4 Marketing Lessons From 2023’s Best Ad Campaigns

On today's episode of Marketing Instagram, we're gonna break down the best marketing campaigns of 2023. We're gonna go from Ben Affleck sipping on some Dunkin to Snoop Dogg giving up smoke, and many, many more. We're gonna break down why they worked, what could have been better, and how you can learn from them and act on them in your business. Today I'm joined by ladronda Alfred, who's the host the Balanced Black Girl podcast. This is Marketing against the Grain. Let's get to today's show. On today's episode of Marketing against the we are talking with Lestranda Alfred about the best marketing campaigns of 2023. Welcome to Marketing against the Grain. Thank you for filling in for my partner Kieran Flanagan, who is getting some much deserved R and R. And thank you for all the work you did on what I thought was an amazing blog post around the best marketing campaigns of 2023 on the HubSpot blog. So for everybody watching on YouTube or listening on podcasts, Lestranda is a HubSpot creator. She's the co host, Balanced Black Girl podcast and she's going to join me today and we're going to break down some of the most successful marketing campaigns of 2023. So what I pull, I'm going to pull up this post so everybody can check it out. But Lestranda, why don't you walk us through how you found all these, what your criteria was and what we're talking about today.

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's so fun to be able to join Marketing against the Grain and talk about what was one of the most fun pieces I got to work on this year. So I wanted to do an end of year roundup of some the most creative, effective marketing campaigns of the year. So naturally the best way to do that is to talk to other marketers, see what caught their attention and see what they liked. So I polled the HubSpot media team, basically our content team here at HubSpot, to see what campaigns they really liked. So I took their feedback, combined it with my own feedback as a marketer and chronically online person, and this is the list that we came up with.

I want to start describing myself as chronically online because I am. So I should just admit that about myself.

Exactly. We just gotta be honest with ourselves.

So I love that and it's the perfect time to do a look back and I think we wanna start with one of the campaigns that you and I both like the most that did make the cut for your post. And that was what Snoop Dogg did with solo stuff. And so to kind of set up this campaign for everybody to. This campaign started with what was a seemingly innocent slash provocative social media post from Snoop Dogg. Snoop Dogg's known for smoking. He's got a lot of association with that. It's part of his personal brand. And he posts just an image. And he posted this everywhere. Instagram, Twitter, the whole thing. And it was like, after much consideration and conversation with my family, I've decided to give up smoke. Please respect my privacy at this time, Snoop Dogg. And to say this post went viral, I think was an understatement. I mean, we're looking at the Instagram version, and it has almost 5 million likes.

Wild.

It was crazy.

Yeah, that level of reach, I mean, it was making headlines that week too. Publications were talking about Snoop Dogg giving up. Giving up smoke. It was a big deal.

Well, and the viral coefficient of this post was crazy just because it instantly turned into a meme. People were making all types of jokes about it and, like, what this means about our society. And it just, like, it felt like if you took a time machine to that week in 2023, like, that was the thing in the zeitgeist. And it's very, very hard for any brand ever to have to be a part of, like, the dominant thing thing in a society for a week. That's a long period of time. And what happened is a few days later after this and what had happened, I had seen this, and then I'd gotten an email from Solo Stove because I'm in their target demo. So I think I got added to their email list at some point that the reason that Snoop Dogg gave up smoke was it wasn't in reference to weed, but it was in reference to Solo Stove, which is a fire pit product that is smokeless. Like, that is. They were. They were really clear on, like, hey, this is the value prop. This is why you would buy this ring of metal versus just having a fire in your backyard. Right? Is that you don't have to deal with the smoke from the fireplace. And so, like, they have a whole. Had a whole campaign bunch of creative and everything with Snoop. And what I thought was pretty remarkable about this campaign is that you had this initial post from Snoop, get a ton of reach, and then you connect to this brand, but you also got their core value prop like that this is a smokeless product. Oftentimes you get that awareness, but you don't get it tied back to your product at All. And they got both, which is pretty impressive. What do you think?

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I mean, I feel like this was an example of the ultimate gotcha. And when the ad came out, I went back to Snoop's original posts and I was like, oh, that makes sense. His initial post was phrased. It was a little cryptic. He said, giving up smoke, not smoking. It was, you know, there were. There were clues there that I think we needed the full context of the ad.

And there was. There was no smoke in the picture. Right. Like, it was a very cropped image. It was, like, very intentional, right?

Mm, exactly.

But let's look, let's be real. How much did you feel it was a bait and switch? This is my big gripe with this campaign. I feel like it was very bait and switchy. But what do you. What do you think?

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely agree. I mean, I think it really played up Snoop's personal brand and what we all associate him with, and that is what really carried the conversation here.

