31 March 2022

In this blog, marketing academics in the Business School cast their votes for the best marketing campaigns so far of 2021-22.

By Lisa Burbidge-Brown, Hajrija Dergic and Dr. Emma Edwards

Awards season is now in full swing, with the BAFTAs having taken place earlier this month, and more ceremonies to come as we approach the Summer.  More recently, it was the turn of the Oscars, but this year’s event was obviously overshadowed by on-stage incidents. 

We thought that we would take the opportunity to cast our votes for some of our favourite marketing campaigns.  Below we discuss just a few that we believe are award-worthy.    

Wonderful world campaign

With sustainability coming to the forefront of Marketing, Olio are leading the way with their emotive and impactful ‘Wonderful World’ campaign, bringing awareness to the colossal challenge of household waste in the UK. The integrated marketing campaign hit out against the shocking fact of 1 tonne of waste generated by each household in the UK, and 2 billion globally. With the harrowing backdrop of one of the UK’s largest landfill sites, the advert uses a group of children to convey their hard-hitting message of ‘let’s not waste our wonderful world’. The messaging provokes not only a heartfelt plea but also optimism in promoting a more greener and cleaner environment for future generations.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0thyfXNp0s

Spotify’s annual round-up

Spotify users eagerly await 1st December every year. Along with opening our chocolate advent calendars and putting up our Christmas decorations, it is the date we get to share our personally curated playlist of our most played songs of the year. Each user gets a click-through story of slides which show your top songs, artists, podcasts and genres. You get to reflect on the year, see how you compare to other music fans and your friends and share your Spotify Wrapped story on social media. Are you in the top 10% of fans for your favourite artist or band? Did you get hooked on TikTok inspired Sea Shanties in 2021? How many hours of music did you listen to? It’s a perfect combination of light-heartedness, gamification and personalisation and blew up Instagram with almost 30,000 grid posts in the first week of December alone in addition to IG stories, Twitter shares and other platforms. In a time of bad news domination, fake news and #cancelled, Spotify Wrapped is a welcome distraction and clever campaign that transcends demographics and unites Spotify users around the globe. https://open.spotify.com/genre/2021-page

Netflix and CALM’s benches of hope

Netflix’s show, After Life, has enjoyed phenomenal success with the final series shown in January this year.  Ricky Gervais took to twitter to thank fans as it was announced it had been watched by a record 100million viewers, making it the most successful British comedy in a decade. 

The central character, Tony, played by Ricky Gervais, is often seen sitting on a bench in a churchyard remembering his late wife. The bench is also a regular meeting place for Tony and Anne, another character who is also bereaved, and with whom he eventually builds a friendship.   The show has received praise for the way in which is tackles the difficult subject of grief and, to mark this series, Netflix joined forces with the Campaign against Living Miserably (CALM) and donated ‘benches of hope’ in locations across the UK.  Made by Blah is the agency behind the campaign which served the dual purpose of promoting the show but, importantly, leveraged its significant platform to encourage people to talk to others and seek help if they find themselves struggling with issues such as grief.  All benches are inscribed with the message ‘hope is everything’ and a QR code allows people to access to vital support.  Although there have been many campaigns encouraging people to share their thoughts and feelings and discuss their mental health, it is vital that the conversations continue, and this campaign successfully encouraged people to do just this.    

For more information and for advice and support from CALM, visit https://www.thecalmzone.net/afterlife/?highlight=NETFLIX

In the current climate marketers have the difficult job of reaching an increasingly fragmented audience, with often decreasing budgets and a demand for significant return on investment.  Despite this, there have been some great examples of marketing campaigns over recent months and years.   Who would get your vote?