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Amol Ghemud Published: August 14, 2018
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Digital marketing continues to steamroll the competition. Online ad spend has been increasing ever year for two decades, but we can see the emergence of a “third wave” of digital marketing built upon the early successes of Internet pioneers. The downfall of some of those original marketers whose good ideas just didn’t quite work out.
Here are a few of the surprise winners. People and companies that dared to look beyond conventional wisdom to find great success:
Have you been following GoPro? The video camera company GoPro has fabricated its digital strategy around remarkable visuals. With 3.2 million subscribers on its YouTube channel and 6,000 GoPro-labeled videos uploaded each day the company has a client base that is locked in. Close by YouTube, GoPro has a few hundred thousand sucscribers of its other channels (World, MX, and Tutorials) while its Instagram sustain brags 4.2 million followers which include amazing pictures and videos that feature its product without really concentrating on the product itself.
Yes, this is a skateboarding cat… but it’s also a genuinely authentic piece of content that originated organically via the community of GoPro users all over the world – a far cry from any big-budget agency brief and ad campaign.
They engage with authentic and often impressive content. Consuming GoPro’s content is widely shared and reported on, and is fast becoming a natural part of the lives of all consumers of digital media.
No One Had More Success than Donald Trump
Political campaigns have been dominated by Big Money, Huge Organizations, and the Two-Party System since George Washington’s day. Now, Mr. Trump blew that paradigm away. Not only did he win despite spending way less money that everyone, he did it without the massive ground game in 50 states that Ms. Clinton had organized and without the support of the Republican Party. In pulling off the Biggest Upset Ever, Trump leveraged digital marketing campaigns like no one has ever. More accurately, Trump leveraged his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a media-savvy guy married to Ivanka Trump, a media-savvy gal. Kushner founded the New York Observer, an online news magazine in 2006 and later, Cadre, an internet portal for large real estate projects. According to a ForbesMagazine interview, after joining the Trump campaign, Kushner called in chits from some of his Silicon Valley connections to design a social media strategy. Utilizing Facebookmicro-targeting and focusing on the states they identified would have to be flipped from Clinton’s Electoral College “Blue Wall,” Kushner began with the campaigns merchandising initiative and quickly ramped sales from less than $8,000 a day to over $80,000 a day. The strategy synced with Trump’s personal style of blunt, concise talking points and exaggerated hyperbole that had already captured a huge Twitter and Facebook audience and billions of dollars’ worth of free television exposure. Trump was already a media juggernaut, but Kushner quickly monetized and focused the campaign. Next, he produced a series of YouTube videos for a mere $160,000 that featured the same low-tech, blunt style. More than 74 million views later, Trump’s internet presence dwarfed Clinton’s best efforts. Just as Trump’s business success required a keen eye on the bottom line, the campaign’s strategies based on ROI. Rather than depending on wealthy donors to fund whatever-it-costs initiatives, the Trump campaign made decisions based on which program got the most “bang for the buck. For more info – Forbes
Nothing is Bigger than the Super Bowl
Source- respect-mag.com
As the Number 1 television event year after year with more than 114 million viewers last year, 30 seconds of Super Bowl airtime is an advertiser’s dream. But, it’s a pricey dream – last year’s event sold half-minute ads for $4.5 million and CBS is asking $5 million for this year’s game. When your budget can only buy a couple of seconds at that rate, you have to innovate. That’s exactly what the creative minds at advertising agency Newcastle Brown Ale did. With a couple of clients looking for a way to get a toehold on that Super Bowl audience, without the dollars to buy in, they had to break the mold. The result: The Super Bowl Battle of the Brands – a melee of second-tier brands battling it out in one TV commercial. Nominated by Salesforce.comas one of the year’s top marketing campaigns, Newcastle borrowed the concept of crowdsourcing and shared economies that make Kickstarter, Uber, AirBnB and others successful. The agency recruited 20-30 (who could count?) companies to join in one Super Bowl ad with everyone sharing the cost and competing for exposure. In a way no one could predict, it clicked, earning the consortium more than 2.3 billion campaign impressions during the game and afterward on social media. Rather than presenting a confusing message with no one company able to rise above the pack, the ad was seen as a tongue-in-cheek dig at the high cost of Super Bowl ads in general. People got it, the brands got their logos in front of the people, and Newcastle got a whole lot more clients. Viewers may not have learned a lot about Rotel, McClures Specialty Foods, Krave Jerky, Vanity Fair, Blettner Engineering, Lee apparel, April, Mr. Cheese Os, Match.com or the other participating brands, but the brands got the toehold they paid for, and a chance to parlay that into even more success through their own follow-up initiatives. For more info– Adweek
