categories and in what has
since been coined crowd-sourced philanthropy (the audience
voted on who got the grants). Sadly, the campaign was pulled
after 10 months due to fraud allegations and slipping market
shareyet the influence of The Refresh Project as a remarkable
example of behemoth brands committing more dollars (and brain
cells) to digital and social media continues to be felt.

Steal this:
Been doing the same thing for 23 years? Surprise the hell
out of everyone by not doing it. At least once.
Even high-profile, high-budget do good programs dont
do much good if theyre not authentic and brand-relevant.
Learn from Pepsis mistakes.

#7

#7

Elf yourself
Brand: Oce Max

Creative Partners: Jason Zada EVB

Toy

Maccabee

THE OMFG! FACTOR:

Who knew that uploading images of yourself, friends or loved ones,
then watching them dance as Christmas elves would be so
remarkable?
It was a simple idea, but at the time of its launch in 2006,
a groundbreaking one. Let people star in their own interactive
ecard? Virtually unheard of but totally awesome.
Six years and over half a billion shares later, Elf Yourself can boast
not only of being a viral phenomenon, but also an enduring success
one that has literally become a holiday tradition.

Steal this:
Give your audience opportunities to star in your marketing
Create an annual tradition (that gets better every year!)
Make it wicked easy to participate and just as easy to share

#6

#6

the man your man could smell like

Brand: Old Spice

Creative Partner: Weiden + Kennedy

THE OMFG! FACTOR

The Old Spice Man debuted in a 2010 Super Bowl ad, bringing
humor, sex appeal, and intrigue to a brand that was all-butforgotten. Five months later, he made marketing history by
appearing in a series of 180 near-real-time videos that not only got
the attention of celebrities like Demi Moore and Ellen DeGeneres,
but also helped Procter & Gamble to amass over 40 million views
on YouTube and enjoy a 107% increase in body wash sales within
30 days of the campaign launch.

Steal this:
Got a spokesperson for your brand? Make sure he/she
appeals to & entertains both genders and provide
opportunities for your audience to engage with him/her
both on and oine.
Short, frequent, episodic & highly-shareworthy content
will be shared more than the usual marketing fodder.

#5

#5

The best job in the world

Brand: Queensland Board of Tourism /

Creative Partner: Nitro

The OMFG! factor

Wait you want to pay me $150,000 to spend 6 months cleaning the
pool, feeding the fish, collecting the mail, and exploring a gorgeous,
little-known island o the Great Barrier Reef? And all I have to do is
submit a 1-minute video on why I should get the job?
Yes, yes, thats exactly what the Queensland Board of Tourism did in
2009 in a remarkable campaign that relied on a most unlikely media
channelthe Jobs section of newspapers. Fueled by an extraordinary
streak of PR and clever use of social media, the Board received over
7 million visitors, 34,000 applicants from 200 countries, and 500,000
votes for this once-in-a-lifetime job. And the lucky winner? Well, he
continues his reign of Remarkableness as the Ambassador of
Queensland Tourism. Lucky bastard.

Steal this:
Experiment with non-traditional channels
No brand is too small to make a giant,
remarkable splash

#4

#4

In rainbows
Radiohead

The OMFG! factor

The music industry used to have a really simple formula: talent + record label
+ plastic discs = dollars. But digital and social technology completely disrupted
that formulaand a few risk-taking, innovative folks like Thom Yorke of
Radiohead, disrupted right back.

In Rainbows, which was the bands seventh album, was released directly to fans
with an oer that was altogether unheard of: pay what you want. To date, the
band reports that their OMFG strategy paid owith 3 million downloads in the
first year and a cool $10 million in revenueby far, the bands biggest
commercial success EVER. Its no wonder The New York Times hailed this
establishment-bucking quintet from Oxfordshire as a band fast becoming as
synonymous with technological mischief as they are with music.
BOO-YA!

Steal this:
Explore new ways to embrace the very thing (technology,
competition, etc) thats disrupting your business model.
Invest in, cultivate, & nurture deep, direct relationships with your
fans/loyal customers/promoters. One day soon, that will really
come in handy.

