For many marketers, the primary half of 2025 summoned unwelcome parallels to the early days of the pandemic. The rush to batten down the hatches, trim budgets and adjust media plans on the fly returned in force — and even included one other on-again, off-again TikTok ban — but this time the scramble got here in response to careening tariffs fairly than a public health crisis.
That said, marketers entered the most recent bout of chaos with several years of navigating historically choppy waters under their belts. As some brands went silent, others jumped on the chance to drive home resonant messages around pricing, inclusion or humor, higher girding themselves for the uncertain months ahead.
These strategies, nonetheless well-executed, haven’t at all times resulted within the expected performance bump as tariffs rattle businesses reliant on global trade and consumer sentiment stays low. Regardless, they supply brands with solid foundations to construct upon once stability is back in play. For some, culturally tapped-in marketing has also helped enshrine category dominance while rivals flounder.
Below, Marketing Dive has brought together essentially the most eye-catching marketing from H1 2025, spanning tactics including experiential, rebranding, packaging and good old-fashioned TV ads. Assessing what worked about these efforts, lots of which pushed against the industry grain, could help inform planning around an H2 that will carry high expectations and a powerful need to distinguish amid a proliferation of generative artificial intelligence and samey messaging.
Best creative comeback: Nike’s “So Win.”
Lots stays up within the air regarding Nike’s turnaround, however the sportswear icon proved it could recapture its old marketing magic at Super Bowl LIX in February. Returning to the massive game for the primary time in nearly 30 years, the brand and inventive agency Wieden+Kennedy Portland delivered the variety of showstopping spot that has change into rare in an promoting slate that generally skews toward celebrity cameos and humor.
“So Win.” not only cut through the clutter of TV’s biggest night, securing the Super Clio Award, but additionally demonstrated Nike can balance leaning on legacy while offering consumers something fresh. That’s a crucial needle to string because the brand looks to correct course after years of overfocusing on performance marketing.
“It felt very harking back to the way in which that Nike used to advertise,” said Devon Archbold, director of campaign strategy at Movers+Shakers.
The 60-second business, shot in cinematic black and white, stars athletes including Jordan Chiles, Caitlin Clark and Sha’Carri Richardson as rapper Doechii rattles off all of the things women supposedly “can’t” be and the defiant attitude it takes to beat such adversity. “So Win.” capitalized on a groundswell of interest in women’s skilled sports, but additionally might be interpreted as a deeper rallying cry given the political climate. As other marketers pump the brakes on purpose in response to diversity, equity and inclusion backlash, Nike showed tips on how to stay the course while remaining rooted in brand fundamentals.
“What was really cool was that Nike went all in, proving that purpose and performance can coexist,” said Archbold.
Chili’s Fast Food Financing pop-up emulates an affordable payday loan retailer to knock the rising prices at fast food rivals.
Courtesy of Chili’s Grill & Bar
Best value-driven play: Chili’s Fast Food Financing
Inviting comparisons to scuzzy payday loan retailers probably isn’t the wisest strategy for many brands in search of to advertise a message around value. For Chili’s, the outside-the-box concept was an ingenious method to extend its battle against fast food titans.
In April, the dine-in chain opened a Fast Food Financing pop-up next to a McDonald’s location in Manhattan to herald the launch of its Big QP burger, a rival to the Quarter Pounder. Videos styled after chintzy daytime TV ads helped raise awareness for the activation, which let visitors fill out forms to receive gift cards to cover their meal costs and included a speakeasy serving up the beef-heavy menu addition. The experience, which was executed with agencies JM&D and M ss ng p eces, drew a three-hour line at the height of its popularity while generating over 6 billion earned media impressions, in line with a representative for Chili’s.
“Creativity should not be budget-constrained, and that is an incredible example of something that wasn’t grand on a big scale but was incredibly thoughtful and ended up getting a whole lot of buzz,” said Nick Valenti, CEO at Mādin, of Fast Food Financing.
