This is how it’s done. Take a look at our curated list of 10 marketing campaigns that used emotional storytelling as the core element to deliver its marketing messaging.
Coca Cola and Marvel – an unexpected collaboration, but their latest campaign hit the right chords! Coca-Cola x Marvel: The Heroes showcases custom illustrations of over 30 characters from across the Marvel Universe—from Ant-Man to Captain America—on Coca-Cola bottles and cans.
Mindy Hamilton, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing Partnerships at The Walt Disney Company, said, “We took the traditional marketing paradigm and redefined it in the best way possible. The result is an unprecedented campaign that taps into the power of the Marvel Universe—which is entering its 85th year of beloved characters—and tells stories in a way that can only be done when Coca-Cola and Disney come together.”
Absolutely, marketing campaigns are more about the brand stories that customers would want to hear. These stories drive a sense of empathy and belongingness among target consumers, further influencing purchase decisions.
Global brands and marketers have been rapidly routing their marketing strategies towards an emotional appeal. Sausage brand Richmond’s £2.6 million investment championing the ‘Good Times’ is another recent example.
Here’s a look at marketing campaigns that used emotional appeal and creative storytelling as the core elements.
Top 10 emotionally-appealing marketing campaigns that wove great stories
1. H&M’s Immersive Digital Fashion Experience
In 2023 H&M debuted an immersive experience for Roblox fans, connecting its young and older customers. Depicting a playful theme, the game enabled users to discover their unique digital fashion identity in the metaverse.
2. LADbible and Google’s Collaboration with Harry Kane for AI Bard Promotion
Harry Kane is a popular football player and an inspiration for the younger generation. He teamed up with LADbible and Google to promote Bard, showcasing his day-to-day challenges and how he deals with them, via playful prompts.
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3. Spanx’s Innovative Campaign Starring Body Activist Charli Howard
Influencing women consumers with an urge to stay fit, Spanx, a shapewear brand, introduced its marketing campaign, starring Charli Howard. The ad focused on the adaptability of the product, centring it on how it fits perfectly with women’s lives.
4. Corona’s ‘Sunshine is Back’ Billboard Innovation
In 2023, Corona unveiled its sun-drenched billboard activation at Brighton’s seafront, celebrating its “100% Natural” campaign. Highlighting the objective of the use of all-natural ingredients in Corona beer, the campaign featured a 6-metre yellow board with the Corona beer label, forming a bottle shape using sunlight.
5. Pepsi’s Collaboration with a Sneaker Tweak
Shaq has been an evergreen brand voice for both Pepsi and Reebok. Recently, Pepsi and Reebok collaborated to design a custom shoe which accommodates the Pepsi mini can. So, Pepsi’s Sneaker allowed Shaq to enjoy a refreshing sip of Pepsi, whenever the urge arose. This advertisement conveyed Pepsi’s wider accessibility irrespective of the location.
6. Paris Baguette’s Giveaway Trip to Paris
Enjoying a live football match with a VIP pass is a dream for all sports enthusiasts, and even if not a sports lover who is going to miss a sponsored trip to Paris. To make this dream a reality, Paris Baguette teamed up with Paris Saint-Germain. The brand took this initiative to increase its sales by tempting people to buy its products, further making them subscribe to its app.
7. Pepsico’s Starry Campaign Featuring Basketball Player Giannis
Pepsico’s branding strategies have always proven to be a perfect avenue where emotional appeal meets creativity. For instance, the brand featured Giannis in its Starry campaign, where the football player hilariously chose Pepsico’s Lemon Lime soda over his fan. In its other campaign, “You Can Own Any Moment,” Pepsico made a buzz with its innovative approach, showcasing women’s empowerment with a sporty feel. It played an essential role in connecting the brand with its female customers.
8. LinkedIn’s Coffee Truck Initiative to Fuel Gen Z Professionals
Recently, LinkedIn took a coffee truck with a twist on the road, welcoming the youth professionals to have career-boosting chats over a cup of coffee. The campaign aimed at connecting and motivating Gen Z professionals, who are the least confident when it comes to navigating their professional lives or asking for help.
9. Nationwide’s Hyperlocal High Street Campaign
Inculcating the feeling of community and belongingness among people of all age groups, Nationwide featured Windsor-born pop star Chesney Hawkes. The motive behind the brand’s campaign was to tell its customers the importance of branches and what difference 1:1 interaction creates.
10. British Airways’ Initiative To Rediscover Travel
Showcasing the homely feeling of being taken care of, and the transformative journey of its travellers, from infant to youth, this ad by British Airways was a blockbuster. The creative revolved around a baby girl taking her first flight, before imagining the various travel scenarios that would take place throughout her life as she grows into adulthood.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 represents a robust cloud-based CRM solution with features such as pipeline assessment, relationship analytics, and conversational intelligence. It utilises AI-powered insights to provide actionable intelligence via predictive analytics, lead scoring, sentiment analysis, etc. Currently, Microsoft operates in 190 countries and is made up of more than 220,000 employees worldwide.
HubSpot is an inbound marketing, sales, and customer service software provider, offering robust CRM and automation solutions. Some of its products include Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Operations Hub, Content Hub, Commerce Hub, Marketing Analytics and Dashboard Software. Guided by its inbound methodology, HubSpot enables companies to prioritise innovation and customer success.
Monday.com is a project management software company, offering a cloud-based platform that enables businesses 
Headquartered in San Mateo, California, Freshworks is a global AI-powered business software provider. Its tech stack includes a scalable and comprehensive suite for IT, customer support, sales, and marketing teams, ensuring value for immediate business impact. Its product portfolio includes Customer Service Suite, Freshdesk, Freshchat, Freshcaller, Freshsuccess, and Freshservice. Freshservice for Business Teams has helped several global organisations to enhance their operational efficiency.