The Most Watchable Train Wreck
Even products we don’t want to talk about need love to. We usually see marketing campaigns from an assortment of gross or unmentionable products breaking new ground where only the likes of Depends and Tampex dared tread in the past. None was more innovative and successful than Squatty Potty, a toilet-training tool for new parents and their out-of-control toddlers. How does one go about making Number 2 Number 1? The digital marketers at Squatty Potty decided to just grab the bull by the horns and make us comfortable with their product by, essentially, making us uncomfortable with their product. How else does one explain in-your-face imagery of brightly colored soft serve ice cream spiraling from the bottom of an enthusiastically delighted, big-eyed unicorn seated over a waffle-cone conveyor belt in the universal posture of imminent excretion? Any child instantly identified with the animal’s self-pride as each cone was precisely filled in order. Who would have thought potty training could be so much fun? Parents certainly did, and so did the marketing gurus at AdHere, a Houston B2B ad agency. According to their research, the Squatty Potty social media marketing campaign received 10 million views in its first two months, and those clicks weren’t all two-year olds on their smartphones. You don’t even want to know how “sticky” it was, or how many viewers visited the potty over and over. Can a co-marketing campaign with PeptoBismal be far behind? Today, Squatty Potty is the #1 Best Seller in Amazon’s Toilet Training Potties & Seats category and unicorns will never quite be viewed the same again. For more info – Squattypotty
#LikeAGirl
One of the most powerful integrated marketing communications campaigns launched in recent times is the #Like A Girl campaign for Procter & Gamble’s feminine hygiene brand always. And the campaign is continuing to tackle the artificial limitations society places on girls. A recent iteration features girls lamenting the lack of female emojis on their phone. Always has filmed girls smashing stereotypes in different fields. There are also a “confidence summit” developed in partnership with TED that launched in 10 cities around the world.
The campaign was mentioned more than 1000 times in the media, and generated more than 4 billion earned impressions. The intent to purchase the Always product grew by more than 50 per cent among the target audience.
What’s Next in Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing campaigns continues to evolve. Will Yahoo become the next AOL? Can Twitter become more than just a PR machine for politicians and celebrities? Will younger folks return to active use of Facebook? With so many huge questions to be answered, we often lose track of the small. Incremental changes that eventually prove to be the Next Big Thing. The success of this year’s innovators provides ample evidence that out of the box is where it’s at. Our advice: don’t take “huh?” for an answer.
GoPro built its strategy by focusing on authentic, user-generated content rather than polished corporate advertising. This approach turns customers into brand ambassadors, creating a continuous stream of compelling visuals that showcase the product in real-world, exciting scenarios. The success of this community-centric model is evident in their impressive metrics and deep audience engagement.
The company's strategy demonstrates a powerful shift from selling a product to selling an experience. Key indicators of its success include:
A YouTube channel with 3.2 million subscribers, where an astonishing 6,000 GoPro-labeled videos are uploaded daily by users.
An Instagram presence with 4.2 million followers, featuring breathtaking photos and videos that highlight what the camera can do without being a direct sales pitch.
Engagement with organic content, like a video of a skateboarding cat, which resonates far more deeply than a big-budget ad campaign ever could.
This focus on authenticity creates a virtuous cycle where compelling user content attracts new viewers, who then become customers and creators themselves. To fully understand how this model redefined content marketing, exploring the specific types of user videos they amplify is revealing.
The Donald Trump campaign succeeded by adopting a highly targeted, data-driven, and ROI-focused digital strategy, a stark contrast to big-spending traditional campaigns. Spearheaded by Jared Kushner, the team leveraged Silicon Valley insights to monetize and focus Trump's existing massive media presence rather than relying on expensive, broad-stroke advertising. This lean and agile approach proved that efficiency could trump sheer financial power.
The campaign's success was not accidental; it was the result of precise, measurable actions. For instance, after implementing Facebook micro-targeting and other digital initiatives, the campaign's merchandising sales grew from under $8,000 a day to over $80,000 a day. Furthermore, a series of low-tech YouTube videos produced for only $160,000 generated more than 74 million views, dwarfing the impact of more expensive productions. Every decision was based on which program delivered the most 'bang for the buck,' turning the campaign into a nimble marketing machine. This case study provides a powerful blueprint for how data-driven decisions can yield disproportionate results.
