From British Airway to Barbie take a look at some of our favourites .
Corteiz as a brand has a very different approach to marketing compared to many others. Corteiz is a streetwear brand created in 2017 by 26-year-old university student Clint (also known as clint419) from his bedroom in West London. The brand has been able to build its success by using a unique strategy and has gained a reputation for causing chaos in the streets of London. Due to the success of its marketing. As a brand Corteiz thrives on its exclusivity, not only does the brand only ever have limited amounts of clothing whenever there is a drop, but even the website itself needs a password to access it when a new drop is happening. They have had a number of extremely successful pop-up events/shops in London, New York, and even Paris. In January last year, Corteiz organised the ‘BOLO’ exchange in a car park in West London, this event consisted of people swapping their jackets from big corporate brands such as Supreme, The North Face, and more in return for the new Bolo jacket from Corteiz. Within minutes of the location of where this event would be taking place, thousands turned up all in the hopes of getting their hands on one of these jackets. Shortly after the event Clint released a photo of all the jackets that had been exchanged which came to a grand total of around £16,000 which he donated to Lawrence’s Larder, a charity organisation committed to providing meals to those who are in need. This campaign not only took competitors' clothing off the streets, but it also had a huge amount of community engagement.
Shortly after this Clint was back again to announce the 99P Cargos Drop, the cargos, which had a retail price of £125. The event was held in a corner shop in Shepherds Bush Green, where the cargos were being sold with limited stock available, and at 99p – the catch being you had to have exactly 99p as there was no change being given. As always, shortly after the location was given over two thousand people showed up to try and get their hands on a pair of cargos. Once again, building his connection with his community but also building a social media presence as posts are made on Corteiz’s social platforms. These cargos also feature the brand's logo very clearly similar to a lot of other items Corteiz has created. Its unique logo features Alcatraz Island and the tagline "Rules The World" as screenshotted in a TikTok video, Clint said Corteiz’s logo represents how living in society feels like a prison and Corteiz is about “escaping from the societal restraints that we’ve grown up with to pursue what you really want to do.” This helps the brand with its storytelling and allows the brand to create a more emotional connection with its consumers.
The most recent release was the Nike X Corteiz collaboration one of the most popular items being the Air Max 95 Olive trainers which are featured in many of the photos. Then the Crossbar challenge took place on February 25th and the concept was very simple: hit the crossbar twice from the 18-yard box and win a pair of unreleased shoes in your preferred size. To promote the challenge the French Real Madrid football star Eduardo Camavinga posted a video on social media, which helped create hype for the upcoming event. The football pitch coordinates were dropped on the day. Once again thousands of people turned up for a chance to win. They also offered a cash prize of £1000 to anyone who hit the crossbar while wearing the 95s. From looking at how Cortiez markets its brand we can see the main appeal of the brand is the exclusivity and mainly promoted by word of mouth and social media presence. Many famous UK artists can be seen wearing this brand such as Stormzy, Dave, Jorja Smith, and many more. Clint's use of marketing is extremely innovative and doesn't stick to traditional marketing forms that we typically see.
Spotify Wrapped began in 2016 and has become an annual event in the past three years, the campaigns have been executed extremely well and the public has gone crazy about them. Even companies have tapped into creating posts based on the theme of Spotify Wrapped and people love them, with the format becoming a trailblazing trend for businesses. On a yearly basis, Spofity perfectly executes its Spotify Wrapped to keep its customers engaged and interested. Last year (2022) Spotify created its own 16 personality types based on the music you listened to, which would reveal certain characteristics and behaviours of users as well as this they also created ‘Audio Day’ which is an interactive story that gives you insights into how your music taste evolved throughout the day. This includes descriptions of your music for morning, noon, and night. In 2021, Wrapped created your ‘aura’ depending on the music you listen to but on the next card they made it more interactive. They had created two truths and one lie which you had to guess about yourself. In 2020, the main themes of The Wrapped were gratitude and resilience. “No one knew what was going to happen in March so there had to be a shift, and that shift meant that we had to be very intentional with our tone, knowing that this year has been incredible in terms of its challenges but also has shown incredible strength in communities around the world,” said Spotify VP-Global Executive Creative Director Alex Bodman.
