Did you miss our most-read brand stories of 2023?

Away from social, 2023 has seen the rapid growth of emerging categories like low or no alcohol, gut health and newly legal intoxicants. And the demise of retail stalwarts like Wilko and Bed and Beyond.

Marketers have had to deal with extreme budget pressures in 2023, which has meant more brand collaboration deals as well as big changes in influencer marketing strategies.

As The Drum gears up for what 2024 will bring to brand marketing, we reflect on the most-read stories of 2023.

Calling ‘bullshit’ on ageism in advertising: lessons from JD Williams & Trinny London

A CreativeX study assessed over 126,000 ads from around the world and found that just 4% of the people cast in them were over the age of 60 despite that demographic controlling 25% of consumer spending. Clothing retailer JD Williams and beauty brand Trinny London were two brands praised by anti-agism campaign groups for their age-representative advertising.

House 337’s executive creative director, Zara Ineson, worked with JD Williams to transform its creative direction. “The brand already knew who it wanted to speak to, and the agency kind of called bullshit on how it wasn’t speaking to them, then together we got the stories straight,” she said.

How Zara could have avoided controversial campaign claimed to resemble Gaza

Fashion retailer Zara pulled a social and in-store campaign and posted a statement after social media users claimed the ads resembled scenes in war-torn Gaza. Marks and Spencer faced similar backlash to its Christmas campaign a month before. The cases have become a warning for brands that don’t properly prepare for a backlash like this.

Tamara Littleton, the co-founder of PR crisis company Polpeo, said even if a brand doesn’t intend to cause harm, being able to switch direction quickly is part of the job remit now. “You have to be ready to apologize,” she says.

Inside the viral Heinz x Absolut collab that sent pasta sauce sales soaring

At the start of 2023, Heinz launched its first range of pasta sauces. To build awareness of the new products, Heinz and Wunderman Thompson used social listening to uncover viral pasta trends. The team landed on the Gigi Hadid-hyped penne alla vodka and partnered with Absolut vodka, a real partnership almost lost in the annual deceit of April Fools.

The vodka sauce campaign was a viral success, earning 500m impressions on social media and selling out within days, even seeing jars ending up on eBay asking for 10 times the RRP. In the two months after launch, the pasta sauce range sales increased 52%, and retail distribution grew, now holding a 24% share in Waitrose.

What Adidas’ Yeezy profit plunge means for the future of celebrity partnerships

Kanye West’s Yeezy line used to bring Adidas an eye-watering $2bn a year in profit and account for 8% of its total revenue. The six-year partnership was once a shining example of celebrity deals done right. In September, the German sports retailer was at the center of a scandal over its inability to act when its biggest celebrity collaborator, Kanye West, made a series of anti-Semitic remarks.

Celebrity endorsements as we know them may become a thing of the past. The future is celebrity-owned or part-owned brands. There’s nothing like having skin in the game to go the extra mile; that mutual interest and benefit keep everyone in line.

The beer brand calling BrewDog ‘LooDog’ opens up on stunt

Peachy lager company Jubel gave BrewDog a taste of its own medicine in retaliation for disrupting one of its campaigns by encouraging rugby fans to chuck cans of BrewDog in a toilet. The stunt was remarkably reminiscent of the early days of BrewDog marketing.

Jubel co-founder Jesse Wilson said: “BrewDog marketing has historically been purely for PR reasons, but our marketing is always product-based and trying to find ways to actually get people drinking Jubel,” he says.

Ogilvy’s behavioral scientist defends Mayor of London ‘Maaate’ campaign

In July, an anti-sexism campaign from The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, polarized the public and the ad industry. Much of the debate was over the semantics of ‘mate,’ the decision to place responsibility on the friend, not the perpetrator, and whether the campaign trivializes the issue.

The Drum secured an exclusive interview with David Fanner, the consultant at Ogilvy’s Behavioral Science Practice division, who led the research underpinning the work. Fanner addressed the criticism and shared the insights that informed the creative execution. “This is not when someone is being violent, this is low-level misogyny among friends, and this is when men can be the most helpful.”

‘The brand became pointless’: why marketing failures lie at the heart of Wilko’s downfall

British high street stalwart Wilko fell into administration after a rescue deal failed to materialize. While the industry and the public expressed genuine sadness over the fallen retailer when The Drum spoke to industry experts, there was a feeling that people would quickly forget and move on, signaling that Wilko ultimately failed to land its place in culture.

Rob Sellers, a retail consultant formerly of VCCP, found a lesson to brands in this story: “The number one mistake modern retailers make is to act like ‘traders,’ not brands.”

WPP Open X opens up on Coca-Cola partnership, which is fizzing away nicely after two years

After a massive agency review that kicked off in December 2020, The Coca-Cola Company named WPP its global network partner in November 2021, creating the bespoke team Open X to run and manage the account. The Open X leadership team sat down with The Drum two years in to find out how it built the team infrastructure and what early benefits the two businesses had already reaped.