Digital marketing industry case study library

Any agency or media owner can submit case studies to our team and these 23 are the strongest we have received, with the most recent case studies at the top of this page. If you're interested in more digital marketing case studies then review our complete case study library. If you're interested in submitting case studies then email our case studies manager to find out more CaseStudies@DigitalTrainingAcademy.com.

To celebrate All Hallows’ Eve, Adobe hosted a little murder mystery challenge for Photoshop users on its Photoshop Facebook page. This case study looks at how the campaign resulted in over 4.8 million impressions and 22k Photoshop downloads of the game.

Adobe Photoshop: Murder Mystery Case Study (full edit) from Edelman West on Vimeo.

03/10/2017  |  Full story...

YSL chose PageSkin Plus, with animated sidebars and the campaign video integrated into the large creative header, to promote the launch of their new Gloss Volupté lip gloss. This case study looks at how the luxury beauty brand achieved huge ad recall and brand uplift far above industry benchmarks.

22/10/2014  |  Full story...

How do you measure success in a digital campaign? Getting more YouTube fans, Facebook likes or newsletter sign ups is all well and good, but do these actually translate to more sales and justify the initial spend? We look back at some of the best food campaigns of the past year that show how digital success translates into real world cash.

30/09/2014  |  Full story...

To reinforce its World Cup sponsorship, Adidas worked with InSkin Media to run this World Cup display campaign optimised to get the most from desktop and tablet publishing sites.

adidas wmv from Danny Meadows-Klue on Vimeo.

05/08/2014  |  Full story...

Kraft Foods worked communications partner GeiserMaclang to create a ‘national thank you day’ in the Philippines to promote its Tobelerone confectionery brand. The campaign was a huge success which can be proved from the fact that official website generated nearly 500,000 hits and the Toblerone sales escalated 132%.

Brand: Toblerone | Sector: Food | Country: Philippines | Objective: brand awareness, consideration and purchase | Format: Video, YouTube, Viral

20/02/2014  |  Full story...

How do you go about promoting a horror movie about a devil child? There are all the usual routes--TV ads, billboards, websites, trailers--but perhaps the best way to convey the spirit of the film is to actually scare the living hell out of people with an actual devil baby. Following on from the success of Carrie’s YouTube prank last year, the makers of 20th Century Fox’s latest horror movie ‘Devil’s Due’ have used a similar tactic to great effect- getting over 36m views in the process.

Brand: 20th Century Fox| Sector: Film | Country: US | Objective: brand awareness, consideration and purchase | Format: Video, Viral, Social

11/02/2014  |  Full story...

It’s true that a life without mistakes is a life not truly lived- but we can be sure the Kellogg’s marketing department could have lived without promising to feed hungry children in exchange for retweets. As 2013 draws to a close, we look as some of the biggest digital marketing fails of the year, from the horsemeat scandal and HMV’s live-blogged mass sackings to Facebook’s ‘Home’ flop and the Xbox ‘deal with it’ Twitter outburst. Read on, learn from the mistakes and hope your team doesn’t make the list in 2014….

Country: Global | Objective: brand awareness, consideration and purchase | Format: Video, YouTube, Viral, social, Mobile, search

22/01/2014  |  Full story...

P&G worked with eye-tracking technology firm Sticky to optimise its digital branding campaigns. This case study looks at how the consumer packaged goods giant saved up to 25% on some of its campaigns by ensuring the ads it paid for were seen by consumer online.

More on this case study…
Brand: P&G | Sector: FMCG, Food and Beverage | Country: UK | Agency/partner; Sticky, Eyetrackshop | Objective: brand awareness and favourability | Format: Media buying, Eye tracking, analytics|

06/06/2013  |  Full story...

Airbus used BBC campaign to create awareness of the Airbus A380. The campaign had a one-day global takeover of key sections on bbc.com was to maximise the impact of Airbus’ advertising budget and maximising the opportunity represented by the Dubai Airshow. The online advertising campaign on bbc.com delivered 25 million page impressions in just 24 hour, helping to create brand awareness and favourability.

Digital marketing case study (PDF)

More on this case study…
Brand: Airbus| Sector: Travel & Tourism | Objective: brand awareness and favourability | Format: BBC Banner ads |

24/05/2013

Online advertising is soaring worldwide, but some formats work better than others to get the message across to consumers. This US-based infographic from InsightsOne looks at those ads that cause the most irritation- and the negative impact on the brands behind them.

