today we are going to talk about some of the best marketing campaigns and marketing initiatives ever I'm going to cover a wide swath from Fashion to liquor to Cosmetics what are those campaigns that resonate generationally we're going to talk about why they're so impactful and build out our toolkit as marketers and people understanding the world around us at the same time covering diamonds dualingo Ralph luren Lego absolute dois Keels all over let's lock in and we're going to start with one of my favorites and that's Ralph Loren and there's two standout things that I really associate with this brand I think are perfect takeaways to have and it all comes back to being an ambassador of the American lifestyle and the storytelling of that so we've all seen these iconic print campaigns where they basically put this idilic New York adjacent horses skiing American Lifestyle on display for Generations in print letting the imagery talk for the brand no tag lines just the basics of the brand or the line has become synonymous with this storytelling like around the fabric of America in American fashion but one of the C the campaign I feel really ties this all together that we see comes up every few years is Ralph Lauren's choice to be the Olympic provider where when you see the clothes that people are wearing the uniforms that they're wearing what happens when we unveil anything they basically said we are going to spend our money sponsoring and making clothing for these Olympic teams so that on a world stage whenever everyone from America Tunes in they see us as the brand that is the ambassador and when the world Tunes in and then watches America win a disproportionate amount of all the contests they are going to see our brand as an ambassador and it's one of those marketing campaigns that is so high level that is often kind of overlooked as to the power and impact it has generationally by having a choice to say we have this huge anchor moment that we do again again and again this synonymous with our Brand Story at the highest level and being consistent like that over time has benefits right I think we've seen Olympic viewership dwindle less and less people care in the internet era than ever but then With viral moments it comes right back and by staying consist consistent with that all of a sudden you know staying through a downturn of less interest up into the hey there's Tik Tok things happening constantly and for any Olympic event that goes down you begin to ride the waves of the potential of working through an initiative over time but small Brands can learn from this too can learn from having an anchor event at the highest scale that portrays yourself in your category I want to bring up Bandit running for this so maybe not one of the best marketing campaigns of all time but certainly one that could turn into it if continually executed is Bandit basically said we're going to participate in the Olympics as a smaller brand and in running with their unsponsored project where they say any any people that are competing for their own places in there that don't have a sponsor we will give them unbranded clothing and they promote the actual campaign itself and they took this a step further but I think they actually sponsored two Runners who lost their sponsorship from St Vincent and the Grenadines and they said hey we're going to inside this Niche that we are in play above our weight class in an initiative that speaks to the Goodwill promoted by the brand and then make this a marquee that we go back to every Olympics we have some variation of the unsponsored project even though we're a small brand and we're going to be able to play again at a global scale at a skill that's really recognized within the pros inside our community and leverage a similar strategy to what we've seen Ralph luren do now for Generations but shifting gears into something completely different one of my most favorite recent campaigns I feel brands are really apt to learn from right now is what we've seen from du lingo and the DU lingo owl so a few months ago I was speaking on a panel at the notion conference in San Francisco and I was actually moderating with the social media manager from Duolingo and a social media manager from from Arc I think she's actually the head of Storytelling was her title but at dualingo was talking about some of the workflows they happened there one thing that stood out to me is they treat their content creation process more like a writer room where they really think of their content from a comedy angle and so we've all seen this owl right this owl has permeated pop culture it is somehow part of the squid games roll out it is at the was at the brat concerts when they were at their Peak is on social media feeds in the way that any pop culture character or influencer is and has this like this ever Perpetual association with anything going on in culture and navigated in a way a corporate Mass Scott simply never has before and the important takeaway that I have here is treating your marketing like entertainment right that idea of hey can we have our Brands mascot or our Brand's influencers or our Brand's content how do we treat that like a writer room how do we make this episodic how do we bring on more characters how is our goal to be ubiquitous to this level that may someone may never have associated with a language app with whatever it is you're building as opposed to saying oh we need to make more videos walking through our Brand's products and I like to show that as a great example of a modern brand of something that shifts and moves with the culture but it's also equally as interesting to look at