January 20, 2025

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7 top campaigns from 2024 and the tactics that drove success

7 top campaigns from 2024 and the tactics that drove success

Highs and lows characterized much of marketing in 2024. The industry was enlivened by occasions for unity, including a blockbuster Summer Olympics in Paris, but the final stretch of the year brought back an atmosphere of uncertainty and risk aversion. Marketers rediscovered their brand-building appetites after an overcorrection toward performance marketing, but too much creative energy manifested in the realm of fleeting, directionless social content. How many brands excitedly billed themselves as “brat” or demure before abandoning the idea once the next trend took hold?

The seesaw effect was evident in areas like generative artificial intelligence (AI), which secured a steady deluge of investment but repeatedly proved itself unready for the limelight, with Coke’s holiday campaign the latest AI-driven concept to receive a shellacking. Rebrands and refreshes aimed at younger consumers also remained in vogue, with mixed results. Jaguar recently showed that going all-in on a bold, Gen Z-friendly new look still carries the risk of blowback for legacy brands.

Other marketers expertly threaded the needle and were able to revitalize not only brand perceptions, but also sales during a period of challenging consumer pullbacks. These companies drove an impact by executing specific tactics, whether related to purpose-driven marketing, ambassador partnerships, media strategy or, in one case, simply not advertising at all.

The best marketing of 2024, which Marketing Dive has assembled below, carries important lessons as industry decision-makers continue to feel the pressure to make fewer resources go further.

Yeti and Liquid Death casket cooler

Liquid Death’s casket cooler collaboration with Yeti

Courtesy of Liquid Death

 

Best challenger brand marketing: Liquid Death

Liquid Death is seemingly always promoting a new brand collaboration, outsized stunt or celebrity partnership, keeping the canned beverage brand in the social media and trade press conversation. The constant stream of entertainment content is too steady for even its executives to keep up with.

“We put out so much stuff, I have to look back at our YouTube channel or Instagram to remember what we even did this year,” joked Vice President of Creative Andy Pearson.

The content-heavy approach — which doesn’t rely on paid media — is working. Apart from its $1.4 billion valuation, Liquid Death is killing the engagement and return-on-investment game with its anything-goes marketing approach.

This year, Liquid Death’s most successful efforts were out-of-nowhere brand collaborations, like a corpse paint line with E.l.f. Cosmetics, a hot fudge sundae LTO with ice cream chain Van Leeuwen and a casket cooler with Yeti.

“The partnerships are great, because they’re either people and brands that make total sense or ones that make zero sense,” Pearson said. 

The E.l.f. collaboration notched more than 250 million social impressions as reaction videos ping-ponged across social media, while the Van Leeuwen product sold out in under 7 hours and was the No. 1 most successful grocery LTO on Amazon ever, per details shared with Marketing Dive. Along with the Yeti casket — which sold for $68,000 in auction — the collaborations demonstrate how Liquid Death is cutting through ad noise in a crowded category.

“A throughline of this year has been widening the palette of stuff that we’re painting with,” Pearson said.

Chili's BurgerTime

Big Smasher BurgerTime gameplay

Courtesy of Chili’s Grill & Bar

 

Best use of nostalgia: Chili’s Big Smasher BurgerTime

Chili’s is no stranger to looking backward to move forward, and after bringing back its iconic “Baby Back Ribs” jingle in 2023, the restaurant chain utilized nostalgia for ‘80s arcade games to reinforce its value messaging and stick it to fast-food chains.

The chain in June revealed Chili’s Big Smasher BurgerTime, a refreshed version of the classic platformer BurgerTime in which gamers toy with ladders to make ingredients transform into complete burgers. 

Along with promoting its Big Smasher menu item, the game allowed Chili’s to take on a profit-crazed “evil Fast-Food Syndicate” and reinforce its value message while chains like McDonald’s and Burger King scrambled to assert their own value propositions. The strategy also helped the chain’s other main imperative: getting into the cultural conversation, according to CMO George Felix.

“It felt like a perfect blend to bring [back] a game like that which has not really been rebooted. I definitely remember playing it on an Apple 2e computer with my sister growing up,” Felix said. (While CMO at Pizza Hut, Felix helped mastermind a similarly retro gaming experience around Pac-Man.)

Created by agencies Jon Marshall and Daughters and Media.Monks, Big Smasher BurgerTime accrued 8,184 hours of gameplay, or nearly a year’s worth of hours, over the campaign’s 20 days. But the effort wasn’t “nostalgia just for nostalgia’s sake,” Felix explained.

“It just felt like a really perfect match for us,” the executive said. “As games become more complex and sophisticated, there is something about that simplicity of those older games that people really gravitate towards.”

Calvin Klein

“The Bear” actor Jeremy Allen White for Calvin Klein

Courtesy of Calvin Klein

 

Best celebrity tie-in: Jeremy Allen White for Calvin Klein

A sea of marketers this year have sought high-profile celebrity partnerships in hopes of boosting their profile, but none managed to turn heads to the same degree as Calvin Klein’s steamy collaboration with up-and-comer Jeremy Allen White. 

The 56-year-old brand in January released its spring 2024 ad campaign starring White, who was photographed in his hometown of New York City while sporting classic Calvin Klein styles. An accompanying video featured White exercising on a rooftop to the tune of Lesley Gore’s song “You Don’t Own Me.”

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