Wrapped is not only interactive and hyper-personalised, it is shareable on almost every platform. True personalisation like Spotify Wrapped builds a deeper relationship with customers, this can also help build an emotional connection as music can be a very emotional and personal experience for many individuals. Spotify Wrapped taps into this emotional connection by allowing users to reminisce about their favourite songs, discover new artists, and reflect on their year in music. They feel seen, heard, and special. This goes a long way toward building trust with a brand. Spotify leverages user-generated content as a form of free advertising. Users willingly share their experiences, playlists, and stats, which spreads the word about Spotify to a wider audience this often leads to people sharing their Spotify-wrapped stats online and many brands tap into this and create posts about it or in the same theme of the wrapped that year so when friends and followers see others sharing their Wrapped results, they're more likely to want to participate themselves.
The British Airways “Take your holiday seriously” campaign created with Uncommon Creative studio, features pictures of beautiful holiday destinations as a background, with the not so typical out of office email placed on the front, but behind the humour featured on this campaign is a more important message that holidays are more than luxury but a way for us to prioritise time away from work and help look after our well being. British Airways used YouGov to do research on how people act while taking time away from work. One of the surveys revealed that 50% of UK working adults do not take their full annual leave allocation. It also found that 48% of those who did take their holiday allocation found themselves checking work emails while away. The campaign also inadvertently helped to give people the opportunity to talk about burnout and open up about mental health. This is a very creative way of resonating with the public as it's an issue many people struggle with especially the guilt of taking time away from work.
Apple's shot on iPhone campaign has been very popular, for many years now. It was first being used to promote the iPhone 6 in 2014 and then a similar idea reimagined in times more recently such as from January 25th till February 16th, 2022 where there was a #iPhoneMarcoChallenege which encouraged participants to take photos using the new phones added features like the two-centimetre minimum focusing distance. But the trend that gained the most popularity was the #shotoniphone trend back in 2014 the trend used user-generated content (UGC) and the trend amassed more than 28 million posts on Instagram and over 4 billion views on TikTok. We all know that building a sense of community is a key part of having a successful business.
The best photos have been blown up and displayed on billboards, buildings, and other large-scale, outdoor public spaces across the globe to tout iPhone’s technology. The effective concept shows no signs of slowing down, either, with calls for photos to celebrate specific themes, holidays, and movements; the sense of community the trend created led to a brand retention rate of 90%. Although beyond building a community, user-generated content also leads to an increase in credibility and trust, these are key components of having a good customer and brand relationship. This perhaps can be seen in the statistics too as in 2015 Apple sold over 231 million iPhones, 62 million more than the year before. Obviously, the 62 million extra are not all from the campaign alone but the campaign certainly has a successful impact on the sales increase. Along with the trends, Apple encouraged many people, especially teenagers, to take to social media apps such as TikTok to create their own #shotoniphone videos but with a twist. The twist is that the video would feature their friends doing something funny or chaotic and then would enter the clip of the shot on the iPhone campaign. This was a fun way to get people who didn't want to be sharing pictures in a serious way but they were able to add their own creative touch to it.
Was the Barbie movie’s marketing the ultimate comeback of 2023? Barbie's marketing budget was 150 million dollars (even more than it cost to film production) the budget was spent strategically by the marketing department. Starting with typical offline marketing the movie character posters could be spotted in multiple locations around the globe, All posters featured a character from the show with a brief description of the actor's name and film title. this was also created into a website so the public had access to the template and were able to personalise it.
Not only did Barbie use key marketing strategies of brand collaborations such as Barbie x Be’is (which featured a collection of hot pink suitcases); a capsule collection with trainer brand Superga; an assortment of clothes and accessories at Hot Topic; and in Brazil there was a limited edition Barbie cheeseburger from Burger King that featured a pink sauce. Aswell as all of these collaborations there was also the Barbie AirBnB on Malibu beach, which was only available to the public for two nights.
Barbie had a lot of brand awareness from taking part in red carpet and interviews to participating in Pride Month in LA and NYC in June. But can we really talk about Barbie’s marketing if we don't touch on Barbenheimer ( Barbie x Oppenheimer)? With two of the biggest movies of 2023 coming out on the same day it created a showdown between the two. People were taking to social media to create Barbenhiemer memes about the two. Oppenheimer is about
J. Roberts Oppenheimer’s role in building the atomic bomb and Barbie as a film that sought to promote what Barbie stands for such as feminism and beauty standards, this so-called showdown created a rare situation where instead of driving a divide between people it caused people to come together and this can be seen in the incredible sales of both of the films. Although Barbie is traditionally a children's brand, the marketing for the film was aimed at all ages and used nostalgia for the toy to help market to all ages.
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