Yes. But it was also, like, so separate from what you thought the joke and the story was that you're like, wait, like, if he had done this for any type of smoking product or other things, you would have been like, oh, I kind of get the correlation. Be like, wait, this is a fireplace thing, right?

Yeah.

Like, I mean, this isn't Google switching out the Gemini videos and doing faux Gemini videos on us, but it's a little bit of a bait and switch.

Definitely was. Yeah. And then with their press release that they also came out with saying that Snoop was their official smokesman instead of spokesman, it was. It was just. Yeah, there was a lot.

Which also is kind of not great branding. Right. Because you're trying to be smokeless. So why do you want to smoke men? Like, that is like, like, oh, you're trying just, like, a little too hard on this. And I. And I get it, but trying a little too hard. Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

To unpack.

I still. But look, the great. The thing about most great marketing campaigns is that they're going to have some of those moments. Right. Because they broke through, they were differentiated, they took a lot of risk.

Yeah.

But if you're out there looking at this, the true lesson here is they took the value prop of their product, which is, hey, no smoke when you're sitting around a campfire, and they basically ideated to how to get that across in some popular cultural way, and they eventually dotted line to Soup Dog, who was known for smoking. And there's probably five other really Interesting ideas they had, but they were all based in the value prop of their product, which is going to be key if you're ever trying to do a campaign like this.

Exactly, yeah. And found a really creative way to get that message across.

All right, we're gonna skip around. I want you to break down for everybody what Nicki Minaj did this year, because I also thought this campaign was great. I think this is probably one of your favorite ones from our pre. Pre show conversation. So walk through what happened here for everybody watching.

Yes. So for those who may not know, first of all, it's important context to have Nicki Minaj the rapper, musician, has one of the most engaged fan bases on the planet. They are called the Barbs. And the Barbs are so engaged. They absolutely love Nikki as their leader and they take what she does very seriously and are very quick to rally around her work, which is great. So earlier this fall, Nicki was releasing a new album. And to tease this album, she released the album cover about two months before it came out on social media. And her fan base, the Barbs, got really excited about it. Now, this image, very on brand for Nikki. It's like her with a futuristic background.

There's lots of pulling it up now. It's. It's like super iconic and super in her style, right?

It is. It's like super on brand. It's a gorgeous image. All of this pink, very on brand for her. And there's this very futuristic cityscape behind her. And so her fan base, the Barbs, quickly referred to it as Gag City. For people who don't know what gag means, it's slang. It's like, oh, my gosh, this is so amazing. Took my breath away. It gagged me. Like, this is so exciting. So Gag City. To reference where she is in this image. Her fans then took to AI to generate their own images of Gag City, creating all of these, like, pink images that completely flooded Twitter for a while. And it was absolutely wild to see. You could not, at least I could not scroll through Twitter or X, I should say, without seeing all of these super pink AI generated images. And then it got so popular that some brands started hopping on. So, like, Baskin Robbins did it, Bing, the Empire Estate building. Like, all of these brands started hopping on, creating their own kind of Pink Friday to Gag City images. And it just. It went wild. And it's like the perfect example of ugc, like, to the nth degree.

Well, what's. What's interesting about this, right, is you made the key point here is that she didn't try to make this happen. This was an outcome of a highly, highly engaged community of people. She has more than just an audience. Right. She has this community of listeners that are deeply, deeply engaged. But at the same time, she enabled it to happen. Because I don't know about you, I'm on Twitter and I'm scrolling through, I see a lot of AI generated images that. That are just like the image she posted. Right. She nailed the aesthetic and lighting and colors and style of the moment. Right. That this is kind of the AI generated image. Like, if you and I were to look at this and not know who Nicki Minaj was, we'd been like, oh, that's an AI generated image. And so it just, like, subconsciously made total sense that people would go and, like, build on it with their own interpretation using different AI image tools.

Absolutely. Yeah. And just the level of awareness that this garnered for her album was almost better than anything that, like, a record label could have planned to do.

And it was a picture. It wasn't like some big campaign.

No. It was just the album cover some.

Of the other folks on your list did. This was literally a picture.

Yeah, just the album cover. Buy it in two months and, like, it then took on a life of its own.

It underscores that the amount of work and campaign work you have to do is inversely correlated to your audience engagement. Right. If you don't have low awareness or an audience that doesn't care or know much about you, you have to do a lot of work. You know, you gotta coordinate, you gotta orchestrate, you gotta partner with other celebrities and other things to kind of get with their audiences. But if you have that big audience, then you just need the right, you know, firestarter, for the sake of the solo stove conversation, to get them going, to get to get them to get them to care and start to take some action. And I think that, to me, is the most remarkable thing about what Nicki Minaj did, is that it seems like she was the ultimate, like, community leader of 2023. That really enabled her tribe to go and spread the word for her.

Absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, community managers could learn a lot from the Barbs and like, that community and how they operate and rally around her work because it's truly incredible to see.

