When researching the impact of brand storytelling on business success, we found many, many different articles about massive business results achieved through creative campaigns. 

And we also found Jake from State Farm. 

AdWeek told the story of Jake from State Farm glomming onto the Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce hype by attending Travis’s brother’s football games and chatting up the Kelces’ mom. “He’d find Donna Kelce in the crowd, have a conversation with her and take a selfie. He’d also track down Jason Kelce in the tunnel after the game and hang out for a bit before leaving the stadium together.”

Why is Jake from State Farm, who is a made up person stumping for an insurance agency, hanging out with the extended family of Taylor Swift’s boyfriend? Marketing, we guess.

Also, he’s not done! Just a couple weeks ago, he was spotted at the WNBA Draft, a coronation for basketball star Caitlin Clark, who became the No. 1 pick in the draft and who, when exiting the stage moments after being drafted, was embraced by Jake from State Farm before even her parents. Why? Are Jake and Caitlin dating? Was she in the middle of an insurance quote? Is this still planet Earth? 

Now, the antics of Jake from State Farm may qualify as creative marketing. Who are we to judge? But it is not our kind of creative marketing. 

We love something super unique and super valuable and, apologies to State Farm’s creative marketing team, super something we understand. As you’ll recall from our recent newsletter, creativity is about novelty and about relevancy. 

So, inspired and repulsed by the State Farm campaigns, we thought we’d share some of our favorite brand activations, events, campaigns, and experiences from the past several years. 

We’d love to know yours!

Our most favorite brand activations

Burger King selling Whoppers “at” McDonald’s

Burger King found a way to offer Whoppers at McDonald's

In 2019, Burger King’s mobile app launched an enterprising new way to sell Whopper hamburgers…and make a little dig at their biggest competitor, McDonald’s, at the same time. 

The way it worked: if you had the Burger King app and you came within 600 feet of a McDonald’s, the app would let you order a Whopper for one cent. You could pick up your Whopper at the nearest Burger King. Huge credit to the creative, geofencing enthusiasts on the Burger King marketing team for dreaming this one up!

Maybelline’s faux mascara ads

It may be cheating to list a campaign that is famous for, well, not being real. But it most definitely is creative! 

Fake out-of-home advertising had a moment in the sun with all sorts of different brands grabbing headlines with clever ads that looked real but were definitely fake. Thanks to the talent of some digital creators, brands can conceive of enormous, bizarre, or enormously bizarre real-world campaigns, bring these campaigns to “life” with altered videos and photos, then post to social media to get lots of people talking, even though the campaigns never actually existed. 

One of our favorites is from Maybelline, which created ads for their mascara products by affixing giant eyelashes onto city buses and subway cars, which then sped past giant mascara wands, applying the mascara with a satisfying swipe. 

Other inventive FOOH campaigns include: 

• The Big Ben tower wearing a North Face jacket

• Jack Reacher ads on the Sydney Harbor bridge

• A giant bottle of Popeye’s Truff sauce on the back of a yacht

Super Bowl shenanigans

Super Bowl commercials cost a lot, which leads some brands to avoid the charade altogether and other brands to swing for the fences. For this year’s Super Bowl, Liquid Death chose to remain on the bench and did not pay for an ad. Instead, they used the event to incentivize others to advertise on cases of Liquid Death’s canned water. That’s right, anyone could claim an entire panel of ad space on a Liquid Death 12-pack by being the highest bidder on eBay. The winner got their ad on 50,000 cases of Liquid Death. 

Those who do advertise at the Super Bowl often spend tons of money on the spot creation in addition to the multimillion-dollar ad space. Except for Coinbase. When the crypto company advertised a few years back, they ran a 30-second commercial that featured a single QR code bouncing around the screen, like those old DVD screensavers (turned into a relatable meme on The Office). 

(Go figure, Coinbase was also the company that won the Liquid Death ad auction!)

Dropping PowerBars from an airplane (for real??)

Several years back, we interviewed a brand marketing candidate who gave us this case study example of his work: Apparently, during the Boston Marathon, his brand team at PowerBar rented a helicopter, flew to the marathon course, and proceeded to drop PowerBars onto race participants and race enthusiasts.

Did this actually happen? Highly unlikely! (Being the good journalists we are, we did some googling and found zero results.) But was this story in and of itself a type of brand marketing campaign for the candidate? We think so! What a story to tell when you’re applying for a job that requires great storytelling. Ever since, their Powerbar idea has remained one of the gold standards for us in terms of creativity, bravery, and, well, liability.

Also, the person did not get the job. But they did leave an impression!

Gentle Monster Concept Cafés & More

Taking “iykyk” to the next level, Gentle Monster, a too-cool glasses and sunglasses brand, opened concept cafes that have no relation to their actual products. In fact, you can’t even buy their products at these cafes. In fact in fact, the cafes don’t even bear the brand’s name. 

Whut. 

These cafés are super high-end aesthetic experiences in and of themselves, beautifully and quirkily designed, and clearly created to be imminently Instagrammable. (Teeny tiny croissants or effing giant croissants, anyone?) Do they actually make money? No, maybe not. But do they increase the brand's caché and intrigue and give the customers who know about them a strong sense of in-group superiority? Absolutely! 

And that’s the point. While we did rag a bit on the irrelevance of the Jake from State Farm activation, we'd argue that this isn’t the same. The exclusive, in-the-know experience of these cafés is exactly the experience that the brand wants to perpetuate for itself. It’s an extension of the feeling they want shopping for and wearing their glasses to be. 

They also have other really aesthetically amazing activations, collaborations, and pop-ups, which you can browse here! (We want the capybara with fabulous hair.)

Pinterest Manifestival

What if you could turn the experience of using your digital product into a literal, physical one? That’s what Pinterest did with their Manifestival last year, giving people a wide range of hands-on, participatory, creative opportunities for self-discovery and improvement all in one concentrated place. Just like scrolling through your Pinterest page. 

Sure, Pinterest could have hosted a conference with speakers and panels and breakout sessions, but instead, they took the time to think about why and how people use Pinterest: as an inspirational platform for creating their best lives. Whether people are looking for things related to health and beauty, interior design, tattoos, weddings, fashion, cooking—you name it!—the common thread is getting inspired to do something and exercising your tastes, preferences, and creativity. Pinterest gave people an IRL opportunity to do exactly that, with stations for making their own jewelry, getting tattoos and tooth gems (?!) on the spot, experimenting with hair and makeup, and more. 

Over to you

What are some of your favorite brand campaigns over the years?

We’d love to hear from you and add to our inspiration list!

For more…

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And let us know if you’d like to go deeper with us to talk about you and creativity. We do:

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Say hi anytime.

Kumbaya,Shannon & Kevan