Talkdesk offers an innovative AI-powered customer-centric tech stack to its global partners. The company provides generative AI integrations, delivering industry-specific solutions to its customers. Talkdesk CX Cloud and Industry Experience Clouds utilise modern machine learning and language models to enhance contact centre efficiency and client satisfaction.
The company offers comprehensive cloud-based solutions, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365, Gaming Consoles, Microsoft Advertising, Copilot, among other things, to help organisations offer enhanced CX and ROI. Its generative-AI-powered speech and voice recognition solutions,such as Cortana and Azure Speech Services empowers developers to build intelligent applications.
IBM is a global hybrid cloud and AI-powered 
Uniphore is an enterprise-class, AI-native company that was incubated in 2008. Its enterprise-class multimodal AI and data platform unifies all elements of voice, video, text and data by leveraging Generative AI, Knowledge AI, Emotion AI and workflow automation. Some of its products include U-Self Serve, U-Assist, U-Capture, and U-Analyze. Its Q for Sale is a conversational intelligence software that guides revenue teams with AI-powered insights, offering clarity on how to effectively keep prospects engaged.
Google Cloud accelerates every organisation’s ability to digitally transform its business. Its enterprise-grade solutions leverage modern technology to solve the most criticial business problems 
8×8 offers out-of-the-box contact centre solutions, assisting all-size businesses to efficiently meet customer needs and preferences. It offers custom CRM integrations support and integrates effortlessly with third-party CRMs like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Zendesk, and more. Offering global support in all time zones & development teams in 5 continents, its patented geo-routing solution ensures consistent voice quality.
Sprinklr is a comprehensive enterprise software company for all customer-focused functions. With advanced AI, Sprinklr’s unified customer experience management (Unified-CXM) platform lets organisations offer human experiences to every customer, every time, across any modern channel.
Upland offers a comprehensive suite of contact centre and customer service solutions with products including InGenius, Panviva, Rant & Rave, and RightAnswers. InGenius enables organisations to connect their existing phone system with CRM, further enhancing agent productivity. Panviva provides compliant and omnichannel capabilities for highly regulated industries. Whereas, Rant & Rave, and RightAnswers are its AI-powered solutions, 
Zoho Social, a part of Zoho’s suite of 50+ products, is a comprehensive social media management platform for businesses and agencies. The Zoho Social dashboard includes a robust set of features, such as Publishing Calendar, Bulk Scheduler, and Approval Management to offer businesses all the essential social media publishing tools. Its monitoring tools help enterprises track and respond to relevant social conversations.
Hootsuite, headquartered in Vancouver, is a social media management platform that streamlines the process of managing multiple social media accounts. Some of its core offerings include social media content planning and publishing, audience engagement tools, analytics and social advertising. Its easy-to-integrate capabilities help marketing teams to schedule and publish social media posts efficiently.
Brandwatch enables businesses to build and scale the optimal strategy for their clients with intuitive, use-case-focused tools that are easy and quick to master. Bringing together consumer intelligence and social media management, the company helps its users react to the trends that matter, collaborate on data-driven content, shield the brand from threats and manage all the social media channels at scale.
Zoho Corporation offers innovative and tailored software to help leaders grow their business. Zoho’s 55+ products aid sales and marketing, support and collaboration, finance, and recruitment requirements. Its customer analytics capabilities come with a conversational feature, Ask Zia. It enables users to ask questions and get insights in the form of reports and widgets in real-time.
Salesforce-owned Tableau is an AI-powered analytics and business intelligence platform, offering the breadth and depth of capabilities that serve the requirements of global enterprises in a seamless, integrated experience. Marketers can utilise generative AI models, AI-powered predictions, natural language querying, and recommendationsons.
Fullstory is a behavioural data platform, helping C-suite leaders make informed decisions by injecting digital behavioural data into its analytics stack. Its patented technology uncovers the power of quality behavioural data at scale, transforming every digital visit into actionable insights. Enterprises can increase funnel conversion and identify their highest-value customers effortlessly.
Contentsquare is a cloud-based digital experience analytics platform, helping brands track billions of digital interactions, and turn those digital 
Amplitude is a product analytics platform, enabling businesses to track visitors with the help of collaborative analytics. The platform leverages the capabilities of 
Adobe Experience Cloud offers a comprehensive set of applications, capabilities, and services specifically designed to address day-to-day requirement for personalised customer experiences at scale. Its platform helps play an essential role in managing different digital content or assets to improve customer happiness. Its easy-to-optimise content gives users appropriate marketing streams, ensuring product awareness.
Started in 2005 in a Sweden-based small town, Norrköping, Voyado offers a customer experience cloud platform that includes a customer loyalty management system. This platform helps businesses design and implement customer loyalty programs, track customer 
TapMango provides a comprehensive, customisable, flexible and feature-rich customer loyalty program. The loyalty tools include an integrated suite of customised consumer-facing technology, easy-to-use merchant tools, and automation algorithms, all aimed at enhancing customer experience. Adaptable to any industry, TapMango’s platform helps merchants compete with larger chains, converting customer one-time purchases into profitable spending habits.
Adobe Experience Cloud offers a comprehensive set of applications, capabilities, and services specifically designed to address day-to-day requirements for personalised customer experiences at scale. Its innovative platform has played an essential role in managing different digital content or assets, to improve customer happiness or satisfaction. Some of its products include Adobe Gen Studio, Experience Manager Sites, Real-time CDP, and Marketo Engage.
