In this video, the speaker reviews four standout marketing campaigns from 2025: Duolingo’s faux‑death of its mascot Duo, Dr. Squatch’s limited‑edition Sydney Sweeney bath‑water soap, the Cat’s Eye × Gap collaboration that riffed on a rival brand, and Skims’ “bush underwear” drop featuring Kim Kardashian. For each, he explains the stunt’s premise, the massive organic reach it generated (millions of views, billions of impressions), the scarcity‑driven sales spikes, and the follow‑up retargeting that kept the brands top‑of‑mind. He concludes by urging viewers to apply the core takeaways—leveraging timely relevance, creating buzz through controversy or novelty, and using scarcity plus retargeting—to grow their own businesses.
Chapters
These are the top marketing campaigns of 2025. First is the death of Duolingo. So Duolingo posted that Duo the bird died, and it got millions of views, and tons of influencers and news outlets picked up on it too. So Duo died, and so many people picked up on it, and it brought so much free publicity to the brand. Everyone was crazy hyped when he came back to life. The next one is Dr. Squatch and the Sydney Sweeney bathwater soap. This was a crazy campaign, got so many people's attention, and was pretty wild. The soap sold out in minutes, and even today you can go on eBay and buy a bar of soap for like $200, which is just insane. This made Dr. Squatch top of mind for so many people, even if they didn't get a chance to purchase this. When they went into stores or saw other ads from them online, they converted a lot higher. The next one is the Cat's Eye and Gap promo. Now this is crazy because it was actually lashing back at American Eagle and that whole thing, but this ad got like 20 million views in just the first few days of it being live. and 8 billion impressions. It shows that if you actually have an ad that's relating to relevant situations happening right now, it can just blow up. And last but not least is the bush underwear from Skims and Kim Kardashian. Like, what even is this? This is just crazy. So what was really great about this is the way they actually executed it. Not everyone could buy this, but so many people had to enter their name, email, phone number, or at least name and email to actually like sign up for it and then to actually purchase it. But anyone that couldn't got hit with tons of emails, tons of promotions, tons of retargeting other products. And because once again, like Dr. Squatch, they were top of mind, it worked. So what do you think of these top marketing campaigns of 2025? Is there one that I missed? Which one of these was your favorite? And I hope you can take something and learn from your business from what some of these really big brands did. If you can get top of mind with people, if you can relate to current scenarios going on in the world, and it doesn't mean they have to be controversial, you can really grab attention and your business will grow.
