Focused on brand aware­ness, the most excit­ing dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing cam­paigns of 2014 had a few things in com­mon: they spanned chan­nels and pro­vid­ed mul­ti­ple lay­ers of enter­tain­ment, and engage­ment for the con­sumer.

The dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing cam­paigns that made an impact in 2014 stayed with view­ers across chan­nels. View­ing and engage­ment went both ways, as tra­di­tion­al TV and PR drove peo­ple to view online video, sub­mit fan con­tri­bu­tions, and opt in for con­tin­ued con­nec­tion with brands – and vice ver­sa.

Tidy Cats Pounces On A Trend With Parody Kitten Week

Let’s face it: your brand has an advan­tage on the Inter­net if your prod­uct is in any way relat­ed to the web’s favorite top­ic: kit­tens. Puri­na Tidy Cats cat lit­ter, with a his­to­ry of pro­duc­ing par­o­dy ads, decid­ed that Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel’s “Shark Week,” a week of pro­gram­ming cen­tered on the world’s most fero­cious crea­ture, could use a com­ple­men­tary com­pan­ion cel­e­bra­tion of the world’s most cud­dly.

From August 10 to 17 (the same time as Shark Week aired on TV), Tidy Cats post­ed a series of “Shark Week”-style videos to YouTube. “Kit­ten Week” shared close encounter sto­ries dubbed “True Tails.” Hash­tag #Kit­ten­Week uni­fied the YouTube series with the brand’s Twit­ter and Face­book activ­i­ty, which includ­ed fan-sub­mit­ted meme-style pho­tos.

Dur­ing the week­long dig­i­tal cam­paign pro­duced by Resource/Ammirati, Tidy Cat grew its YouTube sub­scriber base 115 per­cent with more than 1.5 mil­lion total video views across social. More than 7,400 peo­ple joined the fun on Twit­ter, gain­ing the #Kit­ten­Week hash­tag 44 mil­lion impres­sions. Tidy Cat’s Twit­ter fol­low­ers grew 11 per­cent dur­ing the brief cam­paign, and Face­book reach extend­ed to 8 mil­lion users and 15,000 video shares.

Budweiser Puppy Love Is Super Bowl’s Top Ad, Thanks To A Marriage Of Traditional & Digital

The Super Bowl is the U.S.‘s biggest annu­al ad spec­ta­cle, and adver­tis­ers have learned that TV ads must call users to inter­act with the cam­paign online or leave oppor­tu­ni­ty for engage­ment on the table. Earn­ing the title of a top Super Bowl ad of 2014 was Bud­weis­er for its Pup­py Love ad by agency Anom­aly.

Accord­ing to analy­sis by Vis­i­ble Mea­sures, Pup­py Love was the most shared of all Super Bowl cam­paigns, with 71,240 tweets and 1,343,726 Face­book shares, likes, com­ments and clicks – more than triple the Face­book and Twit­ter inter­ac­tions of the next clos­est cam­paign. Bud­weis­er had part­nered with Google’s Brand­Lab for infor­ma­tion about con­sumer behav­ior and trends around the big game.

The dig­i­tal strat­e­gy exe­cut­ed in light of these insights involved releas­ing the Pup­py Love ad on YouTube six days before its TV debut. At the time of this writ­ing, Pup­py Love has been viewed more than 54 mil­lion times on YouTube.

Kel­ly Wrather, senior man­ag­er of con­tent mar­ket­ing at Ken­shoo, said it isn’t sur­pris­ing Budweiser’s 2014 Super Bowl spot, Pup­py Love, came out on top.

“The com­mer­cial works because it con­nects on an emo­tion­al lev­el with con­sumers. It’s not just about a cute pup­py, but the idea of the unbreak­able bonds of friend­ship — no mat­ter how uncon­ven­tion­al the pair­ing may be,” Wrather said.

“That’s fur­ther rein­forced with its clever hash­tag #best­buds,” she said. “From a cre­ative stand­point, Pup­py Love tips it hat to its pre­de­ces­sor, the 2013 Bud­weis­er Super Bowl com­mer­cial about a train­er who just can’t seem to shake his old pal, the Clydes­dale. With these sto­ries, Bud­weis­er proves that Super Bowl ads don’t have to be off-the-wall fun­ny to res­onate and be mem­o­rable.”

Aaron Kahlow, CEO and founder of Online Mar­ket­ing Insti­tute, agrees this was one to remem­ber. “Mas­sive kudos to Bud­weis­er in real­ly map­ping a con­tent mar­ket­ing cal­en­dar to YouTube, to social and to the TV spot itself,” Kahlow said. “It’s just smart. More­over, they had the met­rics on all fronts ready to rock Day One. These guys went in, eyes wide open, and real­ly learned with Google how to cre­ate a great cam­paign, ver­sus just toss­ing out anoth­er idea and hop­ing it works.”

Nutella Gets Sweet On Social Media & Influencer Marketing

Hazel­nut choco­late spread Nutel­la turned 50 last May. The brand proved it isn’t too old to learn new tricks about con­tent mar­ket­ing and influ­encer out­reach, engag­ing in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing cam­paigns span­ning Face­book, Twit­ter, Pin­ter­est, Insta­gram, and Tum­blr.

In the months lead­ing up to the com­pa­ny’s anniver­sary, Nutel­la teamed up with agency Sapi­ent­Ni­tro, which in sev­en months, cre­at­ed more than 500 pieces of con­tent aimed at inspir­ing new ways to enjoy the sweet spread.

Addi­tion­al­ly, an influ­encer pro­gram was acti­vat­ed by col­lect­ing fans’ sto­ries about Nutel­la, pulling in 15,000 sto­ries in two days. Celebri­ties, includ­ing William Shat­ner, were tapped to share their Nutel­la sto­ries, ampli­fy­ing the cam­paign.

