Brew Dog

Brew Dog is no stranger to controversy, and this approach has secured plenty of media coverage for the Scottish brewer.

The Mail, for example, fell hook, line and sinker for the 41% beer stunt. Then there was the reaction to Diageo allegedly pressuring organisers not to award a prize to Brew Dog. 

Kelvin Newman cites Brew Dog as his favourite content marketing example: 

BrewDog continues to be the company constantly delivering marketing where I wish I’d been behind it it. It’s well known but the ‘Equity for Punks’ is, I think, going to be one of those case studies taught for decades and often imitated.

Equity for Punks is a way of crowd-funding the business and a useful content marketing strategy at the same time. 

 

British Airways

Selected by Kevin Gibbons, and here’s why: 

British Airways has been producing some incredible campaigns recently. I often think the term ‘content marketing’ is thought of as an online campaign, but I wouldn’t restrict it just to that.

The recent #Lookup campaign BA has produced is very effective, firstly because it’s a very clever idea and it gets people talking. And secondly, because it does a great job of integrating offline advertising with online marketing, encouraging people to share via the #Lookup hashtag to generate additional promotion via social media too.

They really understand their audience, and make high-quality consumer-led content, which is why it works so well, another example being the visit mum video campaign which was very powerful to show the emotional side behind their content.

Chipotle

Jason Thibeault nominates the scarecrow campaign: 

Chipotle created a Transmedia story of a scarecrow. Video. Website. Mobile game. It was fantastic.

The Scarecrow was an animated short film accompanied by a mobile game, on the subject of the industrialised world of processed food.

Chipotle highlights the industrialisation of fast food, while holding itself up as a more sustainable alternative. This has naturally provoked much debate and hundreds of blog posts. 

Meanwhile the video above has been viewed more than 11m times and the relaed apps have clocked up 400,000+ downloads. 

IBM

Suggested by Doug Kessler, IBMblr is IBM’s innovation culture blog, and contains some great, easily digestable content. 

General Electric

This (also Doug’s suggestion) is fantastic. It captures all the take offs and landing in one day at a selection of airports, and shows them all at once in this hypnotic short film.   

Williams-Sonoma

Suggested by Juliet Stott, the Taste blog is “a great online lifestyle magazine and complements the products it’s selling”.

Charmin

Sit or squat, from P&G, helps people find clean public toilets. 

According to Andrew Davies

This is outstanding, but scatological, example that’s both useful and quirky. It’s a site where fans document and collate information on the cleanliness of nearby public loos.

The crowd-sourced nature of it give it long-term utility that excels beyond the usual short-termism of brand campaigns, and functions such as adding photographs and reviews make it richer than the usual map-based fare.

Airbnb

This suggestion comes from our very own Andrew Warren-Payne, who nominates Airbnb for its editorially-driven city guides.

This isn’t necessarily anything new, but it’s beautifully executed and totally complementary to the main product.

Volvo

Van Damme doing the splits between two moving trucks, what’s not to like?