“In the long history of humankind, those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” – Charles Darwin. A great PR campaign is the one that alters people’s outlook towards a brand and brings an organic element to it. While some campaigns are solely created for the purpose of building a brand, there are some campaigns that have driven huge sales for businesses and therefore, deserve a worthy mention. There are various aspects of a campaign that when evaluated meticulously will add to the taste you’re craving. The challenge here is to first create a road-map and implement it in ways that would trigger curiosity among the audience, newswires, and media houses.
When a brand initiates a campaign that’s both fun and interactive, it automatically gets highlighted in various media forums as well as newspapers. However, there are a few such campaigns that have gained an overwhelming response and deserve to be in the hall of fame.
Carlsberg has a name for creating super cool and ingenious campaigns. Its cleverly designed beer dispending billboard campaigns gave it worldwide fame and social media attention. The campaign had nothing extraordinary but a large billboard displaying the caption ‘Probably the best poster in the world’ with beer dispensers offering fresh pints of beer to those lucky bystanders. This campaign gave them a huge push into the hub of various social media platforms as well as PR newswires.
Wondering why does it deserve a prodigious mention and a rank? The brand strategized to combine audience ‘likes’ with planned calendar opportunities that lead to its worldwide success. It received acclamations from newspapers and the hashtag #probablythebest globally generated over three million Twitter impressions in a day. The poster dispensed 1,400 glasses of beer in a day that generated humongous PR buzz, crossing over 60 million consumers globally. In addition to that, the campaign generated massive buzz across social and mainstream media that compelled journalists to curate content on it for various newspapers like the Guardian, Mirror along with 1,238 shares across all social media platforms.
Coke Zero
What’s zero got to do with coke, is an immediate question that usually clicks in our head. More than its taste, the prime goal was to create a drive that would grab the attention of impassive millennials.
This campaign created a buzz amongst millennials and media houses that paved a new spot for them to partner with ESPN College GameDay and Shazam. According to Coca Cola, the consumers of Coke Zero increased by nearly 50% in a month. The drinkable ad campaign delivered close to 155,000 samples of Coke Zero over the weekend, while the drinkable poster delivered over 4,000 Coke Zeros in a single weekend. This interactive campaign created an enormous uproar, generating massive PR and social media impressions within 48 hours. In addition, it also won industry recognition and got covered in the press namely, The Drum, Agency Spy, and the Adweek.
Free WHOPPHERs from Burger King
Burger King is well-known for making remarkable campaigns. With the driving ban being lifted in Saudi Arabia the brand created a remarkable campaign that offered free ‘whopphers’ to female drivers. For an entire month, from June 24 to July 24, Saudi Arabia’s Burger King outlets went on distributing free burgers to every woman in the driver’s seat, who pulled up to its drive-thru windows. The burgers came wrapped in special paper that had renamed the sandwich to #WhoppHer. This initiative sets an example of a great instance where brands have sought out to celebrate a radical change that opens the door for a more global and equal future.
What is a successful PR campaign then? When it stands out from the clutter. To ensure that, it is necessary to build a strong connection between consumers and make them contemplate about the message that the brand wants to disclose. With traditional and digital PR tactics having their individual core values, yet in a world where time, exclusivity and speed are the essence when distributing news, there is clearly one winner – the one who gets through and also gets some dough rolling!
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