The Drum Marketing Awards Brand of the Year finalists revealed: Apple, Domino's, Heineken, Innocent Smoothies & British Airways

Here are the top five brands you thought were worthy of going forward to be named as Brand of the Year at the awards, which take place in London next week, on 8 May.

The Drum’s Marketing Awards nominees: British Airways

From innovative interactive billboards and screens to a beacon technology funding campaign, British Airways has flown sky high its marketing efforts in order to do new things over the past year.In November 2013 the airline claimed an “advertising first” when it created two digital billboards that interacted with aircraft in the sky for #lookup. Using surveillance technology, the boards were able to track aircraft then interrupt the digital display as it passed over the site, revealing the image of a child pointing at the plane overhead accompanied by its flight number and the destination it arrived from.It was also accompanied by a relevant message to the flight, such as ‘Fly the new A380 to Los Angeles. ba.com/lookup’, or details such as the lowest fare available or the temperature at the destination.Also in the vein of interactivity, British Airways teamed up with CBS Outdoor to let shoppers at Westfield London use interactive LCD screens to create their own dream holidays. They were able to build their perfect holiday depending on their interests and requirements, creating a visual mood board, which BA then used to suggest suitable destinations that could be shared on social media.Most recently the airline begana small campaign to raise funds to build a prototype of its Beacon in a Backpack, which was created in an effort to connect developing countries online.The backpack, which would contain a tablet, a Raspberry Pi, a solar cell for power and a beacon which could send out a wireless internet signal for half a mile would allow travellers to set up an internet connection in remote parts of the world.

The Drum’s Marketing Awards nominees: Innocent Smoothies

Innocent / Chain of Good 60" from 101 London on Vimeo.

It may have started from humble beginnings, but Innocent has quickly made a name for itself when it comes to smart campaigns and savvy marketing strategies. Known for its engaging dialogue with consumers over social media, Innocent recently overhauled its marketing strategy to focus on emotional messaging and charity work –a lynchpin the for the company – rather than its individual product. In October last year the drinks company celebrated the 10th anniversary of its Big Knit campaign, in aid of charity Age UK, with a dedicated website using interactive, multimedia storytelling to recount the history and success of the scheme, which enabled people to get involved. The Big Knit was devised to encourage customers to knit a tiny hat that will fit on top of a bottle of Innocent, with the smoothie brand estimating sales of around 4m hatted bottles since its launch.In January of this year Innocent unveiled a new multi-million pound campaign called Chain of Good to highlight its brand purpose with a new strapline 'Innocent. Tastes good, does good.' A new website was created to showcase the journey of an Innocent smoothie from consumption to charity donations, followed by a #chainofgood Compliment Generator which has since been adapted for events such as Valentine’s Day and Mothering Sunday.

The Drum’s Marketing Awards nominees: Dominos

Offer the past few years Domino’s has experienced phenomenal growth, thanks to a restructure of its IT systems that allowed the pizza brand to develop new platforms and develop successful ways to use its digital channels. It’s through these digital channels that Domino’s pushes a large amount of marketing initiatives and over recent months it has seen online and mobile sales soar courtesy of an active and engaging presence on social media platforms.The #DominosMeltdown competition, which saw fans offered a year’s supply of free pizza if their tweet turned up the heat on a sunlamp enough to ‘melt’ the arms of an ice statue in the form of a delivery man,trended for almost a day on Twitter in the UK. Another example of Domino’s using social in a fun and engaging way saw the brand take to mobile dating service Tinder, promoting ‘cheesy’ one-liners and ‘saucy’ chats.The pizza brand also added a bit of lighthearted humour to its campaign strategy last year when it created its own version of British Airways' #Lookup campaign, inviting consumers to #Lookdown at a pizza delivery man in an outdoor campaign late last year.The campaign also used real-time bespoke messaging and depicted a boy pointing at a pizza delivery driver, with accompanying straplines such as ‘Look, it’s a Pepperoni Passion for Simon in Acton’.In August Domino’s was the headline sponsor of The X Factor's new app for the 2013 series, which saw the brand run across the digital property, as well as within bespoke second screen ad formats and new interactive features. Domino’s used ITV’s dual-screen format to run a number of interactive campaigns.

The Drum’s Marketing Awards nominees: Heineken

Adventurous marketing stunts, a tongue-in-cheek TV ad and a mission to become the UK’s best marketing department – Heineken has been busy over the past few months. During summer 2013 the global beer brand launched a pretty bold marketing campaign at JFK airport in New York when it asked travellers to drop everything and take a trip into the unknown through its ‘Departure Roulette’ activity, where it dared people departing to gamble and go to another random destination instead.The travel experiment formed part of the company’s broader marketing campaign ‘The Voyage’ that put the spotlight on travel and adventure and followed on from an online series entitled ‘Dropped’ where Heineken sent four men to remote destinations around the world to film their experiences and the challenges they faced.The brand has begun to steer its marketing strategy down a more modern road, displayed when it created an online buzz around its global ad campaign, ‘The Odyssey’ – which faced criticism over its authenticity. It released a film to address scepticism by a commentator on YouTube that the men who featured in the original TV ad weren’t actually ‘real life legends’, and featured a click through to an interactive version of the ad to see additional content.In another live action stunt in the US, Heineken invited a group of people to participate in an evening of "Carol Karaoke" in a small studio last Christmas. What the guests didn’t know was that behind the curtain was a TV studio linked by Heineken to broadcast the performances live in Times Square in New York, on taxi screens around the city and on the Jumbotron at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C.

The Drum’s Marketing Awards nominees: Apple

Effortlessly, at times, it seems, Apple often dominates the media when it comes to its product launches but what about its marketing techniques? Apple has tended to put its products front and centre of its ad campaigns, often letting them speak for themselves. Yet a slight change in tack over the past year or so has seen the technology company focus on the way its products “enhance” users’ lives. Last summer it launched a new style of advertising when it released a series of ads, including 'Photos Every Day' and 'Music Every Day' using the tagline "Designed by Apple in California". The ads aimed to make an emotional connection with consumers and showed how users of Apple products employ in everyday life. For launch of the iPhone 5c Apple quietly took to Tumblr to for its 'Every color has a story' campaign, creating a webpage called 'ISee5c'. Each of the ads on the site demonstrated a different phone colour and ended with a statement to reflect the music and colour shown in the video.And in a rare taunt, a tongue-in-cheek press ad appeared in UK national newspapers last week carrying the strapline “there are some ideas we want every company to copy” – a playful reference to the ongoing high-profile patent infringement court case between Apple and Samsung. The campaign pushes Apple’s environmentally friendly credentials and features a voiceover from CEO Tim Cook, who describes how the technology company is aiming to be “better” by being even more environmentally friendly. The campaign is supported by a dedicated 'Environment' section on the Apple.com site.