Every year brings with it some amazing marketing campaigns that have us thinking why we didn’t think of it first. Marketing is an essential business management area which affects the sales and ROI directly and indirectly, both. Certain campaigns are done from the purpose of hard-selling while others might be a brand building exercise. Below we recount 10 marketing campaigns from across the globe that blew our minds in 2017:

1. A stunt that scares: The franchise of “The Ring” movie is known for its pranky marketing campaigns. Its sequel “Rings” released in 2017 and the film’s marketing and promotions stunt scared people to their bones. This campaign which consisted of a real life activity was introduced in January of last year and its video garnered millions of views. And though the video looks funny, the real activity scared people and had them running for their life. In the activity that was done in TV stores, a screen looking similar to the other TVs was placed in the store and an ad of the movie was run on it, while a girl is made to sit in the fake screen. When she walks out of the screen is when people run for cover.
2. Statues attack coasts: Another marketing activity which blew our minds was the promotion of the film “Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge”. 2m tall statues of pirates were placed along three coastlines in Britain. The statues were placed in a way that they were revealed in low tide. The statues depicted the new characters of this film.
3. Spotify- Play this at my funeral: A campaign that used a simple idea in an innovative way along with the user data they already had. They spun several funny memes from the song  “play this at my funeral” by DNCE. They also did certain promotions taking the idea from their TV ads forward.
4. Pass the Heinz: This campaign from Heinz ran in print and outdoor media in Miami. The ketchup is nowhere to be seen in the pictures of snack items such as burger, pasta etc. with just the caption “Pass the Heinz”. This campaign was proposed in the fiction Mad Men about 50 years  ago. The fact that it was defictionalized and actually used so much later is what blows our mind.
5. KFC’s 11 herbs and spices: KFC’s creative agency Weiden + Kennedy did a little stunt on Twitter by following 11 people – the 5 spice girls and the 6 guys named herb. Even though as a standalone stunt it does not mean much but when it is understood in the context of the 11 secret herbs of KFC’s recipes, it is mindblowing.
6. #WomensMarch: This was a marketing campaign for a cause. A protest against the inauguration of Donald Trump, this movement started on several Facebook pages. As the pages became viral, the leaders of the movement began to place hashtag #WomensMarch to the pages to consolidate the march. The campaign led to several women’s marches across U.S.
7. Shot on iPhone: This is a series of campaigns which presents different messages through content generated by users. It also comprised photos shot by iPhone users and submitted to iPhone for the campaign and several of these high quality photos were used on billboards.
8. Uberflip: This was an interesting campaign which utilized A Christmas Carol, the Charles Dickens classic as its content marketing theme. In it, Mrs. Shmitty, who’s a content marketer, goes through her  past, present and future to understand the true importance of her role.
9. How do you give back?: This popular campaign by software firm CISCO became extremely popular in 2017. In the campaign CISCO encouraged Facebook users to share how they gave back to the society. For every comment, four meals were donated to the World Food Program by CISCO.
10. McDonald’s – Search It: With on of the most popular logos, McDonalds created quite a stir by removing their logo from all their ads in their recent campaign called “Search It”. In this campaign all the ads online asked users to answer the question where they would find the best Coca-Cola. The campaign looks to leverage Coca-Cola drinkers to have their burger with it and increase sales.

The above is a global list of different kinds of marketing campigns from 2017 that blew our minds. We are awaiting more such campaigns in 2018.