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We are getting closer and closer to the end of the year and to celebrate we thought we would share our top three marketing campaigns of 2021!
Update March 2022 – The original video from Airbnb has been removed so this page has been updated with a new link.
Towards the beginning of the year, Airbnb announced that they were making cuts to their sales and marketing spend. They have since chosen to focus their marketing on building their brand.
In February, Airbnb launched its marketing campaign ‘Made Possible by Hosts’. They created videos with user-generated content, photographs taken by guests staying in Airbnb properties around the world. Their main goal with this campaign was ‘to educate the world on the possibilities that our Hosts open up for our guests’.
The videos in the series were all named after popular songs and featured covers of the songs along with photographs of different guests’ stays. My personal favourite is ‘Forever Young’ which features photographs
of a group of friends who have gone away for a weekend and spent it at ‘The River Lodge’ which is hosted by Cynthia.
Other videos from the series include ‘I Will Always Love You’ which features photographs of a golden retriever and its owners on a trip to Northern Italy and ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ which shows photographs of a mother and daughter on a trip to the Australian coast.
These videos all make you feel nostalgic and inspire you to go travelling with friends, family or loved ones. Airbnb has done an amazing job of sharing stories and reminding its audience to treasure their time with loved ones.
Probably one of the biggest campaigns of the year… Aldi’s #FreeCuthbert!
Marks & Spencer launched legal action against Aldi towards the beginning of the year and it could have been a nightmare for them, instead, they turned it around completely and boosted their social following and engagement massively.
Aldi took to Twitter and even used M&S’s tagline against them and within a series of tweets managed to become number one trending and gained coverage on BBC Breakfast, Good Morning Britain and This Morning for several days. In total there were over one thousand pieces of written coverage, had user-generated video content and thousands of people joined in on the debate online.
The company has described the #FreeCuthebert as their most effective social media campaign in history and have carried on using it in its marketing, including in their Christmas ad where you can see Cuthbert the Caterpillar being taken away by the police in the background.
Aldi is always on the ball with their reactive marketing and we can’t wait to see what they come up with next as I’m sure it will be a topic of conversation in the office!
Our top marketing campaign of 2021 has to go to Thursday!
If you haven’t heard of Thursday, it is a dating app that only works on one day of the week… Thursday. They want to share the message that ‘there’s more to life than dating apps’ and so only works for 24 hours per week.
Their marketing campaigns have been funny and creative throughout the year and one even included a member of their creative team sitting on the tube in London with a projector showing one of their ads on the inside of the tube.
They are a computer software company but the team at Thursday don’t just focus on digital marketing and choose to use a lot of OOH (Out-of-home) and grassroots marketing.
A few posts shared by interns on LinkedIn included funny ways that they got people to download the app, including handing out actual dates (the fruit) and handcuffing themselves to poles saying that they couldn’t move until 1,000 people had downloaded it.
But, by far the best campaign they have done has to be their collaboration with HomeExchange.
Thursday and HomeExchange are working together this Christmas to recreate the Christmas movie ‘The Holiday’. They are giving two singles, one based in the UK and one based in New York the opportunity to swap homes for Christmas and finding them dates for when they land.
This campaign has been a huge hit on socials already and we are all waiting to see what the results are!
We have loved following this company’s unique and creative approach to marketing and are excited for what is coming next!
There are so many other great marketing campaigns that have stood out to us this year and we cannot wait to see what 2022 brings us!
Keep up to date with the marketing campaigns we love over on our socials!
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