When HubSpot, a marketing, sales and CRM software company embarked upon a mission to identify the Best Advertising and Marketing Campaigns of all time, two common denominators jumped to the fore that you can use to create your successful campaigns.
1.) Tactics were secondary, and strategy was first in all fourteen campaigns. In 1984, Wendy’s wildly popular “Where’s the Beef?” campaign featured a giant bun and a small pattie and three cute little old ladies to point out the lack of beef in competitor’s burgers. The catchphrase was the launch of Wendy’s turnaround success.
2.) Campaign success is not measured by clicks, followers, or views, it’s measured by sales. Hubspot also featured a 1957 Clairol campaign, “Does She, or Doesn’t She?” At the time of launch, only 1 out of 15 women used artificial hair color. Eleven years after the launch of the campaign, 1 out of every two women were coloring their hair.
Even though HubSpot practices in the digital space, in recognizing a list of the most successful advertising campaigns, they did not focus on the media or platforms used. Instead, they focused on the message, or “The big idea” to create an emotional connection with consumers. And success was measured by sales and market-share growth rather than digital metrics.
The lessons in these case studies of successful advertising strategy and measurement can also be seen in Nike’s “Just Do It”, De Beer’s “A Diamond is Forever”, and Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.”