Campaign readers are being invited to vote for the brand they believe has demonstrated the bravest approach to marketing over the past 12 months.
Brave Brand of the Year, awarded by The Marketing Society’ in association with Campaign and sponsored by IBM iX, celebrates companies that have taken risks in a challenging environment over the past year.
The Marketing Society has announced a shortlist of 20 brands and it is down to Campaign readers to whittle it down to five finalists. Those finalists will then be put to the live vote at The Marketing Society’s annual dinner on Wednesday 14 November.
Gemma Greaves, chief executive of The Marketing Society, said: “Our brave agenda and purpose to inspire bold leadership continues to drive everything we do at The Marketing Society.
“So, in the second year of our Brave Brand of the Year award, we continue to recognise the brands that took risks and stood out in a competitive environment.
“We have assembled an impressive shortlist, including those who responded to a considerable challenge, came up with a brilliant solution to a problem, excelled with their marketing creativity or simply pushed boundaries and tackled big taboos.
“Now I’m excited to discover who our members and readers of Campaign think deserve a place in our top five.”
Vote for your favourite brand here by 5pm on Friday 26 October or tweet using #brandoftheyear.
The British Army
If a brand as steeped in tradition as the Army is annoying the likes of the Daily Mail, then it’s clearly doing something mould-breaking. Asking questions such as “Can I be gay?” and “What if I get emotional?” and featuring a praying Muslim recruit, “This is belonging” is an empowering, inclusive campaign that embraces diversity. For an institution historically associated with machismo, that’s a brave move.
Beano
When an established publisher is seeing print sales haemorrhage, it’s a bold move to eschew an 80-year heritage and overturn its business model. Apparently taking inspiration from its own Dennis the Menace character, Beano disrupted its own marketplace, creating a campaign that got into the heads of kids, boosted online penetration by 1500% and won the Brand Revitalisation category at The Marketing Society Excellence Awards 2018.
Bodyform
It takes an unusually brave brand to deliberately provoke internet trolls. But that’s just what Bodyform did with its global #Bloodnormal campaign. Smashing the convention of using blue liquid in ads to represent menstrual blood and replacing it with red, Bodyform inspired many and achieved its biggest cut-through ever. It also won a trio of awards at The Marketing Society Excellence Awards 2018, including the Grand Prix.
BrewDog
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – or so the saying goes. So it’s incredibly brave for a brand as commercially successful as BrewDog to ditch its “shock tactics” approach to marketing, embodied in stunts such as a parody porn site and a satirical swipe at gender-stereotyping with its Pink IPA. Instead, the brewer will pursue a more community-focused, responsible marketing strategy from now on, with irreverence directed at its beer rather than at social issues.
Channel 4
Channel 4 exposed some of the hateful attitudes on social media with a campaign that overlaid an entire ad break with the abusive comments that each ad had attracted. Partnering brands including McCain, Mars and Nationwide, Channel 4 confronted the abusers head-on, exposing the nastiness of online hate.
The Football Association
If footballing success was based on winning hearts and minds as opposed to goals, England would have triumphed at 2018’s Fifa World Cup – and topping the team’s performance was Gareth Southgate. The FA’s decision to appoint an unproven manager whose career was largely defined by a failed penalty in Euro ’96 was nothing short of audacious. And it paid off.
Harvey Nichols
What’s in a name? For a retail brand, the moniker emblazoned across its storefront is synonymous with all it stands for. So when Harvey Nichols changed its name to Holly Nichols for the whole of September to celebrate women, and invited suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst’s granddaughter to smash its store windows, it was undeniably a brave move.
KFC
When a fast-food brand runs out of its key ingredient, it could have spelt disaster, but KFC used transparency, humour and a near-profane “FCK” apology to deal with its chicken shortfall. The campaign has gained industry-wide recognition, scooping numerous awards for its exemplary approach to crisis marketing.
LADbible
LADbible’s “U OK M8?” is not just a brave campaign in and of itself, but it’s a bold move by the publisher to inspire bravery in its young, male audience, getting them to open up about the taboo of mental health. Using content including video and tapping into its own vast community, the campaign has reached 26 million people and sparked 823,000 engagements across social media.
