Besides the social activity, the campaign also included a minimalist billboard. The work earned recognition at Cannes, Sabre, and IABC. It even drew a public response from rival mattress retailer Sleep Country, which reacted with its own billboard stating, “Sorry, I was asleep,” near Ikea stores. – Rebecca Stewart
11. Heinz | “It Has to Be” by Wieden+Kennedy London
Dropping the logo has become a popular advertising tactic, used by brands from McDonald’s to British Airways to Ikea. But no one did it better than Heinz. Its billboards featured close-up shots of food and swapped the word “Heinz” in the slogan “It Has to Be” with familiar pairings like fries and bread. The result demonstrated the strength of the Heinz brand: even without a logo, the ads were instantly recognizable. – Brittaney Kiefer
10. A24 | Marty Supreme trailer feat. Timothée Chalamet (in-house)
A month before the release of his latest film, Marty Supreme, actor Timothée Chalamet posted a bizarre 18-minute Zoom call on Instagram. The call was supposedly a virtual meeting between him and A24’s team to discuss the movie’s marketing strategy. In it, Chalamet proposes strange ideas while pretending to be a star whose fame has gone to his head. His big pitch is to make everything orange, much like the Barbie movie marketing machine turned the world pink.
Chalamet’s awkward performance subtly skewered marketers and fame-crazed stars, while demonstrating meta-marketing at its finest. The viral video did more to promote the movie than any traditional campaign ever could. – Brittaney Kiefer
9. Gushers | “FruitHead” by Imagine Entertainment
Just in time for Halloween, Gushers developed a chilling backstory for its “Fruithead” ads from the 1990s, which used then-brand-new CGI to turn kids’ heads into giant fruits after eating the chewy candy. The 9-minute body horror film casts Bradley Whitford as the director of the ‘90s campaign, in which he becomes maniacal and really transforms a child’s head into a giant strawberry. Years later, the now grown man comes back to haunt Whitford—and punish him for his crimes.