Completely agree. I thought the depth of community engagement was unlike anything I'd ever seen. And I'll be honest with you, I thought the work that the brands did around it, this is a good kind of secondary takeaway. For people who might be watching or listening to today's show is that if you don't have, you know, a community like Nikki has, you can do what some of the brands did. Right. Which was participate in that community and gain a little bit of credibility with that community. Right. And you mentioned what Baskin Robbins and Microsoft and others did. But I think that is an effective way to do it. But you have to be following the zeitgeist, the popular culture, and you need to act quickly and in a relevant way. And that's what I think. Where a lot of companies out there fail.

Yeah. Agree.

Is it like, the last of the party? They don't know what's going on, and it's kind of like. Or the execution is kind of like, way too corporate. And, like, that becomes the issue.

Yep. You got to be able to move quickly and. And make it relevant and a little funny, you know, so that people want to be involved.

All right, we. We have to go to one of my favorites, which is just like, the ongoing weird union of Dunkin Donuts and Ben Affleck.

Yes.

Because it's like, look, it'd be one thing if Ben Affleck had just been part of the Dunkin Donut super bowl commercial. That would've been great. It was a good commercial. But they've kind of turned him into this passive brand ambassador in that, like, he, like, served coffee at the Cambridge Dunkin Donuts in Massachusetts. For those who don't know, Ben Affleck grew up here in the Boston area. Grew up in Cambridge. He was serving coffee there. He's, like, always photographed carrying a Dunkin Donuts coffee around. And people love to make Ben Affleck memes because he always looks, like, sad and unhappy. You know, it's like the sad Ben Affleck memes, like, a month ago, he now even has a pair of custom Dunkin Donuts Nike dunks. Like, he's a big sneaker guy. And so he's like, where? In his Dunkin Donuts Nikes around. And it's there. There's something about starting off the year, the super bowl commercial, and then just being constantly mentioned and brought back up because of your relationship with this, I guess, ambassador, spokesperson. I don't know what it is, because it's weird because they kind of only did one commercial, but there's a bunch of other stuff.

They've done a few. There's been a few commercials, actually.

Okay. Has there been a few?

There's been a few throughout the year. It started with the super bowl commercial. And it was interesting because that was the first time Duncan did a Super bowl commercial. So that was kind of a interesting landmark for them. But he's actually done a few commercials for Duncan over the year. I think the most recent one was in the fall. It was a commercial with him and Ice Spice, which is, like, such an interesting pairing because it. I don't know. I don't fully understand the pairing there, but I think what I love about the Dunkin Donuts Ben Affleck relationship is just how authentic it is if him as a Massachusetts native. There's paparazzi photos of Ben walking around with Duncan, a Duncan cup in his hand, dating back 20 years. Like, just a very, very.

As long as you can remember.

Yes, yes. From the first time he was with JLo, he was, like, drinking Dunkin Donuts coffee. And so it just is like, a really authentic pairing that when you see Ben Affleck pop up in a Duncan commercial, it makes sense. It's not almost kind of random, kind of Snoop and solo Stove, kind of a random pairing.

Yes.

Ben Affleck's and Dunkin Donuts, like, not random. It actually makes a lot of sense. And it seems like he's just kind of leaning into this Internet Persona that we have of him being grumpy, drinking coffee.

Well, look, the biggest takeaway I have from the Dunkin Donuts Ben Affleck thing is, like, one of the best tools you have as a business is to be in on the joke. Yes, Right. Like, if your customers, your audience has a joke about you, be in on it with them. And the fact that, like, the Internet love that Ben is a mass hole and drinks Dunkin Donuts is awesome. And so, like, Dunkin Donuts got involved and got in on the joke with him. Right. And a lot of companies would say, like, no, no, no, I want to stay at an arm's reach. That's not our brand, Whatever. But that is where you get too cold, too corporate. And then on the other side, you do the solo stove thing, which was an effective stunt, but it was a stunt. Right. There wasn't a ton of authenticity, as you pointed out. This is like the perfect middle ground of there's a ton of credibility, clear, like, overlap in his fandom of the brand and where he's from and everything. And they were able to execute on in a way that actually worked.

Yep, exactly.

Okay, we gotta do one more before we close out. Lestranda, what are you thinking? You think in Dove or Walmart?

