Summer is drawing to a close and the days are getting shorter… it can only be September! Here at DGT, we’re doing what we do best – keeping a close eye on marketing trends to see what the future holds for our fast-moving industry. This month has provided us with an abundance of intriguing, appealing and baffling adverts to sink our teeth into. As much as we’d like to write ad nauseam about our favourite marketing efforts of the month, the team have whittled it down to just three examples for DGT Loves September, each of which say something different about what is popular in marketing at the moment – quirkiness, sustainability and the upheaval of typical marketing tropes.
It is human nature to be intrigued by extreme feats and exceptional efforts – that’s why challenges and world records are so fascinating to us. We watch the Olympics eagerly waiting to see if world records will be broken for fastest sprint, or lengthiest long-jump. More bizarrely, we celebrate bizarre achievements such as world’s scratchiest skin, world’s fastest bathtub, and the greatest number of canned drinks opened by a parrot. The team at Doritos seem to have spotted a gap in the Guinness World Record’s book for the longest cheese pull, and decided to base their latest advert on the great lengths they went to in order to achieve this accomplishment.
Equipped with a helicopter, a pit of cheese, and a giant Dorito, the advert shows the extreme lengths – quite literally – that the Doritos team will go to in order to earn the title of greatest cheese pull. After some careful negotiation between the tangy triangular snack and ginormous dip, the team manage to achieve a 49 foot cheese pull, a new world record. This ad has left us feeling two things – in awe, and ready to crack out a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, primed for dipping.
The DGT team love this for its quirky outlandishness – by increasing the scale of the classic nacho dip to epic proportions, the Doritos team create a hilariously exaggerated version of the typical cheese pull. We also love the competitive factor this creates: we can imagine snackers at home attempting to create the most prolonged cheese string, competing with friends, and sharing their attempts on social media.
This September, the DGT team have come across quite a few quirky, bizarre, and downright strange ads as advertisers seek to stand out in the increasingly competitive digital market. This has seen many brands take a more atypical route to their marketing, exploring unconventional forms of promoting their products. A fantastic example of this is Reese’s new mouth-watering advert promoting their new peanut butter bar. When we think of regular chocolate and confectionery adverts, we typically think of a number of classic tropes – dripping, melted chocolate, then seeing a chocolatier mixing products, followed by a slow-motion clip of a happy customer taking a seductive bite into their food. However, Reese’s flip these marketing stereotypes on the head by instead showing a mundane filing cabinet being filled with peanut butter. Not quite what you’d anticipate from an advert for a chocolate bar…
Reese’s have managed to maintain the classic slow-mo, seductive aspect of many chocolate ads, albeit with sarcasm and humour. After all, the sexualisation of many confectionery adverts is, objectively, quite bizarre, with Reese’s marketing showing that not all chocolate ads need to be serious or seductive. The slow drip of smooth chocolate seen in marketing for brands like Cadbury, Lindt and Galaxy is instead replaced by a comedic drizzle of viscous liquid into a filing cabinet – it’s not sexy, it’s not typical, and it’s certainly not anticipated. But that’s exactly the point. Reese’s don’t want their marketing efforts to blend into the smorgasbord of generic chocolate adverts.
As important as Dorito cheese pulls and cabinets full of peanut butter are, there is little more important than the health of our planet, which is precisely what Apple have focused on in their latest campaign. However, as is a running trend with advertisements this month, Apple have taken a similarly tongue-in-cheek approach to promoting their business by personifying Mother Earth as a sarcastic, bold and witty woman played by Octavia Spencer.
The campaign has already come under fire for its atypical approach to discussing climate change, with some viewers labelling it a cringeworthy skit that downplays the credibility of Apple’s undoubtedly impressive moves to improve their sustainability. However, this advert does a very good job at promoting Apple from multiple perspectives, and the YouTube views for this ad are skyrocketing, currently sitting at almost 4 million. What’s more, the ad is immensely shareable – whether you’re sharing as a fan of Spencer’s work, sharing as a critic, or sharing as an Apple user, it’s no wonder this video has started to go viral.
Firstly, the team are able to boast about their green credentials, stating that they will be eliminating plastic from all products by 2024, have already ensured all of their offices are carbon neutral, and have cut transport emissions by 95%. Secondly, the advert promotes Apple’s latest product, a fully carbon neutral Apple Watch. And lastly, Apple set out a long-term dedication to helping climate change by stating that each of their products will be carbon neutral by 2030, which is sure to go down well with consumers. After all, 81% of consumers prefer to purchase from sustainable businesses, which certainly bodes well for Apple. All-in-all, despite the ad’s tongue-in-cheek approach to green messaging, we appreciate how engaging yet informative this marketing is.
Speaking of outstanding marketing, that’s precisely our specialty at the Demand Generation Team! With over thirty years of marketing experience across a number of sectors, DGT are well-versed in creating campaigns that yield exceptional results. Through our combination of content, PPC, web, lead generation, CRM, automation and much more, our dedicated team of marketing maestros are able to take your marketing output to the next level. Did you enjoy DGT Loves September and want to know more? Fill out the form below and we’ll be in touch!
Posted by Jenna C on Friday 29th September 2023