campaigns that have lasted the length of time and have expanded the life of an industry so perhaps the most prolific marketing campaign of all time is this idea of diamonds are forever and if you pull up even these specific debers ads where they anchor the price you know basically two month salary it's been the price anchor of what a diamond should cost when someone proposes to marry someone else and this is interesting to me to look at in the face of what this achieved for them when lab diamonds came out right so for decades and decades they set mented that this rock that came from the ground is now worth this enormous sum that's a forever commitment it's ingrained in our cultural Essence but also that it has a set price that really the minimum you should be considering is is a two-month salary for the price point so they anchored in price by playing to the emotion of the people that do it by setting a standard of expectation between male and female which is a dynamic that as much marketing they could take advantage of probably should but then look at how that positioned itself for when lab diamonds came out lab diamonds are diamonds you can take them to a jeweler they cannot tell them apart they are chemic Al the same they are significantly cheaper they're for all intensive purposes every single person there's almost no reason that they shouldn't be buying a lab diamond versus a regular Diamond but because of the marketing that this industry had cemented as a group that took way more time than expected now when you survey a group of people and you say you want a lab Diamond a regular Diamond you'll see a disproportionate amount say lab but they basically bought themselves years and years of this by having cemented themselves at this high price point and then also how they played the moment when those diamonds came out some of them released their own lab Diamond lines at a significantly lower price again price anchoring in the campaign and saying this is actually worth less than what we have is worth more and again it's consumer psychology it didn't last forever but it's extending the life of this industry right versus watching it just die outright and that's what a great marketing campaign and a campaign that potentially reaches across just your brand and into category which you should certainly be thinking about as a category leader or a secondary in a category is how do we give that Moe that gives us time to figure out what do we do with all these deers stores if diamonds are not worth as much or if the pricing has to change what does that mean for our business model if you need to figure that out in 4 months then your brand is probably if you need to figure that out over the course of 7 years you can probably come out with a great plan and that is literally what we are watching play out from the power of this diamonds are forever campaign so another one of my favorites a more specific campaign is Patagonia don't buy this jacket campaign so Patagonia has lasted through generations as a brand people believe in as a highquality product as a mission driven brand that people say I see transparency in their supply chain they put an ad out in the newspaper on black Friday saying don't buy our product in fact reuse it sustain it we'll help you repair it they stand by their values when people started using the wrong people to them you know Venture Capital started using their vests as merch they they cut their merch programs they're a brand that stands by their values and stays consistent with them as opposed to Someone Like A Northface you know who released that kind of like gibberish AI Manifesto campaign who's kind of lost a bit of the plot over time and that has given Patagonia room to maneuver so one of the most interesting things of this last year is Patagonia launching Provisions so they said after I think they started the 19 73 after 48 years or whatever of being a brand 50 years we're going to launch into a completely new category of food not only food but like tinned fish and that's an interesting choice to say hey we have built this up we built up this reputation and we're going to very carefully move when we move we're going to move all in on it they said there's an overlap between our customer we can leverage our existing retail relationships and we're going to be able to put this line out and succeed with it in a completely different market and not only they done that they've now expanded it now they've got sardines and beans all these things you wouldn't expect but they come from having that cemented identity that has never wavered over time that build an expectation with a customer allows them to know their customer well enough to 50 years in be like we're going to launch a new category I want to talk about pans one of my favorite topics I've gone viral about pans on Instagram many times for some reason but Le cruset specifically Le cruset has used color as the anchor of their marketing so when you go on their Pinterest this is a great example of a legacy French brand using social media to their own devices very well their Pinterest has endless Boards of color combination where you can say if you want to buy a if you own these three colors of Le CET already or pans of these colors you want to add one to it here's how we match that here's how you style your kitchen so they have turned into a knowing that they are a not a once a year purchase so once every eight or 10 years purchase that their customer cares about their kitchens that they can allow them to get into that purchase decision and get excited about it they've made these visual guides for how people can put together their