#3

#2

Lets motor
Brand: Mini Cooper

Creative Partners: Crispin Porter + Bogusky

The OMFG! Factor:

In Europe, the Mini Cooper had long been an icon, but in the gas-guzzling,
SUV-loving USA, the teeny weeny Mini had only 2% brand awareness and
even less market share. So whats a clever marketer to do? Why accentuate
that dierence, of course!
Rather than pursue the same-old, same-old TV/Print/Radio ad formula that
most car brands were following at the time, Mini and their ever-innovating
agency partner decided to eschew traditional media in favor of playing up
the fun-factor of the car itselfin shopping malls, on street corners, glued
to billboards and other unlikely places where only a tiny vehicle with
awesome gas mileage and a kind price tag could shine. Ten years later,
Mini had not only far surpassed its goals of market share and sales in an
indisputably disastrous automobile marketit also saw the U.S. surpass
the UK as the brands biggest-selling single market in the world.

Steal this:
Focus on the one thing that makes you undeniably dierent
from all your competitors. Double down on that one thing.
Screw the cow path. Blaze your own trail.

#2

#2

The BLAIR WITCH PROJECT

Brand: Artisan Entertainment

The omfg! Factor:

Arguably the very first online viral marketing campaign,
predating YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and even Friendster,
The Blair Witch Project remains an often-imitated, neverduplicated runaway success. Shot on a shoestring budget of just
$22,000, the film raked in over $250 million, thanks in part to its
novel approach of terrifying audiences into believing that the
fictitious story of three missing film students was 100% real.
The key? A deft combination of "found footage, strategically
seeded rumors on online message boards, and a series of lowbudget ads and trailers that perpetuated the legend.

Steal this:
TELL GREAT STORIES! (Sound familiar?)
It doesnt have to cost a fortune to be remarkable.

#1

#1

2008 presidential campaign

Barack Obama

The oMFG! Factor:

In early 2007, Barack Obama was a one-term senator with a funny-sounding name and
less than 10% brand recognition. Eighteen months later, Obama went on to raise more
money than any other presidential candidate in U.S. history, ultimately landing him the
title of 44th President of the United States of America.
How did he achieve this? In part because of a brilliantly executed marketing campaign
that leveraged social technology and grass-roots support in ways his competitors
hadnt even considered. He dominated not only YouTube with over 20 million views,
but also claimed the most popular fan page on Facebook (with 2.5 million fans vs
McCains 625,000 at the time), broke down barriers with his social media-friendly
campaign website that bestowed genuine, in-action photos, videos, and issue-oriented
calls-to-action upon its visitors dailyand ultimately, rode that online popularity all the
way to the White House, becoming not only the first U.S. President to have a presence
on social media, but the first one to fully grasp and connect with his constituents across
ALL of the channels that matter to them now.

Steal this:
If the freakin president of the USA can master this social media stu,
so can you.

The bottom line?

Either write something worth reading

or

do something

worth writing
about.

Benjamin franklin

Now Go do
something
OMFG!-worthy.

credits
The Top 10 Most Remarkable Marketing Campaigns EVER was written,
designed & produced by Marta Kagan, Director of Brand
& Buzz, HubSpot. Complaints, compliments, & cash prizes may be
forwarded directly to @mzkagan. Inquiries that refer to Ms Kagan
as a genius or include red velvet cupcakes will be given priority.
All images with the exception of the UNCOMMON ladies on slide 8
(which should be credited to http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmichel67/)
were found on The Googles. If Ive failed to properly credit your work
in this deck, please dont be angry, Ive had very little sleep lately.
Links to credible sources of information that substantiate at least a few
of the claims made within this deck can be found at
http://www.delicious.com/mzkagan99/remarkable.
Feel free to enjoy, share, and reuse this presentation to your hearts
content. No, you may not borrow my pirate hat.
No elves were harmed in the making of this deck.