2023's standout ad campaigns, according to marketers

Marketers had some high highs and some low lows in 2023. The NFL won big when Taylor Swift’s budding romance with Travis Kelce drew millions of Swiftie eyeballs to Kansas City Chiefs games. Others had tougher years (and we can’t help but wonder if X CEO Linda Yaccarino misses her old job at NBCU).

Marketing Brew talked to several marketers for their takes on some of the campaigns that stood out in the past 12 months, and which ones didn’t quite stick the landing.

Responses have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Big hits

Jason Cieslak, president, Pacific Rim at Siegel+Gale: Barbie took over the world this year. I don’t think it was so much the advertising; I think it was all of the places that Barbie wound up as a broader campaign that influenced the social zeitgeist. I think it did so in a way that only a really beloved, iconic brand and product could. I look at that, and I think it really took a lot of oxygen from brand and marketing and advertising out of the room, because it just consumed so much. It appealed to me as a 50-something man. It appealed to my wife, a 40-something millennial. Then I have a 9-year-old daughter that was just consumed by it, and even my 11-year-old son was, too.

Jeff Benjamin, CCO at Tombras: It felt like [Sphere] just dropped down out of outer space. [You] thought you understood out-of-home, and then they make this thing. At first, you almost thought it was a joke, but it was real. Everyone was talking about it. Everyone was connecting about it. It was inspiring new ways of thinking about your brand. When you think about all the brands that have done interesting things on that space, who wouldn’t want to try and advertise there?

Gordy Sang, co-founder, co-CCO at Quality Meats: The Tubi campaign for Mischief…I really liked the headlines and the out-of-home stuff; I almost thought those were stronger than the actual film executions…The campaign that they launched after that is pretty great. It seems like they’ve put a flag in the ground for all of these freebie channels.

Brian Siedband, co-founder, co-CCO at Quality Meats: [Tubi] won the Super Bowl with both the stunt and the rabbit hole [commercial].

Big questions

Benjamin: For years, I’ve been trying to get in touch with Liquid Death. They do this album where they take the negative tweets about Liquid Death and they turn it into music…They go onto Twitter, and they find all the negative comments about Liquid Death, and they take those comments and they turn them into song lyrics, and they make an album out of it, which is incredible…I have an idea for them. I think they should pay the people who wrote the tweets royalties for the music.

Cieslak: I do love the Progressive stuff. Dr. Rick…I don’t know if it’s because it’s really on the nose for me and where I am in my life, but I do know that it has a bit of social currency tied to it, which is a little bit different than the other work that Arnold does for Progressive. They also do Flo. I see the Flo work and I totally disconnect. I don’t think it’s interesting; I think it’s tired. I feel like the Dr. Rick stuff has somehow found a way to stay relevant, and relevant to a lot of different segments of people that I intersect with.

Big miss

Siedband: The Maximum Effort Ryan Reynolds stuff; it just feels like a lot of the same playbook, with the cheat code of using Ryan Reynolds. Good for them that they can do that, but…it’s just a bit oversaturated. He’s associated with so many different brands and [is] doing the same shtick over and over. It gets old.