More on this case study…
Brand: Insights One | Objective: Build brand engagment, drive sales | Format: Email, Social Media, Display Advertising

03/05/2013  |  Full story...

Salvatore Ferragamo used BBC online advertising to attract and engage at the launch of the new shoes range. The luxury brand for men reached out to its consumer with banner ads on BBC.com, at the weather and travel sections. They also used behavioural targeting aimed at socially-conscious audience interested in Science, Environment & Energy and Fashion & Luxury. The campaign resulted in 103% uplift in brand favourability from those who saw the ads on bbc.com compared with those who hadn’t seen any advertising. 86% of respondents who had seen the ads on bbc.com were familiar with the Ferragamo brand, an uplift of 62% from those who had not seen any advertising.

Digital marketing case study (PDF)

More on this case study…
Brand: Salvatore Ferragamo | Sector: Consumer Goods | Objective: brand awareness and favourability | Format: BBC Banner ads |

04/04/2013  |  Full story...

Adidas ran this mobile campaign to promote its latest football boots. Mullen’s mediahub worked with Millennial Media to target users across multiple mobile platforms, inviting them to the Adidas’ “Light You Up” promotional light show. To cap off the event, footballer Lionel Messi joined everyone at New York City’s Penn Station. This is a great example of how location based targeting can be used with mobile video to reach local users with relative and time sensitive messages in order to drive foot traffic to an event. Banner ads engaged nearby users to click through to the landing page to see event information.

More on this case study…
Brand: Adidas | Sector: Sport, Clothing | Country: US | Objective: Build brand enagagement, drive sales | Agency/ Partner: Millenial Media | Format: Video, Live Event, Display Advertising, Outdoor

26/03/2013  |  Full story...

As social media and blogging sites pull readers away from traditional newspapers and their websites, one publisher decided to fight back with this clever banner campaign that highlights how opinions shared on social media aren't always reliable. The banner with an opinion on everything made one message clear: an educated opinion is based on fact. The banner had a 33% engagement rate and the newspaper increased its subscriptions by 1.6% as a result.

More on this case study…
Brand: Khaleej Times | Sector: Newspaper | Country: UAE | Objective: Build brand engagement, drive subscriptions | Format: Display advertising | Agency/ Partner: TBWA/RAAD Dubai

07/03/2013  |  Full story...

To promote its latest console game, Steel Battalion, Capcom used an expandable banner campaign that gave gamer a sneak peek of the game. Using the Say Media AdFrames format, the campaign exceeded engagement benchmarks by providing an immersive experience that emulated the game’s high quality graphics.

Link to creative

More on this case study…
Brand: Capcom | Sector: Gaming | Country: UK | Objective: Build brand engagement, drive sales | Format: Display advertising | Agency/ Partner: Mindshare/ Say Media

01/03/2013  |  Full story...

Alfa Romeo used Skype to promote its new ‘Supermini’ car, using targeted ads when users were consulting trusted friends and family. This case study looks at how the car maker used a combination of homepage takeovers and ‘conversation’ ads to increase brand awareness over 20% and generate clicks of over 50%.

Digital marketing case study

More on this case study…
Brand: Alfa Romeo | Sector: Automotive | Country: US | Objective: Build brand engagement | Format: Skype, Display ads |

25/02/2013  |  Full story...

This summer saw Channel 4 run its ‘Superhuman’ campaign to promote the London Paralympic games. Working with Mediasyndicator, the online element of the promotion attracted more than 150,000 interactions. As part of Channel 4’s ‘Meet the Superhumans’ online Paralympics advertising campaign, deployed in partnership with digital advertising specialists, Mediasyndicator, also captured the attention of online audiences – with results revealing the campaign achieved over 150,000 interactions.

More on this case study…
Brand: Channel 4 | Country: UK Sector: Broadcast | Objective: build brand engagement | Agency: Mediasyndicator, | Format: Video, display

11/10/2012  |  Full story...

Ahead of an annual Beauty Queen pageant held on International Women's Day, Dove created a social media campaign entitled "Beauty Does Not Have Just One Queen." This case study looks at how, with one outdoor billboard and a highly targeted Facebook app, the brand created a huge amount of online engagement and 23,000 new Facebook fans.

The campaign, for the Unilever-owned cosmetic and toiletry brand, used a Facebook application that was connected to a digital billboard in the heart of Tel Aviv. Women uploaded a picture of themselves using the app, and their portrait was then screened on the billboard with the caption "Beauty Does Not Have Just One Queen".

