2023, As Told by Advertising
Let’s all close our eyes and think back to last year around this time, when Pantone announced its color of the year: Viva Magenta,a show-stopping hot pink based in a digital world.
This color waved the flag for a vibrant, volatile year, and 2023 delivered. This was the year we saw the rise of AI, the summer of Barbie, Beyonce and Taylor, and the upending of the expected—from the end of Twitter to the waning of wokeness to the start of new traditions. Speaking of traditions, this is the fourth year in ads I’ve published; check here for 2020, 2021, and 2022.
JANUARY
Dry January is such a thing now that Tito’s made a partnership with Martha Stewart to combat lagging sales during this new-ish tradition.
FEBRUARY
February brought on the Ad Bowl, but the most memorable marketing moment wasn’t during the ad breaks. Pepsi ceded its 10-year ownership of the half-time show to Apple Music. Apple introduced its new role with a gorgeous 60-second ad that painted the magic of Caribbean culture. Rihanna took the stage for a pregnancy reveal / make-up ad / concert in a massive aesthetic shift. Pepsi’s next generation antic shows with multiple performers and over-the-top stages gave way to Apple’s focus on one artist in her prime, augmented by the clean technical prowess of the stage. A great start for the Apple Music ownership of this cultural phenomenon.
Hilton’s 10-minute TikTok ad starring Paris Hilton (and many other stars) tested what we expected of the platform, known for its endless scroll of 1-3 minute shorts.
APRIL
Bud Light hired Dylan Mulvaney, a trans influencer, to promote a March Madness contest. What ensued was a wholesale reorganization of the relationship between advertisers, influencers and progressive issues. A large group of right-wingers boycotted Bud Light, and in response Budweiser pulled its campaign and fired the VP who authorized it, which led to LGBTQ+ advocates also boycotting the beer. Months later, Bud Light is still struggling to regain its share.
The high-profile backlash to a blue collar brand embracing liberal values was a snapshot of an increasingly divided nation. While younger generations are broadly more comfortable with gender fluidity, there are parts of America passing anti-trans laws and growing increasingly hostile to markers of identity. Bud Light’s inability to stick to its gun shows the weakness of many marketers’ commitment to diversity and inclusion. Marketers are taking note and shying away from campaigns that have even a whiff of political backlash.
MAY
The Writers’ Guild of America went on strike for better wages, residuals from streaming, and protection against the threat of AI taking over their jobs. This kicked off a series of labor disputes, including SAG-AFTRA and the Autoworkers Union, both a demonstration of reduced worker satisfaction, demands for more in light of rising costs everywhere, and protection against a hard-to-define threat of AI. The strikes had downstream effects, with little content production or red carpet promotion happening during the bulk of 2023, delaying anticipated releases like the Dune sequel.
JUNE
Sneaking in before the SAG strike, Jennifer Lopez starred in a Virgin Voyages campaign as…many AI versions of herself.
June is also the time of Cannes Lion, when the industry looks up from its grindstone at what a jury of its peers considers best in class work. It’s also often eye-opening to see work that’s coming from non-American markets. Some of my favorites stretched the role of advertising into providing pure functionality and then wrapping it in enough of a creative lens to make it sing, like ADLaM for digitizing a West African alphabet. Or for taking on big global problems through creative means, like the First Digital Nation for digitizing all of Tuvalu as it may be the first country to lose its land to climate change.
JULY
It was a Barbie summer. The tee-up to the Barbie film was a stroke of genius, built on making our world a Barbie world one partnership at a time. I wrote about the impressive marketing feat here, which managed to amplify the film in spite of the SAG strike that hobbled a lot of other film marketing. The list of partnerships knows no bounds…the ultimate in Viva Magenta marketing.
RIP Twitter. Elon took over Twitter in the fall of 2022, and it took him less than a year to wreak havoc. He alienated advertisers with all kinds of shenanigans -- turning verification from a status statement to pay to play, firing HR, PR, advertising people, and moderators of hate speech, and creating an environment that is open to hate speech and therefore unsafe for brands. On July 23, he piled on by rebranding the company X, yet another facepalm moment. He continued to ruffle feathers throughout the year by retweeting anti-semitic posts and then telling advertisers to go fuck themselves when they pulled out of advertising. The demise of a reliable ad platform for voices like Steak-Umms and Wendy’s reshaped the social media landscape. Although a half-dozen competitors tried to take the throne - including Meta’s Threads - no one has cracked the code on the clever hodge-podge of voices and conversations that Twitter encouraged.
AUGUST
The Women’s World Cup continued to be a phenom. Nike stepped up to the plate (sorry for mixed sports metaphors) and brought a suite of incredible ads about women players. The fantastical treatment of Londoner at a grander scale, across multiple spots that created heroes out of football stars.
SEPTEMBER
Apple launched its latest iPhone to middling reviews. It also released a long-form ad about its sustainability goals starring Octavia Spencer as a haughty Mother Earth and an awkward Tim Cook stating Apple’s achievements and goals, including announcing a carbon-neutral Apple Watch. As the world inches closer to a climate crisis, will carbon-neutral products become the new swag?
OCTOBER
The Sphere launched with a U2 show, creating a new canvas for advertisers that took the crown from the reigning out-of-home king, the Times Square billboard. Visible from all over Vegas, the spherical shape invited new ways to think about format and impact. With its hefty price tag, fake images of The Sphere generated conversation minus the money.
Hamas launched an attack on Israel, causing a complex response in the advertising world. Some brands openly expressed support for Israel, while leaders from various brand and agency sectors condemned the attack. However, unlike the unified reaction seen during Russia's invasion of Ukraine, where brands displayed solidarity with blue and yellow flags on their social media platforms, the response to the Israel-Hamas conflict lacked a singular position of support. While the U.S. government and many Americans sided with Israel, others, especially younger generations took to the streets demanding a ceasefire. This rekindling of conflict in the Middle East exposed a profound global division, causing advertisers to tread cautiously.
NOVEMBER
Ocean Spray is building a new tradition of Thanksgiving oddity. Its 2022 jiggle jiggle commercial paved the way for this year’s ad; this year was not quite as strange as last year, but the grandmother sneaking in Ocean Spray cran for a li’l cocktail charmed me enough that I’m looking forward to what next year brings. Like the classic John Lewis holiday adverts that invoke the warmth of the Christmas spirit, Ocean Spray’s Thanksgiving ads have the opportunity to create a uniquely American tradition of bringing the absurd into Thanksgiving scenarios.
DECEMBER
Several ad campaigns fell short this holiday season, stepping into the increasingly muddy water that is the discourse around the Israel-Palestine conflict. Zara was forced to pull an ad after people called out that the scene resembled images from Gaza’s suffering, and Marks and Spencer apologized after a holiday ad included a fireplace scene that looked like Palestinian flags burning. While both of the brands say these ads were produced before the October attacks, it’s a telling lesson for advertisers that perception > intention.
To end on a less grim note, what really broke the internet was a leak of the next Grand Theft Auto trailer. After 10 years without a new GTA release, gaming fans got a sneak peek of what they’ve been waiting for, with a punishing launch date of 2025. Going back to Vice City (aka Miami), the new GTA promises more fleshed out characters, and is catching up to the last few years where women have played heroes in film and TV and other games.
Happy holidays, and happy new year!
You’ve just read Framing, a regular newsletter about what’s good culture, marketing, and business by Anita Schillhorn van Veen.
This is a subscriber-supported newsletter, so please consider a subscription here.