Published on January 9, 2025
Some of the most memorable brand marketing of 2024 emphasized communities and personal connections.
Look for more brand marketing in 2025 that taps into the customer experience at a deeper level. Brand leaders last year engaged diverse target markets in making a better life, using everything from branding toolkits and live events to artificial intelligence and online communities.
Successful campaigns enhance the well-being of families and communities. Consumers select products and services for the goals it helps them achieve. Here are five marketers that encourage their customers to make down payments on a dream.
Airbnb Puts Host Community in the Right Places
Experiential marketing is not always about events. Lego collaborates with the maker community in their creative pursuits. Lululemon and Nike celebrate the sensations of sports and self-care. In 2024, Airbnb built community engagement around the genial and adventurous impulses of its 5 million hosts. Understanding that many hosts rent out their own homes while they travel, Airbnb’s fifth Festival of Hospitality in September 2024 encouraged hosts to share what they love about their communities.
Airbnb brought hosts into its quality and social responsibility programs. The listing agency encourages hosts to critique each other’s listings and hold each other accountable to reliability standards, organized hosts to house Canadian wildfire victims, engaged with affordable housing charities and encouraged inclusive marketing of rentals by circulating a U.S. ispanic travelers survey.
Amazon Puts AI in One Neat Package
Across its B2C and B2B markets, Amazon finds ways to make itself indispensable and to turn a customer base into a sales force. In 2024, the company leveraged its twin roles in retail and web services by putting generative AI tools in the hands of small and mid-sized businesses.
As an online sales leader, Amazon continues to enhance the shopping experience. GenAI creates video animations for realistic display ads and enhances photos and ad copy on Amazon’s featured brand pages. Machine learning programs analyze past purchases and current activity, then hone product recommendations to more nearly match buyers’ interests.
In 2024, Amazon also launched a supply chain service to move products to customers more quickly and tested a chatbot for indep endent sellers, giving them easier access to traffic and sales data and potentially clearing logistical logjams or inventory issues. Meanwhile, Amazon’s AI personal shopper Rufus is more widely available, helping consumers make product comparisons and analyze reviews. Amazon’s embrace of shopping bots dovetails with innovative web services for business analysts and developers.
CVS Health Signifies New Care Services
CVS Health strengthened its branding in 2024 as a purpose-driven healthcare services provider. Its Healthy 2030 impact report frames CVS programs as leveraging expertise and resources to improve health, advancing a corporate defense of environmental, social and governance goals in personal terms.
In building a true wellness brand, CVS hired away McDonald’s Heidi Capozzi as chief people officer, giving her an extensive corporate social responsibility portfolio. Philanthropic collaborations aimed at the social cost of asthma and food insecurity. Healthcare acquisitions Oak Street Health and Signify Health were bundled with pharmacy benefit manager Caremark in a new brand, Healthspire.
A 2025 drug pricing model was marketed as CostVantage to community pharmacies and Caremark TrueCost to commercial clients. Women’s health initiatives included a nationwide Aetna fertility benfit and birth control consultations at Massachusetts pharmacies under a new state law. CVS uses its scale to improve community health and sustainable business practices.
Pepsi Pops for a Throwback Brand Refresh
Soft-drink tastes increasingly favor bright flavors and sugar-free alternatives. Pepsi is repositioning its brand for these new appetites. Tapping decades of brand equity, Pepsi remixed its midcentury globe logo and boldface brandmark in March 2024, reversing the gentle vertical flow and desaturated tones of a 2008 rebrand. Pepsi now distinguishes its diverse sweetener and flavor choices such as lime and peach with a vivid packaging palette and dresses Pepsi Zero Sugar in basic black.
The new look reflects a trend in Ocean Spray, Verizon and other rebrands toward high-contrast designs and saturated colors. Pepsi matched the peppy brand imagery with bold sports and music influencers, as seen in “Gladiator II” NFL cross-promotions where Megan Thee Stallion owns the stadium anthem “We Will Rock You.” If Pepsi returns to the Super Bowl in 2025, don’t expect subtlety
Pop-Tarts Edible Mascot Scores Experiential Points
Marketers bet on live sports to attract large audiences, and perhaps their most playful PR parlay popped up for the former Florida Citrus Bowl. Naming rights for the year-end college football invitational reverted to the sponsor, Kellogg’s parent Kellanova, offering an opportunity to align a brand with youth and athleticism. The result: the Pop-Tarts Bowl.
For the Dec. 28 Miami-Iowa State matchup, three flavors of Pop-Tarts (fabricated by Chicago Mascot Co.) took the field. ESPN’s Cole Cubelic dressed in pastry for a sideline bit. The jammy cheerleaders’ tart antics drew coverage from USA Today, Yahoo! Sports and Rolling Stone. Iowa State’s 42-41 win made Frosted Cinnamon Roll a ritual sacrifice, consumed by the victors.
Kellogg’s promotional flex again was the toast of social media. “It doesn’t feel like I’m being sold to,” Mike Gottschalk gushed on TikTok. The edible mascot has given families food for thought year-round, licensed as a Halloween costume.