In Sapi­ent­Ni­tro’s sub­mis­sion of the mul­ti-plat­form cam­paign to the 2014 Shorty Awards, the agency reports 15.6 per­cent more online con­ver­sa­tions and total engage­ment that has more than dou­bled. Fans and fol­low­ers have increased by a whop­ping 518 per­cent.

Marriott Invites Guests To Transform The Future of Travel

In 2013, Mar­riott and Grey NY launched a cam­paign that invit­ed trav­el­ers to sub­mit ideas that would improve the trav­el expe­ri­ence. They launched a ded­i­cat­ed web­site, TravelBrilliantly.com, where trav­el­ers sub­mit­ted inno­v­a­tive ideas that they felt would improve their time away from home, and in Sep­tem­ber 2014, Mar­riott brought the first of those ideas to life in a Chica­go loca­tion: the Healthy Vend­ing Machine.

TravelBrilliantly.com saw 2 mil­lion vis­its in its first 8 months. To date, the site has col­lect­ed more than 20,000 idea votes.

Every vot­er who con­nect­ed with Mar­riott social­ly or pro­vid­ed an email address is now part of the brand’s email and social out­reach. The dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing cam­paigns includ­ed an inte­grat­ed media mix of paid, social and owned chan­nels and influ­encer col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Cov­er­age on pub­li­ca­tions includ­ing Wired, Fast Com­pa­ny and Mash­able made for a com­bined 160 mil­lion PR impres­sions, and more than 10,000 online engage­ments were report­ed by Grey NY to the Shorty Awards.

TD Canada Trust ATMs Hand Out Heart-Warming Gifts

Banks don’t have the best rep­u­ta­tion for being empa­thet­ic enti­ties, but TD Cana­da Trust balked at that stereo­type in a major way when they turned their ATMs into “auto­mat­ed thank­ing machines.”

On July 25, the bank took cus­tomer appre­ci­a­tion to the extreme, start­ing a col­lege fund for a cus­tomer’s two chil­dren, plus send­ing the fam­i­ly to Dis­ney­land, and giv­ing plane tick­ets to woman so she can vis­it her daugh­ter with can­cer in Trinidad.

These gen­er­ous acts were com­pound­ed when the bank gave $20 to every cus­tomer in a branch, on the phone or online bank­ing at 2 p.m. – a total of 30,000 cus­tomers who would excit­ed­ly spread the word about their bank.

The orig­i­nal video has more than 18 mil­lion views. TD Cana­da has­n’t shared how many times its hash­tag #TDThanksY­ou was used, or its mea­sured lift in brand sen­ti­ment, but pub­li­ciz­ing num­bers like this would prob­a­bly go against the whole spir­it of a cam­paign whose point was to make peo­ple feel good.

Mercedes Creates Brand Awareness With Multichannel Ad Assault

When lux­u­ry car mak­er Mer­cedes launched a new auto­mo­bile into its line this past Sep­tem­ber, it exe­cut­ed a mul­ti-chan­nel mar­ket­ing cam­paign, with all the assets you’d expect of a major glob­al brand, from TV com­mer­cials to bill­boards.

Online, the heart of the dig­i­tal cam­paign was “The For­got­ten Road Trip,” a sto­ry­telling web­site that requires vis­i­tors to scroll, view ani­ma­tions, watch videos, and inter­act with the site to piece togeth­er a mys­tery.

A study in Novem­ber mea­sured brand aware­ness of four lux­u­ry automak­ers, and found that con­sumers that saw Mer­cedes ads were more like­ly to remem­ber and inter­act with the car mak­er in the future when com­pared to Lexus, BMW and Audi.

High­lights from the research include: 30 per­cent of those who watched a Mer­cedes ad report­ed a lift in brand impres­sions, com­pared to the 26 per­cent indus­try aver­age. And 43 per­cent of con­sumers who recalled Mer­cedes took an addi­tion­al action, while the same was only true for 38 per­cent of con­sumers who saw an ad from anoth­er lux­u­ry auto brand in the study.

Mike Gre­han, CMO and man­ag­ing direc­tor at Acronym Media, says the Mer­cedes cam­paign got his atten­tion.

“For a com­pa­ny not­ed for cre­at­ing the world’s first auto­mo­bile back in 1886, it’s fair to say they’ve had enough time to learn how to mar­ket one. As an instant­ly rec­og­niz­able, world-class brand, you’d think that they would have estab­lished them­selves enough glob­al­ly to not have to try so hard any­more,” Gre­han said. “But the fact is, much as the brand retains its lux­u­ry sta­tus and estab­lished pres­ence in the auto­mo­bile indus­try, the way that con­sumers research and buy cars, as well as the way they con­sume media, has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly.”

Gre­han not­ed that the chal­lenge that Mer­cedes has is not to posi­tion or repo­si­tion itself, rather to be in the right place at the right time, “no mat­ter how cliché that sounds these days.”

And, no mat­ter “how cool you think you are in a dig­i­tal age,” Gre­han said, this cam­paign shows that “the mes­sage and the medi­um still mat­ter.” He added that “it’s good news for Mer­cedes to know that they won’t be drop­ping the 30-sec­ond spot any time soon. Although they have test­ed and exper­i­ment­ed in all chan­nels, with some good suc­cess in social media, it’s still the lux­u­ry, lifestyle broad­cast ad that has the most emo­tion­al appeal.”

He con­cludes that this cam­paign proves “you still can’t beat big, glossy cre­ativ­i­ty when it comes to a lux­u­ry brand.”

What oth­er dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing cam­paigns will you remem­ber from 2014? Tell us in the com­ments.