Oh, man, they have both been so great. I mean, I am almost partial to Walmart because I feel like this ad, yeah, this ad was truly after my own millennial heart. So Walmart had a really well executed Black Friday campaign on social and in commercials to promote their Black Friday deals. And their theme for this was the movie Mean Girls, which the original version of the movie came out in 2004 and which is kind of a cult classic among the millennial generation. And why this campaign, one was so good was because they got several members of the original cast to be a part of it. Two, it was just really well produced and high quality content. And three, they really use nostalgia marketing to target millennials, which is very, very important for a couple of reasons. One, nostalgia marketing works very well for millennials in particular because the millennial generation has this interesting position where we had analog childhoods, but very technology driven teenage and adulthood years. So it's like we're tech savvy, but we remember life before having to be tech savvy. And nostalgia that can remind us of that just makes us feel good and yearn for simpler times. And two, millennials are really important for holiday shopping. Brands want to have a successful holiday season. They need millennials because millennials are spending the most money. Millennials have young families doing a lot of shopping for gifts. Across generations are the generation that tend to have kids right now. So if you want to succeed as a retailer during the holiday season, you need millennials to buy from you. So this campaign was a very targeted campaign. Like, hey, Millennials, remember this, this, you know, generation defining movie that you love. Come shop with us. We're going to remind you of the good times.

Well, before you give my take, I got to know how were you, Were you deeply saddened that Rachel McAdams didn't opt in to do the ad?

I wasn't, I wasn't surprised. Rachel McAdams is, you know, she just kind of does her own thing. So I, I wasn't surprised. But it would have been cool to see her reprise, reprise that role.

She, she's, she's also on another level than some of, like the Lacey Chaver and some of the other folks in that ad. Other point that I would guess and you on, on all of that is that like Walmart is also kind of a Gen X brand. It kind of grew up in Gen X and it was, you know, very cost focused, not like quality trend focus. And as, as the, as technically a millennial, I think I'm like the oldest millennial. If you look at the definition of the years of Being a millennial, it's like millennials care enough about quality and aesthetics. And like, we kind of grew up in the Target revolution, right? Like, if we were going to go to a big box store, like, we think Target is cool. And so not only did they do all the things you said, but they kind of got some of that Target attention back on them. We're like, oh, no, Walmart's cool. They're in it. If they're doing an ad like that, they probably, maybe they have some furniture that I'm interested in, some other things that are on that same level of cool and quality. Right? And so I think that really got, really got delivered well in that ad, to me is kind of like a passive, like, side element of that, where I feel like Target has really run past them in the last decade on especially the brand perception with at least millennials, if not, you know, other demos. And so I thought they did a very good job with that creative kind of pulling people back in.

Definitely agree. And I think a big part of why Target has been so popular with our generation is largely due to social media. And how many people over the past decade have created content around going to Target and the shopping experience and the Target halls versus you look at the way people talked about Walmart on social media. And it was always kind of like making fun of it and, you know, making fun of the experiences that you have there, the people that you see there. And so Walmart coming out with this kind of like, cool, really well produced, fresh content to redefine how we're talking about them on social media was a really good move.

Well, the, the lesson in here, I'm trying to make sure that we're taking lessons away from all of these really great campaigns. The lesson here is that your brand is what people think about you. Yes. But you get to control what people think by showing it and telling them different things. Right. If you, if you're not happy with how your brand's being perceived, if you do something different, you can change it. And Walmart did that with this campaign. It wasn't just a pure awareness, it was awareness plus a change in perception, which, yes, it's hard to do, and one campaign doesn't do it, but one campaign makes a start of it. It makes a little bit of progress towards it. Right. And that is what's so interesting and so powerful in this to me, is that it's a reminder to all of us that if we want to be seen differently, either as people or as brands, we just got to Take some different action and it'll start happening.

Couldn't agree more.

All right, we covered five really awesome campaigns before. Before we go in all of your research, were there any other honorable mentions, any other shout outs that you were. We just quickly want to say, like, that was cool. Like, I really admired what they did.

Yeah. I mean, we can't talk about solid campaigns in 2023 without at least mentioning Barbie. And I know we've talked about Barbie a lot. I've written multiple blog posts about Barbie for the HubSpot blog. I know you and Kieran have talked about it, so we don't need to go into too much detail, but just from an overall, like, robust, well executed, multi channel campaign, the Barbie movie really nailed it this year.

So have to mention was the best orchestrated campaign, right? Like just plan deeply, broadly organized to every level, orchestrated at the perfect timeline. Like, they nailed that. And that will be a case study in how to do that well and is a reminder to all of us that the more lead time and planning you have can sometimes be a good thing if you're. If your sites are set big enough, which is pretty awesome.

Yes.

Now, I would ask anybody watching on YouTube if you had a favorite campaign of 2023 that myself l did not cover. Link it down in the comments. We want to know about it. We want to know if. If we missed anything. We'll interact in the comments, give you our take on it. Also hit that, like, hit that subscribe button. We'd love to see you on future episodes. And la, thank you so much for filling in with Kieran, being here with us today and breaking down 2023's best campaigns.

Thank you for having me.

Perfect. All right, everybody, we'll see you next time on Marketing against the Grain. This data is wrong every freaking time.

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