Get Ready for Summer: 5 Great Summer Marketing Campaigns

Summertime is right around the corner which means warmer days, more activities, and lots of fun. As a brand, you can use the season to get involved with your audience, connect with them, and grow.

Not sure how to start? Here are five great examples of experiential and digital marketing campaigns that made the most out of summer.

Snapple’s Summer Play Lab - Experiential and Digital Marketing Campaign

In 2016, Snapple partnered with Spotify and Hakuhodo Singapore to come up with the “Summer Play Lab,” a summer campaign that targeted musically-inclined millennials. Users were given nine weeks to take part in a quiz where they identified the Snapple flavor that matches their personality and Spotify playlist.  

The campaign used experiential and digital marketing to reach out to music lovers, and aimed to prove that the Snapple brand can branch out from being a thirst-quencher to a trend-spotting beverage. The brand also wanted to showcase different cultures and use music as a way to celebrate diversity.

Pantone Café Pop-Up Store - Experiential Marketing Campaign

Pantone is a corporation and authority on color that provides color systems and leading tech for communicating color properly. To engage with people and transform their passion for color into an experience, they created a pop-up restaurant in September of 2015. It was called the Pantone Cafe and was on the shores of the French Riviera. The food items incorporated Pantone colors and were identified using on the serving containers.

The food was not the only thing that was colorful. The furniture, façade, and even the dishes used were all full of carefully selected colors, creating a vibrant vibe and a visually appealing feast for those who came to dine in. The place was truly an Instagrammer’s dream come true.  
  
By ordering a Pantone 18-1660 Tomato red mozza white sandwich while sipping on a Pantone 17-1227 latte, the customers could not only see a Pantone color, but get a taste of it. The Pantone café created an unforgettable, multi-sensory experience for its customers and helped to build brand awareness. It was such a success, they plan to open a permanent restaurant in the future.

Sprite’s Release your summer in 100 ways - Experiential and Digital Marketing Campaign

During the summer of 2015, Sprite partnered with the marketing agency Isobar for a summer-themed campaign that had the goal of getting China’s teenagers off their phones and outdoors. Their target audience were students who reportedly don’t get the most of their summer vacation because of the weather, a lack of money, or a too much homework.

Titled “Release your summer in 100 ways,” the campaign featured 100 different designs that were printed onto Sprite cans, all depicting different summer activities. The activities were grouped together into six categories: food and drink, fashion, travel, sports, party, and entertainment. 

Aside from the design, there was also a QR code on the cans that could be scanned by consumers. Upon scanning, they’d get a chance to play mobile games and receive coupons to outdoor summer activities. Coupons were also made available when the weather got over a certain temperature. Sprite successfully used the summer season to engage with their audience, associate their brand with positivity and fun, and sell more products.

Adidas Boost Your Summer - Experiential Marketing Campaign

Adidas came up with the “Boost Your Summer” campaign in order to launch a new line and create a great offline sporting experience for its Hong Kong fans. The campaign came up with various sporting activities from training workshops to actual competitions in 5 disciplines: basketball, football, running, training, and yoga. 

To increase audience participation and engagement, the sports brand had NBA superstar Jeremy Lin and Manchester United player Lee Sharpe make appearances. There was a pop-up store to integrate the brand into the activities, and an Instagram photo contest to encourage fans to upload pictures.

This worked well for the brand because it brought people together, created a buzz, incorporated influencers to expand their reach, and promoted their new product line.

Lipton Ice Tea’s 'Be a Daybreaker' - Experiential Marketing Campaign

Lipton came up with its “Be a Daybreaker’ campaign back in 2015, the highlight of which was a giant yellow 100-meter inflatable water slide. The aim of the campaign was to encourage busy 18 – 34 year-old Londoners to take a break from their normal routine indoors and to experience their city in a different way. 

Organizers encouraged people to bring their own swimwear and inflatables to have fun in the giant water slide, which was located right next to King’s Cross station. Aside from the slide, other activities in Lipton’s summer event included a luxury commute cruise along the river Thames, a morning film screening, and a DJ set.

By including a lot of experiential activities, the campaign successfully helped to target a younger audience and to reposition the Lipton brand as a beverage that can be consumed all throughout the year, regardless of what season it is.  

Conclusion 

Notice the similarity in all of the five campaigns? They were hugely successful because they were able to tap into their customers’ experience in order to spread their brands’ message.

Instead of solely focusing on themselves, they invested in creating a meaningful experience for their customers, which made their campaigns highly effective. Want to create a campaign for your brand this summer? Contact our team and we will help you plan and implement an effective strategy for your unique business.