Newcastle Brown Ale solved the problem of exorbitant Super Bowl ad costs by creating a collaborative, shared-cost commercial that defied convention. With 30-second spots costing around $5 million, the brand's agency pioneered an ad that featured 20-30 other companies, effectively crowdsourcing the budget. This innovative shared-economy model allowed smaller brands to gain a foothold in America's biggest television event without the need for a massive, standalone budget.
The campaign was a masterclass in turning a limitation into a strength. Instead of a confusing mess, viewers saw the ad as a clever, tongue-in-cheek commentary on the high price of Super Bowl advertising itself. This resonated widely, earning the consortium over 2.3 billion campaign impressions during and after the game. It proved that brands like Rotel, Krave Jerky, and Match.com could achieve massive exposure by pooling resources and embracing a creative, collaborative concept. Discovering the full list of participating brands highlights just how broad and effective this coalition was.
The Squatty Potty campaign demonstrates that the best way to market an 'unmentionable' product is to embrace the awkwardness with bold, memorable humor. Instead of avoiding the topic, they grabbed it 'by the horns' with a viral video featuring a unicorn, rainbow soft-serve ice cream, and a direct explanation of the product’s benefits. This disruptive and humorous approach made people comfortable by first making them slightly uncomfortable, effectively breaking down social taboos.
A company looking to replicate this success should follow a similar stepwise plan:
Identify the Core Awkwardness: Pinpoint exactly what makes your product difficult to discuss and lean into it directly rather than using vague euphemisms.
Develop a Memorable Mascot or Metaphor: The unicorn served as a disarming and hilarious visual metaphor. Find a creative, shareable symbol for your product's function.
Use Unapologetic Humor: Craft content that is funny, slightly shocking, and shareable. The goal is to make people laugh, which lowers their inhibitions about the topic.
Focus on Digital Virality: The campaign gained 10 million views in its first two months by being perfectly suited for social media. Prioritize content designed for platforms like YouTube and Facebook.
By following this blueprint, you can transform a taboo topic into a viral sensation and, like Squatty Potty, become the #1 Best Seller in Amazon’s relevant category.
The Always #LikeAGirl campaign is a powerful example of integrated marketing because it consistently delivered a single, empowering message across multiple channels to change societal perceptions. The campaign went beyond simple advertising, creating a movement that included social media, media outreach, and partnerships with organizations like TED for 'confidence summits.' This holistic, purpose-driven approach ensures that every touchpoint reinforces the core brand value of championing girls' confidence.
The business impact of this strategy is validated by compelling data. The campaign wasn't just a feel-good initiative; it drove tangible results for Procter & Gamble. Key metrics that prove its success include:
The campaign was mentioned over 1,000 times in the media.
It generated more than 4 billion earned impressions, showcasing its massive organic reach.
Most importantly, the intent to purchase the Always product grew by more than 50 percent among the target audience.
This proves that aligning your brand with a meaningful social cause can not only build goodwill but also directly drive significant commercial success. A deeper look at the campaign's evolution reveals how it maintained momentum over time.
The 'third wave' of digital marketing is defined by its emphasis on authenticity, community engagement, and ROI-driven tactics over the high-budget, top-down approaches of earlier internet pioneers. It represents a shift from simply being online to strategically using digital platforms to build genuine connections and measurable results. This is significant because it levels the playing field, allowing innovative thinkers to outperform established players with bigger budgets.
This new paradigm is characterized by several key elements seen in successful campaigns. Companies like GoPro thrive on user-generated content, turning customers into a marketing engine. Political efforts like the Trump campaign demonstrate how micro-targeting and a relentless focus on 'bang for the buck' can win against immense financial odds. Brands such as Squatty Potty show that even with a challenging product, viral, humor-led content can create a market leader. Understanding these underlying principles is crucial for any brand seeking to achieve standout success today.
When evaluating these two starkly different approaches, a challenger brand must prioritize creativity and shared upside over the vanity of a solo spot. While a traditional $5 million Super Bowl ad promises massive viewership, Newcastle Brown Ale's strategy proved that collaboration can yield comparable or even greater impact for a fraction of the cost. The key is to shift the goal from owning a moment to creating a movement.
Here are the critical factors for a challenger brand to consider:
Budget Efficiency vs. Brand Purity: Are you willing to share the spotlight to gain access you couldn't otherwise afford? The 'Band of Brands' ad generated 2.3 billion impressions, a number few of the participants could have achieved alone.
Story and 'Meta-Commentary': Newcastle's ad worked because it was a clever commentary on advertising itself. A collaborative ad needs a compelling, unifying story that makes the collaboration the main event.
Potential for Earned Media: The novelty of the shared ad generated significant post-game buzz. A traditional ad must be exceptionally creative to earn that same level of secondary exposure.