More on this Case study …
Brand: Dove |Media: OOH, Facebook videos | Country: Israel |Sector: FMCG | Agency: McCann Erickson | Format: Facebook App, TV spot

14/05/2012  |  Full story...

Cable channel Reelz used a technique called ‘Smart Versioning’ to continually adjust text, video and URLs in ads based on response, in order to boost ROI. As a result, the campaign achieved a 200% higher dwell rate than average.

The purpose of the campaign was to get audience attention and increase the website traffic.
Smart Versioning enabled for ongoing changes, text, video, and URL feeds. And all updates that would otherwise take hours with smart version can be done in only a few minutes. The regular ongoing updates resulted in high dwell rate.

The campaign resulted in dwell rate of 10.35%, 200% more than the entertainment vertical.

More on this Case study …
Brand: Reelz| Sector: Entertainment| Agency: Haworth, Reelz Channel, MediaMind | Format: Smart Versioning

Read the case study here

05/01/2012  |  Full story...

These kids became iconic through television and online advertising. They’re instantly recognisable and their leaping eyebrows swept through the web as fast as people could forward to their friends. It’s a good example of integration between media channels because the images and music were identical across both. The images are high impact on screen and they work well on the web because of the lack of clutter within the advertising space. It becomes one of the dominant elements on the page and because of this achieves both impact, brand recognition and message association. For fast moving consumer packaged goods brands like Cadbury’s, they’re not trying to sell off the page, their goal is to build brand image, discussion and front of mind awareness. That’s exactly what this creative achieves so brilliantly – even without a click-through to their website.

View campaign creative

09/07/2009

The goals for Pepsi were to bring awareness to their updated brand and logo, re-establish Pepsi’s position as a youthful challenger brand and tap into the iconic “change” social/political movement of the Obama election. They also wanted to foster brand community through 2-way communication with customers and chose the web and a social marketing model as the way to achieve this. Their ‘Refresh Everything’ message was a natural fit with Obama’s drive for change in politics and social values, and the campaign harnessed video content, social media and digital marketing in innovative ways to reach the millennial generation. The model centered around an open letter to Barack Obama and saw consumers recording their webcam messages directly from a video banner. This got them not only interacting with the banner, but actually creating content and pushing it back to the brand.

Download the case study: Pepsi Dear Mr President | View campaign creative

09/07/2009

Food manufacturing giant Nestle has come up with an innovative use for Twitter that combines together a mix of digital channels. Their latest advertising campaign for JuicyJuice includes a Twitter feed within the advertising creative. This social media campaign lets people post their own tweets within the advertising that appears online. At the time of writing, the brand is testing it on US sites CafeMom and BabyCenter. Here’s how it works: there are questions inside the advertising space that relate to parenting (How do you stimulate your child's mind? How important are vitamin-enhanced foods to you?). People can write their message or tweet inside the advertising.

15/06/2009  |  Full story...

A mint, a fizzy drink and a schoolboy prank taken to extremes. We must have watched this 50 times and still it gets a smile. These videos with quality production values and good direction tell a story that’s right in tone, length and format for the web today. Thanks to YouTube they’ll be around 10 years from now and still reinforcing the brand. But as a creative concept this wasn’t created by the brands; it grew from the street and wasn’t easy for the brands to accommodate at first. What many marketers forget is that for every firm there are brand adorers and brand vandals and there needs to be a strategy for dealing with both. Over the next 10 years the centre of gravity of the web will shift to social media and firms need to have these strategies in place before their brands and content start being used. Marketing in social media demands creating material people want to share. The principles of getting this right grew from the early days of viral marketing in the mid 90s and are closely related to PR. ‘Enjoy the film.

11/03/2009  |  Full story...

This television style commercial uses the classic tease and reveal model. It builds a story which is entertaining and engaging. By releasing it on line the web Coke build discussion among key target audiences. The fact the origins of the idea are in an online game gives a synergy with the target audience and the viewing environment. The creative is really a classic television commercial that simply takes an icon of the digital gaming world – Grand Theft Auto – and builds a story around it. The way it was deployed then created a greater effect...

• Harnessing social media content by developing a viral effect for transmitting the message through YouTube and email
• Using online gaming characters and visualisations to build brand equity and message association between Coke, the brand and the coolness of the game
• The brand exploits an icon of digital entertainment in a way that is synergistic with the expectations of the target consumer
• The brand succeeds in creating content that successfully parodies one of the world’s leading games

15/05/2008  |  Full story...