6 Top Digital Campaigns to Inspire You in 2020

As a digital marketing professional, you’ll have the opportunity to work on many different types of campaigns. Your digital strategy for any project can include multiple channels, such as social media marketing (Facebook, Instagram, etc.), search engine marketing, digital advertising, and content marketing. 

However, even with all these channels at your disposal, it can still be difficult to stand out and capture the attention of your target audience. – especially against the massive background noise of the Internet.

To inspire your creativity, we’ve put together a shortlist of some of the most effective digital campaigning examples that have caught our attention over the past couple of years. These digital campaigning examples prove that it doesn’t take an oversized investment of time and money to connect with your audience – rather, audiences respond to ads that are creative, innovative, and contextually relevant. 

Check out these six amazing examples to see exactly what we mean.

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6 Top Digital Campaigns to Inspire You in 2020

Burger King: The Moldy Whopper Campaign

Overview: Burger King took a real gamble with the Moldy Whopper Campaign – and it seems to have paid off. Released on YouTube in February of 2020, this 45-second advertisement shows the production team assembling a picture-perfect whopper, then filming it for 34 days as the sandwich sits in an open-air growing mold. The key takeaway: Burger King’s whopper contains no artificial preservatives.

Why We Loved It: Fast food commercials usually represent their product as juicy and delicious, but Burger King’s marketing team managed to create a very memorable ad by showing their product in its worst state and saying “Look, our product actually breaks down organically, that’s because we’re using fresh ingredients”. 

Other fast-food restaurants have had whole videos and documentaries made exposing the high preservative contents in their food, so this digital campaign really differentiates Burger King from those brands and positions it as a healthier choice with better-quality and fresher ingredients.

Nike: Never Too Far Down

Overview: Released in May 2020, during the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Nike’s Never Too Far Down campaign features narration from LeBron James and a montage of some of the most exciting, incredible, and improbable comeback moments in the history of sports. The ad also mentions the challenges that our communities have faced in dealing with Coronavirus and delivers the inspiring message that we can come back from that too.

Why We Loved It: Everyone loves an exciting comeback story, but what we really loved about this ad was that it took that narrative and applied it to a contextually relevant experience that we could all empathize with. With COVID-19 interrupting athletics for so many amateurs and aspiring athletes, this ad served as a reminder that we can always make a comeback. It has been viewed over 117 million times.

Upwork: Hello World

Overview: Upwork’s “Hello World” campaign was released in January 2018 and used to promote the online freelancer marketplace in advance of its IPO in October that same year. This digital campaign included animated digital videos that audiences could experience online or in-person at subway stations in New York and San Francisco. 

The videos featured shout-outs and offers of freelancer-finding services to celebrities including Elon Musk, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, George R.R. Martin, and even President Trump. They also poked fun at Comic Sans users for using the worst font ever, Blockbuster video for going out of business, and Equifax for having their customer data stolen.

Why We Loved It: This digital campaign connected well with audiences because of its contextual relevance. Upwork was able to call out some of the most recognizable companies and celebrities, say something funny about them, and tie it back to a cohesive brand message. The use of humor made the videos fun and shareable, resulting in millions of views online and increased brand awareness for Upwork.

Dropbox: Life Inside Dropbox

Overview: Life Inside Dropbox is a multi-channel marketing campaign designed to promote Dropbox as an employer by showcasing the lives of the people who work there.

Why We Loved It: Life Inside Dropbox is a great example of multi-channel digital campaigning done right. The organization launched a content marketing campaign through the Medium platform, set up a Facebook group, and created a Twitter hashtag to promote stories about their employees with the hope of attracting better talent in the future. 

Cisco: SuperSmart Graphic Novel

Overview: Cisco’s SuperSmart graphic novel is one of the most innovative and unique content marketing plays we’ve seen in the last couple of years. With enterprise organizations becoming increasingly concerned about data breaches, Cisco created this 8-page comic to educate its audience about some common cybersecurity risks and promote its network-embedded security software.

Why We Loved It: Our favorite thing about this digital campaign is the ingenuity and innovation that Cisco showed in finding a different way to connect with their audience. Rather than going the conventional route and publishing a formal white paper or PDF on cybersecurity and the associated risks, Cisco went in the opposite direction and used a more informal, fun, and engaging medium to tell the exact same story. Their ambition in this project resulted in a much more interesting and memorable experience for audiences.

Deloitte: Business Chemistry

Overview: Recognizing that everyone loves to fill out quizzes on Facebook, Deloitte created the Business Chemistry website where visitors can fill out a personal questionnaire and discover their own business chemistry type: Pioneer, Driver, Integrator, or Guardian. The campaign website encourages teams of people to take the quiz together, learn more about their respective types through the resources available, then adapt their management and communication styles to improve team performance.

Why We Loved It: This content marketing project is both interactive and engaging for audiences, and totally on-brand for Deloitte who take pride in being a high-performance organization. Business Chemistry feels like those viral Facebook quizzes that so many people love taking – but it’s all backed by science and designed to help business teams succeed by working better together. The result is high-engagement, excellent value for audiences, and a great advertisement for Deloitte’s consulting services.

Summary

Thanks for checking out our list of the top 6 digital campaigns to inspire you in 2020! 

If you’re excited by the opportunity to leverage your creativity and reach millions of people with clever digital campaigning, check out our digital marketing course on Directive Institute.