For a smaller brand, the decision hinges on whether it has a creative concept strong enough to make collaboration a bigger story than any single participant. The success of this model offers a roadmap for achieving outsized results through ingenuity.
The campaign successfully monetized its audience by implementing a data-driven e-commerce and fundraising strategy that directly targeted its most engaged followers. Jared Kushner's team, leveraging connections from Silicon Valley, treated the campaign less like a traditional political operation and more like a lean startup focused on customer acquisition and conversion. They moved beyond simply broadcasting messages to building a machine that converted attention into tangible support.
The transformation from social media buzz to a revenue-generating operation was methodical. The first major success came from optimizing the campaign's merchandising initiative. By applying digital marketing principles like micro-targeting on Facebook, they were able to ramp up daily sales from under $8,000 to over $80,000. This ROI-centric mindset was then applied to all digital outreach, ensuring every dollar spent was tracked and maximized for impact. This approach of applying rigorous business metrics to a political movement provides critical lessons for any organization looking to mobilize an online audience.
The success of these campaigns implies that the future of digital marketing belongs to creative risk-takers who prioritize ingenuity over massive budgets. It signals a major shift where cleverness, humor, and collaboration can generate more buzz and better results than conventional, high-cost advertising. For established brands, this means they can no longer rely on sheer spending power to win; they must adapt to a landscape that rewards authenticity and bold ideas.
The Squatty Potty campaign, with its viral unicorn ad, proved that no topic is off-limits if handled with creative humor, leading to 10 million views in just two months. Similarly, Newcastle's collaborative Super Bowl ad showed that even the most exclusive advertising events can be disrupted through a shared-economy model, earning 2.3 billion impressions. Established brands must learn to become more agile, embrace unconventional concepts, and empower their teams to take calculated creative risks. The key takeaway is that in the current marketing climate, a truly original idea is the most valuable asset.
A relentless focus on ROI is critical because it forces marketers to make data-driven decisions that prioritize efficiency and impact over vanity metrics and wasteful spending. This mindset is what allowed the Donald Trump campaign to function like a high-growth tech company, systematically testing and scaling what worked. This 'bang for the buck' philosophy ensures that every dollar of the marketing budget is accountable and contributes directly to achieving core objectives.
The campaign’s outsized results stemmed directly from this discipline. While opponents spent heavily on broad, expensive television ads, the Trump team invested in highly measurable digital tactics. They produced YouTube videos for only $160,000 that garnered 74 million views, an extraordinary ROI. By constantly analyzing performance data from initiatives like Facebook micro-targeting, they could quickly pivot resources away from underperforming efforts and double down on what was converting viewers into supporters and donors. This approach is a powerful lesson that in modern marketing, how you spend is far more important than how much you spend.
While effective in its time, the blunt, micro-targeted strategy will need to evolve towards greater sophistication and nuance to remain potent. As consumers become more aware of data privacy and platform algorithms change to prioritize different types of content, the 'shock value' and hyper-targeting approach may face diminishing returns. Future success will depend on adapting to a more discerning digital audience.
The core principles of ROI and targeting will remain, but their application must change. For example, instead of just blunt talking points, future campaigns might need to invest more in layered storytelling that resonates on an emotional level, similar to the #LikeAGirl campaign. The 74 million views on low-tech videos showed the power of raw authenticity, but as platforms get more saturated, production value and narrative depth may become more important differentiators. Ultimately, strategies will need to blend the data-driven precision of the Trump campaign with a deeper understanding of building long-term community trust, not just short-term engagement.
The Squatty Potty marketing campaign reveals that unconventional imagery is a powerful tool for capturing attention and making a difficult topic shareable. The unforgettable visual of a unicorn pooping rainbow soft-serve ice cream was so bizarre and humorous that it became instantly viral. This pattern-interrupt strategy forced viewers to stop, watch, and share, bypassing the usual resistance to ads for personal hygiene products.
The campaign’s success is a testament to the effectiveness of bold creative choices in driving commerce. The viral video was not just for entertainment; it directly fueled business growth, generating 10 million views in its first two months and propelling the product to become the #1 Best Seller in Amazon’s Toilet Training Potties & Seats category. This proves that in a crowded market, a memorable and even shocking image can be more effective than a safe, conventional message. It encourages marketers to think beyond the expected to create something truly unforgettable, as detailed further in the campaign's full story.
Amol has helped catalyse business growth with his strategic & data-driven methodologies. With a decade of experience in the field of marketing, he has donned multiple hats, from channel optimization, data analytics and creative brand positioning to growth engineering and sales.
