What makes a successful marketing campaign?

Successful marketing campaigns can help turn a company from a relatively successful one to a worldwide force. They also help build an image around brands, which makes us, the consumers, subconsciously understand what it means to purchase certain products. That is what makes them so difficult to devise. It is not easy to make an advert interesting while trying to create the right connotations.

Some of the most successful brands, like Coca Cola or Levi’s Jeans have managed to establish a certain image around their products. We all know what type of lifestyle these brands represent and that is crucial to their success.

The task of creating the right connotations around a company name is so difficult to get right, that brands and company owners are willing to pay extraordinary amounts of money in order to attract the marketing talent capable of delivering such results.

The problem is that if we look at the past successes in marketing, we can see that there is no pattern. Ideas that work can appear from nowhere. The famous meerkat campaign for an online comparison website went viral, even though the service it advertised is arguably not trendy and the ads involved small animals speaking in a foreign accent. But the idea stuck with the public and has now grown so much that a book about the meerkats became a bestseller - they even have their own website and profiles on social networks.

That idea was arguably not a very expensive one at the start and has done better than some huge campaigns launched by already established companies.

There is nothing stopping any venture from achieving the same level of success. It is arguably even easier to achieve online. Placing a viral video on the Internet or starting a social media campaign can be virtually free and if your idea catches on, then the web will let it spread without any boundaries.

The one ingredient nearly all successful campaigns contain is novelty, something which can easily grab people’s attention. Ideally you want to mix the well known with something completely unexpected. A great example of that was Cadbury’s advert featuring a well known rock song and an ape playing the drum. Consumers loved the video, even though it didn’t really seem to carry a message and a chocolate bar was nowhere to be seen. That clash of the unrelated was arguably the main reason for the campaign’s success. It made people stop and take notice, which frankly is the most difficult part of marketing - to differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack.

It may be true that the competition, especially online, is getting steeper, but at least the playing field seems to be a lot more even on this platform. Unlike with TV or printed adverts, the amount of money you can spend on a given campaign is not as crucial on the web.

Originality and an element of surprise or unpredictability are the two things which usually make marketing campaigns a success. If you have an idea that is slightly unorthodox but would leave a good impression about your brand, then it is certainly worth giving it a go. You never know where it could take you.