5 Examples of Great Branding in the First Half of 2017

Making your brand stand out amongst all the branding noise is more difficult than ever. How do you appeal to an audience as huge and diverse as that of our own United States? How do you make that appeal to provoke strong emotions that benefit your brand, as opposed to hurting it? It takes a lot of creativity, but we can also stand to be inspired by these great examples of branding in 2017.

1. Smirnoff Vodka put out a great ad campaign earlier this year that provoked something that has been on all of our minds: the controversies surrounding the Trump associations with Russia. But it did so in a lighthearted way, without offending anybody in particular and at the same time emphasizing one of the notable qualities of the Smirnoff brand. Their campaign included the line “Made in America – but we’d be happy to talk about our ties to Russia under oath.” This ad gained instant popularity with thousands and thousand of retweets of the picture on Twitter.

2. Cards Against Humanity trolled us – again. They are a small company unlikely to reach their audience in a super bowl ad of any kind, but they did put out a blog post claiming that they did. This hilarious post claimed that they put so much time putting together a terrible ad (a 30-second spot of a picture of a potato with the word advertisement) that had zero return on investment and the cost of which supposedly put them out of business. This fired up the internet and circulated the blog post only for the internet to discover that it was a big prank. Just as Smirnoff emphasized its American brand in its ad, Cards Against Humanity reinforced that their brand is one full of laughs and subverting norms.

3. Airbnb put out an ad campaign called “#LiveThere”. Their market research suggested that users didn’t want to be a plain tourist of the city where they were visiting, they wanted to live like the locals and get to know the culture on a more intimate level. Airbnb reinforced their brand as one that allows you to do that by connecting you with hosts that live there, too, and by providing actual homes to stay in as opposed to some hotel room.

4. Guinness this year released an ad around St. Patrick’s Day in order to reinforce their brand as THE Irish beer to drink. The spot said, “St. Patrick’s Day might be the best day to get your first taste,” appealing to consumers that are new to the brand and who might be wavered over to Guinness by hoping to experience a true Irish experience.

5. Ancenstry.com put out an ad spot in which they reveal multiple people of all ethnicities and genders that are descendants of people who signed the Declaration of Independence. They followed this with the tagline “Unlock your past. Inspire your future.” This reinforces the idea that the past is an important part of who you are now, and that finding that out will be impactful for you – and that Ancestry can help you do that.