Other marketers can take a page from Chili’s, which has seen eye-popping sales growth in an otherwise fallow period for restaurants. The brand has tackled marketing around value — a ubiquitous tactic in the meanwhile — in an atypical fashion, hounding fast food fairly than the businesses that make up its direct competitive set, like Applebee’s. The approach has resulted in something that feels more distinctive than the same old tit-for-tat category squabbling, opening a possibility for Chili’s to not only drive home a pricing-focused message, but additionally its positioning as a 3rd place to collect and revel in meals.
“It’s a clever method to capture an audience that’s on the lookout for some place else to go, and so that they’re providing that unique answer,” said Valenti.
Best case of name agility: State Farm’s “Batman vs. Bateman”
The amount of investment that goes right into a Super Bowl ad might be astronomical. What happens when those plans should be overhauled on the fly? That’s the situation State Farm found itself in at Super Bowl LIX, when a superhero-inspired spot was placed on the back burner because the insurer dealt with fallout from California wildfires. Rather than viewing its big game campaign as a sunk cost, State Farm called an audible, moving the ads to March Madness in a standout example of how brands might be agile because the world around them is continuously thrown into tumult.
“We’ve learned across the Super Bowl to not have a one-size-fits all-mentality with it, and we’ve learned that you possibly can pivot if you happen to’re smart and also you’re being attentive,” said Alyson Griffin, head of marketing at State Farm.
“Batman vs. Bateman,” developed with agency Highdive, bears an easy logline: One’s prone to be dissatisfied if wry comedic actor Jason Bateman shows up to avoid wasting the day as an alternative of The Dark Knight of DC Comics fame. Beyond the anthem spot, additional ads focused on villains just like the Joker and the Riddler, a storytelling approach that aligned with the weekslong structure of the NCAA college basketball tournament.
“The narrative that we wanted to begin telling to then grow upon over time was: ‘Having insurance isn’t the identical as having State Farm,’” said Griffin.
State Farm also leaned on Kai Cenat, a top Twitch streamer who appears within the campaign, to support the trouble on late night TV as a late-breaking adjustment to its publicity plan. All told, “Batman vs. Bateman” received greater than 16 million engagements, per a spokesperson, outpacing the highest three Super Bowl ads ranked by USA Today’s Ad Meter. Maybe an enormous game marketing win doesn’t require an enormous game media buy.
Coors Light’s monthlong marketing blitz across the Super Bowl included stunts like a Chill Face Roller meant to assist consumers push through the beginning of the week.
Courtesy of Coors Light
Best use of the Super Bowl as a platform: Coors Light
The Super Bowl is usually treated because the flashiest night of the 12 months for advertisers, but for Coors Light, this 12 months’s event stretched beyond a single night to incorporate a monthlong marketing blitz based around an almost universal belief: Mondays are the worst.
The Molson Coors brand kicked off its Super Bowl campaign on Monday, Jan. 13, with ads that intentionally misspelled “refreshment” as “refershment” in a nod to Monday morning mishaps. The stunt, which included an apology, spurred Reddit threads, LinkedIn posts and op-eds.
“There were all of those articles by marketing experts — my favorite was one that called it a ‘lesson in humility,’” said Marcelo Pascoa, vice chairman of marketing, Coors family of brands.
Days later, the brand revealed limited-edition Mondays Light packaging, a play on the idiom “a case of the Mondays.” The concept was inspired by research which found 41% of respondents call the Monday after the Super Bowl considered one of the worst days of the 12 months. The insight offered a possibility to tap into culture while reinforcing Coors Light’s “Choose Chill” tagline.
“We desired to own each Monday and be certain that we’re top of mind week after week,” said Kevin Mulroy, founding partner and executive creative director at Mischief @ No Fixed Address, the agency behind the campaign.
Next got here the Coors Light Chill Face Roller — which sold out in seven minutes — and a teaser to its big game ad starring actor Timothy Simons. The brand’s 30-second business featured anthropomorphized sloths portraying what a case of the Mondays looks like.
Coors Light continued its campaign after the sport through a partnership with Peloton. In total, the brewer created 1.8 million cases of its limited-edition packaging, and sold all of them. The brand also garnered 12.6 billion earned impressions, and consumers in January looked for “Coors Light” greater than they did over the prior 12 months.
“Across all metrics we saw performance beyond what we had expected,” said Pascoa.