Lego
Utter the word “Lego” and the mind typically conjures up images of plastic bricks. So when the Danish toymaker announced plans to reformulate the literal essence of its product, replacing its traditional plastic with sugarcane plastic, it was a risky move. Its bid to roll out the bricks across most products by 2030 demonstrates a commitment to sustainability that transcends marketing and alters the whole business.
Lloyds
While Britain’s banks are steeped in notions of tradition, they are increasingly using marketing to reject outmoded ideas. None more so than Lloyds, which won Channel 4’s Diversity in Advertising Award last year, earning £1m in airtime. Its use of celebrities such as Jeremy Paxman, Professor Green and Rachel Riley, along with members of the public and staff, to pose the question “Who am I?” tackled misconceptions around non-visible disability.
Maltesers
Maltesers continues to lead the vanguard in being unafraid to attract both praise and opprobrium. Following its “Look on the light side” campaign, 2018’s activity is “celebrating similarities”. Ads have included “Powerpoint”, about women going through menopause, and “Accountant”, about a lesbian bemoaning the challenges of dating. Maltesers does it with a lightness of touch that belies the weightiness of the issues it tackles. It also won a trio of awards at The Marketing Society Excellence Awards 2017.
McCain
Advertising so often paints an idealised picture of life. So it’s both refreshing and brave when a brand chooses to celebrate the normal. McCain’s “We are family” campaign kicked off in 2017 and sought to bridge the gulf between families as depicted in culture and those based on reality. Featuring real-life single mums and two-dad families, McCain has this year continued the theme, showing how love transcends race, disability and gender.
Monzo
Banks tend to differentiate themselves using marketing rather than product. But mobile-only bank Monzo took the bold step of disrupting the market itself. As well as simplifying typically abstruse products and ditching the plastic debit card for the smartphone, Monzo is also a force for good – something that was demonstrated when its own fraud analysts spotted and publicly announced a Ticketmaster data breach.
Nike
Nike is no stranger to controversy, so it’s not surprising that 2018 has seen the brand attract its share of positive and negative publicity. It was forced into removing its “Nothing beats a Londoner” ad from YouTube, while, across the Atlantic the brand defied Donald Trump’s claim that it would get “killed” for using NFL player Colin Kaepernick, boosting its market value by nearly $6bn.
Paddy Power
Described by Campaign as the “scallywags of the betting world”, Paddy Power is a brand that is nothing if not brave. And 2018 has been no different to other years in its history. For the Fifa World Cup, it published a video of a polar bear spray-painted with a St George’s cross, while it pledged to donate £10,000 to LGBT+ charities every time Russia scored. Paddy Power’s ethos remains one of mischief.
Tesco
Tesco has transformed itself under the watch of chief executive Dave Lewis from a brand beset by controversies to one increasingly defined by transparency and honesty. It’s an approach embodied by last year’s campaign to cut the price of women’s sanitary products by 5% following the government’s decision to apply a “tampon tax”, as well as the launch of Jack’s, a discount chain going up against Aldi and Lidl.
Skittles
The Skittles brand and product is defined by bright colours, so removing its rainbow visual identity was an undeniably brave move. But it was also one that took a marketing idea and literally lent it to a worthy cause. With a modest spend, the brand “gave” its rainbow to LGBT+ festival organisers Pride, with PR, social, a video and rainbowless packets of Skittles sold in Tesco. The campaign won the Bravest Brand category at The Marketing Society Excellence Awards 2018.
Sky
Plastic bottles are the world’s third most common polluter after cigarettes and food packaging. So Sky’s £25m commitment to remove all single-use plastics from its operations, products and supply chain by 2020 is laudable. It even turned the heart of the idea into a piece of marketing, allowing sports fans to redeem codes from the 5,000 bottles Team Sky throws to the side of the road at the Tour de France.
Ugly
In just two years since launch in 2017, London start-up Ugly has carved a niche into the UK’s sugar-rich drinks market, disrupting with a brand committed to healthy, 100% natural, fruit-infused sparkling waters. Tapping into the consumer shift away from calories and sweeteners, Ugly has secured retail deals in 3,500 stores and is taking the brand to the US.