array of pans and colors that's not where their color strategy ends they introduce new colors every year there's a new L cruset palette and they exit colors every year so now these are going away and they've built into their distribution and they channels both online and in stores how to actually take advantage of that so when you see new le cruset colors get released all of your William Sonoma and all these places will have their displays of the new La cette colorways then at the same time online you'll see all the Bon appetites and all the you know kitchen blogs all release hey here's all the new colors that are coming out and then at the same time you'll see all them promoting this is your last chance to get these three colors that are going away and this cycle happens every single year and gives the brand an extra four or five touch points from announcing it to them actually releasing to these are going away to here's your final chance to oh my God like lime is coming back this year to actually have that marketing talk and what's worth noting is those affiliate links those news sites that you see they write about this every one of those they're making a percent on those sales there's a whole clickback economy of Brands and blogs newspapers major Publications getting paid by Le cruset per one of those purchases by reporting on these colorways and this campaign is powerful because it gave people the framework to do it a framework for merchandising in store for cons consumers to engage in social media and for writing and the kind of content creation establishment to work around it and it is absolute genius and a brand that's often replicated this is is yeti that's a separate conversation next I want to bring up two campaigns that didn't last that probably should both in alcohol the first is absolute so in my era the absolute ad was was Peak people had these posters on their walls they cut them out of magazines and it was genius they took the silhouette of the bottle and they gave locations and artists and cultural figures and their art Direction team a canvas with which they could work in advertising that had the ability to appeal to everybody from specific regions to the fans of specific artists to just certain and specific Lifestyles it was immediately recognizable as absolute one of the best brand building plays of all time and now you see they have the remnants of that decades later but it's gone but I don't think it would have to be in the social media era that they used that same exact framework today but it was in video it was in Tik toks it was in carousels it had artists it had locations it had that Nostalgia it wouldn't have to be gone anymore which brings me back to another liquor brand that's worth talking about dois and the most interesting man in the world by far the best beer campaign of all time I'm not afraid to say it put dois into the purchasing stage in a way that nothing else would but eventually became so big it almost was bigger than the brand it was associated with more than just dois they became afraid of the campaign and eliminated it had problems with the guy tried to bring the guy back just not lasting it but again another one of the social media era that if you were thinking through it from a social media perspective has the opportunity for Pure genius because nowadays you don't need to make a mascot for the most interesting brand in the world you can go find those people find the most interesting folks all around the globe have them tell their stories have those intimate human moments on social media of who the most interesting person in whatever town is and begin to kind of Leverage that into its own life and series and always in their hand a dois outside of liquor I want to talk about one of the best brand collaborations of all times it's one I think it's a little unthought of because collaborations are are a campaign sometimes can last a test of time so KS very a longtime standing Cosmetics brand lotions soaps shampoos that kind of thing sold in department stores forever sampling was one of their Key Programs you can always get your free sample always have your trial natural to that that Niche but their collaboration with Equinox where up until last year this was the all the products you would find inside of an equinox would be KS is to me one of the most legendary co- benefiting collaborations of all time because it's a product that most the guys I know had were introduced to that product through Equinox and guess what if a guy finds a soap they like or a soap that's reput capable in whatever way and they like it and they buy one they're going to buy it for the rest of time especially if women then note that it was a good choice then they are locked in and that introduction for the vast majority of those male clients was through Equinox he said this is a great product it's in my Equinox it's Ambiguously branded enough I'm going to get compliments on it after I am locked in shut up and take my money but same thing for their entire customer base right female customer whatever it is them betting on Equinox and then Equinox blowing up for the level it was and that luxury Association of the Equinox brand the luxury Association of their brand and this just basically massive sampling over years across the globe by the Association of the two of them is in my mind one of the best collabs for both it brought a level of credibility to to Equinox in terms of their choices and their tasteem and it brought the introduction of a brand associated with this new luxury for an old luxury brand to an entirely new level it's about new channels and new discovery in a way