3 Effective Marketing Campaigns That We Loved in 2021

We’ve seen many a marketing success in 2021, but today we’re sharing three in particular that really stayed with us over the course of the year. To learn more about our top-3 effective marketing campaigns that we loved in 2021, just keep on reading.

#GBBO

Ah, the Great British Bake Off. A little slice of wholesome that 8pm on Tuesday brings. We find ourselves lost and forlorn now that it’s all over for another year. Despite only being around for 12 weeks of the year (13 if you count the Christmas special!), their marketing is wildly successful every single year. Using a variety of platforms and methods to their madness, their content is one element in particular that sticks with us here at MXB HQ. With a staggering 734,300 Twitter followers and 898,000 more on Instagram, it’s quite the audience to uphold and entertain. But master it, they do.

What we loved the most: their reactive-based Twitter commentary alongside each live episode. Why it’s effective? It’s funny. It’s relatable. It makes you tap the like/share button without hesitation. Using a selection of behind the scenes pieces, motivational quotes for contestants, tongue-in-cheek context-free GIFs and meme-style posts, their content drives engagement and conversation from the audience, a telltale sign of success from any marketing campaign.

Whiskey Meets Crypto Fashion

NFTs have been all the rage for 2021. To the point where they’ve invaded all scapes of life: including the world of fashion. Quite the unlikely pairing, Glenfiddich (known for creating the World’s Most Awarded Single Malt Scotch Whisky) teamed up with digital designer Stephanie Fung to create an NFT fashion collection, known as ‘The Filigree Aesthetic’.

With a collection inspired by the works of The Grande Composition artist group, the aim was to create digital wearables that could be utilised in meta verses, AR and VR. The freedom of digital design allowed for so much more than real life garments, such as animated graphics, gravity defiance and glowing materials. This campaign was used to target young Chinese consumers, auctioning off the NFTs with 100% of the proceeds going to an organisation that supports and promotes up-and-coming digital designers.

NFT collections allow brands to align with young, new creators and artists, adapting to the full-throttle digital now, creating new customer influence and going above and beyond what can be achieved with traditional marketing campaigns.

#FreeCuthbert

When Aldi turned a legal battle with competitor Marks and Spencer into marketing gold. Over 30 million views of gold, in fact. And that was just the user-generated content. Cuthbert, as we know him, is very similar to M&S’ famous Colin the Caterpillar. When M&S made legal claim over trademark infringement, Aldi’s response was to take control of the narrative via public opinion. To put it light, it. Spread. Like. Wildfire. News headlines, the number one trending spot on Twitter, protest, TV panels, parodies, celebrity involvement, online memes, the works. Not too shabby of a result, we reckon.

Why it’s effective? It resulted in increases across the board for Aldi. News sentiment: up 8.5%. Purchase consideration: up 6.8%. Twitter following? An astounding 30% increase over the course of the campaign. Not to mention reaching 35 million people on Facebook and achieving an impressive 15% engagement rate. Put it this way: to achieve results like this, their media spend would’ve had to be at least £5 million pounds. Aldi’s actual spend? A grand total of £0. Off the back of their campaign’s wild success, Aldi launched a limited edition Cuthbert cake in-store, with all proceeds going to Teenage Cancer Trust.