Our Favorite Marketing Campaigns of 2023

Marketing is becoming more about creativity than big budgets, and we’re here for it. Often, hefty budgets lead to basic ad campaigns: just hire a famous person to hold your product and say something clever, then buy enough media to make sure everyone see it.

Our pick for the marketing world of 2023 is: creativity. Sometimes, great marketing campaigns come together quickly and organically, generating more impact than campaigns that take a year to develop.

Brands that won this year were the ones who took risks, moved fast, and understood their audience. Here are our favorite campaigns from 2023:

The Barbie Movie

We won't go into details about the genius of the Airbnb house or the numerous collabs and partnerships. What was less discussed was Barbie's hyper-focus on their target audience. They could have easily made a kids' movie and tried to reignite the brand for today's youth, but they were smarter than that. Instead, they focused on Gen X and Millennials who grew up with Barbie and leaned into something the women in this demographic care about: feminism. Many moms stayed away from buying Barbies for their kids because of her inherent profile as the "perfect" woman. By leaning into feminism for the movie, it created renewed interest and respect for the IP, which repositioned the brand in their minds. This came across in the director chosen, the actors cast, the script written, and all of the innovative brand partnerships launched.

Snoop Dogg's "Giving Up Smoke" Campaign

C'mon, this was legendary. What we loved most about this campaign was its simplicity. Taking an icon and tapping into what he is most known for, then disrupting it. With one simple post, he garnered over 4.7 million likes and 175k comments. He continued to lean into this over the next week, and then, when he finally announced it was a collab with Solo Stove, it erupted with over 50M views on the video while search terms for "Solo Stoves" went through the roof. Between the social campaign, PR, podcasts, and overall watercooler talk, we'll never really know how many impressions this received, but we will know the impact on sales soon since they’re a public company.

The #GrimaceShake Trend

Our next favorite campaign isn't even a campaign at all and is a great example of why the internet is awesome (sometimes). We're talking about the incredibly viral Grimace Shake trend on TikTok. This is where people pretended to pass out (among other things!) in random places after drinking McDonald's’ purple drink (in New Orleans, we have a similar drink called the Purple Drank - iykyk). McDonald's had nothing to do with this campaign but they thoroughly embraced it. McDonald's Senior Marketing Director wrote a post about it, stating they were just as excited as we were watching it and even happier with the billions of impressions it received.

And … honorable mention goes to our favorite lovable curmudgeon: Ben Affleck and Dunkin' Donuts. Ben has been pictured numerous times enjoying Dunkin', so why not ask him to be an official spokesperson? They created a series of commercials with the actor, one of which aired during the Super Bowl. Do you think he got paid, or was he offered a lifetime supply of his favorite beverage?