When it comes to online marketing, creativity is a must. You need to ensure you stand out against the rest to generate those click-throughs on your adverts, whether that’s PPC, Facebook Ads or even organic social ads.
It can be challenging to get creative, especially when you’re only limited to text ads, however, it’s still possible.
Here are some fantastic creative PPC campaigns that have done exceptionally well due to the creativeness.
#1 Alec Brownstein – Job Application
Freelance copywriter and marketer, Alec Brownstein had dreamt of working alongside New York’s top creative directors. Rather than letting his dream drift off, he bought Google Adwords spots next to the names of the six directors he wanted to work with.
The results?
It was a success.
Alec managed to get 4 interviews and 2 job offers.
#2 Ann Summers – Inuendoes
Imagine typing Election 2020 into the search bar and getting sex shop adverts? Ann Summers’ pay per click agency are pretty smart and know what they are doing. They implemented a strategy and bidding on the keywords around the 2010 Election.
Whilst it might not have generated sales from their target audience – it sure was a successful publicity stunt. They received over 1.5 million impressions and received plenty of media coverage in publications such as The Guardian and The Independent, all for less than £5,000!
This isn’t the first time either, their agency also did something alike for the British Airways Christmas strike in 2009.
#3 Snickers – Misspellings
Bad at spelling? Eat some chocolate!
Snickers ingenious paid-search campaign served misspelt ads to people who had made spelling mistakes in their searches. The campaign reached 500,000 people within 3 days of launching.
Misspelt words generally don’t have much competition which would have meant a relatively low CPC. Original, entertaining, and cost-effective.
#4 Kleenex – Flu Outbreak
This particular campaign was that successful, it even won the award for the “Best Use of Digital Media in 2013”. The paid-search team at Mindshare used live search trends to inform their bidding and ad copy choices. Search traffic on the topic of Flu was monitored for 18 months and linked to bid-adjustment scripts which upped the ante in areas that showed a high search density for flu-related search terms.
The campaign was hugely successful, with Kleenex selling 432,499 boxes over the first two months of the campaign.
#5 Sky News – Headline Bidding
Sky News was in for a challenge to target users who searched for specific news stories, and therefore, they opted in to paid search to get ahead of their competition. This still seemed to be a challenge, so they collaborated with Unique Digital, who then took their RSS feed and ran it through Darwin Optimiser technology. This created various keyword terms that were relevant to the particular news stories.
Sky News had a PPC budget in place and began to work their magic with paid ads, which resulted in over 100,000 clicks with the CPCs less than 25p each.
#6 Converse – Life Events
Converse, the global footwear brand partnered with marketing agency, Anomoly took the extra step and find an innovate fun way to connect with their teenage audience online. They successfully achieved this by using Google Adwords, tapping into search terms that their prospective customers might be searching for. They decided to bid on the following search terms, but instead of an ad, they started a dialogue through ad copy.
- [First day of summer]
- [Spelling bee]
- [How to talk to girls]
- [How to kiss]
#7 Matt Stimson – Facebook Dates
Dating’s a numbers game. Matt tilted the odds in his favour with his Facebook lonely-hearts ad, which only targeted people with desirable interests and demographic qualities. For $19.39 Matt managed to get 5 dates.
I hope this little list of creative and original PPC campaigns has inspired you! The PPC pioneers from this article have demonstrated the versatility of the Google Ads and Facebook platforms, but I’m sure there are still many utilisations that haven’t been thought off, yet.
With rapidly improving targeting and analytical tools, many more opportunities are opening to make waves in the digital
marketing world. Who knows, one day you may end up on a list with your own groundbreaking campaign.
