CSAA Insurance Group modernizes the Rickroll.
For decades, brands have looked for innovative ways to set themselves apart from competitors, often turning to creative—or even bizarre—methods to promote themselves and their products. Brands continued to up the ante this year, turning to humorous products, unique activations and fan-favorite characters to compete for consumer attention and favor.
Below are five of the best attention-grabbing ploys brands used to sway consumers in 2022.
Despite its simple product offering, Liquid Death breaks from the mundaneness of canned water with zany marketing ploys. This Halloween, the brand continued to employ that strategy, teaming up with Martha Stewart to advertise a black, unscented candle in the shape of a severed hand holding a can of Liquid Death. The gory promotional video for the “Dismembered Moments Luxury Candle” starred Stewart wielding a massive kitchen knife and “chopping off” the hands of several unsuspecting, blindfolded people lined up for what they think is an appearance on the “Martha Stewart Show.” The “handmade” candles are only one example of Liquid Death’s unconventional campaigns throughout 2022. The brand’s attention-grabbing, often edgy marketing strategy landed it on this year’s Marketers of the Year list.
When Mtn Dew introduced Puppy Monkey Baby in the brand’s 2016 Super Bowl ad, the odd hybrid creature—a wry amalgamation of three widely-used Super Bowl advertising tropes—received widespread attention, ranging from fond to scornful. Following that ad, the creature largely faded from Mtn Dew’s marketing—but Puppy Monkey Baby made a triumphant return in 2022. In February, Mtn Dew traced back to Puppy Monkey Baby’s self-aware origins with a series of TV spots pointing out various advertising clichés, featuring the controversial creature in an ad mocking the often-obvious nature of product placements. Mtn Dew decided to bring Puppy Monkey Baby out of retirement to appeal to Gen Z consumers, who love the creature and appreciate brands that poke fun at themselves, Pat O’Toole, Mtn Dew’s VP of marketing, told Ad Age earlier this year.
Last year might have been the year of hard seltzers, but canned cocktails dominated in 2022, with major players in the alcohol industry including Molson Coors and Heineken introducing new products to join in on the canned cocktail craze. Tito’s Handmade Vodka, however, had a tongue-in-cheek take on the trend, launching a “Tito’s in a Can” product in August that was simply an empty, reusable steel can rather than a premixed cocktail. In place of nutrition facts, the brand labeled the can with various recipes for Tito’s-based cocktails, requiring consumers to make their own drinks. The brand donated proceeds from sales to various nonprofit organizations that consumers could choose. “There comes a time when every alcohol brand must ask, ‘Should we make a seltzer?’” a voiceover asks in the video spot. “And our answer is ‘No.’”
When Instacart learned the MTV Video Music Awards banned attendees from bringing outside food to the event, the food delivery company teamed up with fashion brand threeASFOUR to brainstorm a workaround. The two companies landed on a puffy, shimmery silver dress. Although it was unflattering at best, the “Cart Couture” dress fulfilled its duty of allowing its wearer—“Saturday Night Live” star Chloe Fineman—to conceal snacks in the dress’s hidden pockets. This foray into fashion was part of Instacart’s larger “The World Is Your Cart” campaign, which included the brand’s video spot starring Lizzo and aims to appeal to Gen Z Instacart users.
Rickrolling—or disguising the link to the music video for Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” as a more desirable piece of online content—is a classic element of internet culture. But this August, CSAA Insurance Group brought the online prank to 17 cities across the U.S. with a series of billboards and other out-of-home ads featuring only a QR code topped with an illustration of Astley’s hair. The code brought consumers to a remake of the music video at the core of Rickrolling, with Astley dressed in the same outfit as the original. This new version, however, incorporates CSAA Insurance representatives and heavily features the company’s logo. The video garnered a million views on YouTube in only two days, and currently has 5.3 million views.
Although the ad is meant to be playful, Linda Goldstein, executive VP of customer experience and marketing at CSAA Insurance Group, emphasized that the video also aimed to tie the song’s messages of devotion and reliability to the quality of the service the company provides.
