Working in the [Marketing and Advertising] industry, many times I have had to be asked on the question of what constitutes a successful marketing campaign.
This question has been the cause of many arguments in advertising circles and in the industry with little in the way of answering.
As an industry, this has left the practitioners defenseless and a little defenseless in the eyes of management which always feel that money sank in marketing goes to waste.
In order to attempt to answer the question, I took a look at some of the great campaigns that have run this year in order to pinpoint some great advertising that we can benchmark.
In the marketing and communication industry, Super Bowl is a marketing campaign central in terms of great advertising content as brands usually clamour to get the attention of millions of viewers watching in America.
Super Bowl 2018 didn’t disappoint in terms of the advertising content that was put out by brands in a bid to catch eye-balls and share of mind of viewers glued on the Super Bowl. My personal favorite among the brands that advertised in Super Bowl 2018 was a campaign by Amazon Alexa dubbed Alexa loses her voice.
The campaign centered around a new voice assistant that Amazon launched dubbed Alexa which offers people convenience by issuing voice commands.
So within the advert, Alexa loses her voice in the middle of a conversation with a lady who had asked about the weather forecast.
The campaign utilized great actors like Gordon Ramsay, Rebel Wilson, Cardi B, and Sir Anthony Hopkins – trying to replace Alexa’s voice which had dried up.
The ad also focuses on how company execs from Amazon recruit a team of people to hold down the fort in Alexa’s absence but end up boggling up the whole job until Alexa’s makes a re-entry to save the day
The advert stands out for me because of the extra mile Amazon went in creating great content, which according to me, is the biggest component of great marketing campaigns.
The use of some of Hollywood’s favorite actors together with the famous rapper Cardi B was a bold statement on how far Amazon was willing to go to get good content in the eyes of their potential customers.
The use of these icons had many benefits including ensuring the campaign amplification potential.
The virality of the campaign was highly enhanced as there were many shares on social media and an astounding 45 million YouTube views!
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In conclusion, I believe the key points to note out of this narrative is that great marketing campaigns are not by happenstance but rather they are a function of great planning, good content creation and execution (placement strategy.)
Therefore company executives ought to empower their marketing functions to create content which increases the overall brand affinity and has huge marketing dividends.
Edgar Karamagi is a public relations officer for Africell Uganda