that is more than just a couple videos online so I'm going to talk about one more iconic campaign then we're going to talk a bit about kind of modern marketing and people that are rolling all these together so this last campaign I want to talk about is the revitalization of Lego so forever Lego was a staple toy was slightly falling off but lived in its own world there were no Star Wars Legos or Marvel Legos they created their own characters they had Ninjago they had a few they were trying to create their own lore but they stayed away from we are going to let other IP cross over with rip and then one day they said you know what it we're letting the Cannons loose we're doing everything and now literally you can go buy a fortnite Lego set a Batman Lego set Dungeons and Dragons any cultural thing you could humanly think of is now available in Lego and it was the right time right maybe may it wasn't the right time prior years before to do it but when they actually opened the floodgates and said we're going in major was in the right timing of the world niching down of fandoms becoming popular of people's identities becoming more and more wrapped up in the game they really love with the TV show they enjoy of purchasing those things and all of a sudden it allowed these experiences to cross over in a way that has revitalized the brand has led into literal movie channels like headlight all these things that would not have happened for Lego without the ability to actually then put all this other IP in place around it platform which is the right term for what Lego had built and I like that it took so long I don't think they should have been running Star Wars and Star Trek like in the 80s necessarily but when they did it they went completely wide with it they put it across channels and it led into one of the most interesting conversations ever and Licensing is a huge conversation I think more brands should talk about in terms of if you have a popular product like for instance I sell shoe bags people on teams buy my shoe bags I'll get 10 or 15 bought at one time people lit be buying them for their team or whatever that looks like and to me that means you know what one day as this product grows this brand grows I should be doing NFL versions of these with NFL logos on it whatever tied into it that is a thing that's attainable if you had a certain amount of money a certain amount of reach you could pitch that right but certainly a level back being like hey I could do this cross branded with smaller leagues or we could do it with rugby or whatever it is that licensing is a tool for marketing and branding where look it's usually a flat fee and like a 10 or 12% royalty of sale if you can build a business that works around that is a massively powerful tool and every time you see a Lego you should be reminded of that for your brand now the last brand I want to talk about is one that kind of has pushed all these together which is a really interesting session and they've done that to disrupt a massive traditional industry so we going to talk about the new generation of soda and we're going to talk about poppy CU poppy has done something interesting they've basically hit every single note of marketing they've struck on and they've basically been able to say hey for a fraction of what Coca-Cola spends on marketing we're going to just do all of these things that they participate in but do them well and do them in a modern fashion and then use that to basically disrupt an entire category and it's interesting I was speaking at a brand the other day and I do this uh anytime I I do kind of walk through poppy or something similar to that I will survey people hey how many of you drink traditional soda how many of you drink this new wave of soda the poppy ollipop and you know the younger the crowd SKS and even now middle age the more people just drink these modern sodas the market for that bigger soda is shrinking in a way that I would be absolutely terrified if I was those companies but then you look at the marketing Cannon of what they've been able to do so Poppy's a great example because the founder is in the content and there are creators in the content and the founders is a personality herself where they have taken personality from the start and associated with the brand the way Coca-Cola never has we got a polar bear that's it and they also have those same celebrity collabs at the highest level post Malone Paris Hilton where they're activating on social they're doing Tik toks that are going viral and their inside of the mainstream campaign something that the big brands have not been able to do right they'll still put a you know they'll have Britney Spears in a TV campaign they'll have their modern version but they have not been able to cross that over to successful social at the same time while also activating in store while also activating in branded activations while also making sure they're present inside sports stadiums there is this kind of War coming on by saying hey we are going to do everything a traditional brand does but more cost effective with more personality with more social reach behind it with a product that speaks to a better lifestyle that is basically the blueprint for disrupting any big category that came before so anyway this was some of my favorite marketing campaigns of all times of all different types if you like this series please let me know cuz I have a laundry list of kind of 50 or more that we could walk through inside all different types and categories but we'll keep a little shorter here today than just some of my favorites hope you learned a ton and appreciate yall watching [Music]