Brand Examples: How Coca-Cola, Red Bull, LEGO, and Others Do Marketing
Great brands don’t emerge by chance. Coca-Cola, Red Bull, HelloFresh, P&G, Oatly, BMW, Aldi, Patagonia, and LEGO have built their market positions over decades through targeted advertising and a consistent brand strategy, rather than relying solely on a good product. These nine companies demonstrate just how varied the path to a strong brand can be: from visual identities that have stood the test of time to the near-complete abandonment of traditional advertising, all the way to brand-building in the age of performance marketing, short films, and deliberate provocation.
The following look at nine very different companies uses real campaigns, advertising deals, and interviews to reveal the patterns behind successful brand-building—and why these patterns can be applied to any company, regardless of budget or industry.
Coca-Cola: How a Syrup Became a Global Icon
Coca-Cola was first sold as a syrup in Atlanta in 1886 by pharmacist John Stith Pemberton—it wasn’t until decades of consistent advertising that the beverage became a global brand. Early on, the company relied on a recognizable visual system consisting of red, curved lettering, and consistently evoked emotions: community, warmth, and holidays. This consistency in brand identity remains at the core of Coca-Cola’s communication to this day.
Practical Tip: A brand doesn’t have to be reinvented every year. Coca-Cola proves that a single, recurring image—red Christmas trucks, a jingle, a tagline—can build brand recognition over decades if it’s repeated consistently and without major breaks.
This is most evident in the “Holidays are Coming” campaign, which first aired in 1995: Red trucks loaded with Coca-Cola bottles drive through snow-covered streets at night, accompanied by a short jingle. The commercial has aired practically every Christmas season since then, often with only minor changes, and has become an integral part of the pre-Christmas season in many European countries.
The video shows the original commercial straight from the official Coca-Cola YouTube channel: the lighted trucks, the people waving from the side of the road, and the iconic melody that is still associated with the start of the Christmas season today. It’s a textbook example of how a single advertising motif can become an integral part of a brand over the course of decades.
In addition to visual imagery, Coca-Cola has repeatedly relied on celebrity endorsements, such as in the well-known 1979 commercial featuring American football player “Mean” Joe Greene, in which a child offers him a Coca-Cola after the game. Such testimonials and celebrity brand ambassadors connect the brand with real, likable people rather than just a product promise. The personalized bottles from the “Share a Coke” campaign, which launched in Australia in 2011, also follow the same principle: people should be able to see themselves reflected in the brand.
- Consistently repeating a visual motif over the years
- Communicate emotions rather than product features
- Use celebrity endorsements sparingly but effectively
- Seasonal rituals create genuine recognition
- Addressing people by name strengthens emotional bonds
Red Bull: A Brand Without Traditional Advertising
Red Bull was launched in Austria in 1987, developed by Dietrich Mateschitz in collaboration with Thai entrepreneur Chaleo Yoovidhya. From the very beginning, Mateschitz largely avoided traditional advertising campaigns, relying instead on sponsorships, proprietary sports events, and self-produced content. This radical focus on a single, clearly tangible brand essence —energy, extreme sports, pushing boundaries—made Red Bull one of the most valuable beverage brands in the world, even though the product itself is just one of many energy drink formulas.
The most compelling evidence to date of this strategy is the Red Bull Stratos jump: On October 14, 2012, Austrian Felix Baumgartner jumped back to Earth from an altitude of about 39 kilometers, setting several world records in the process. The livestream on YouTube attracted over eight million viewers simultaneously—a record for the platform at the time. Instead of a commercial, Red Bull had created a global live event that was covered worldwide.
The official Red Bull video shows the entire jump from the perspective of Felix Baumgartner’s helmet camera, from the moment he exits the capsule to his landing on the ground. It is one of the best-known examples of how a brand can generate more attention through a unique, high-profile event than through any traditional campaign.
- Create an experience instead of just advertising
- Consistently Focus on a Brand Essence
- Original media content instead of rented ad space
- Global attention through real-life events
HelloFresh: Brand Building in the Age of Performance Marketing
HelloFresh was founded in Berlin in November 2011 by Dominik Richter, Thomas Griesel, and Jessica Nilsson, and within just a few years grew from a meal-kit idea conceived in a shared apartment kitchen into an internationally publicly traded company: In 2017, HelloFresh went public on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Unlike Coca-Cola or Red Bull, HelloFresh did not build its brand on decades-old imagery, but rather through direct-to-consumer marketing, a wide range of performance channels, and the public visibility of its founders.
Co-founder and CEO Dominik Richter frequently speaks openly in interviews about the decisions behind HelloFresh’s growth, such as on Harry Stebbings’ “20VC” podcast. Such founder interviews are themselves part of the brand’s communication strategy: they tell the story of the company’s origins and development and give the otherwise rather abstract brand a credible face.
In this episode, Dominik Richter talks with Harry Stebbings about, among other things, why he believes direct-to-consumer marketing is by no means on the decline, how important a broad range of marketing channels was for a company like HelloFresh, and what role timing played in the company’s initial public offering. The interview shows how a CEO openly explains his business decisions and, in doing so, contributes to the brand himself.
- Founders as the Credible Face of the Brand
- Deliberately diversify marketing channels
- Open CEO Interviews Build Trust
- Direct-to-Consumer as a Standalone Brand Strategy
P&G: How a Corporation with a Portfolio of Brands Sells Emotion
Procter & Gamble was founded in Cincinnati in 1837 by brothers-in-law William Procter and James Gamble, initially as a small candle and soap manufacturer. Today, the company owns dozens of individual brands, from Pampers to Gillette, but P&G itself rarely appears in the public eye—instead, the company focuses its marketing efforts on a few large, company-wide campaigns that target a shared emotion rather than a single product.
The best-known of these campaigns is “Thank You, Mom,” which P&G launched in 2012 as part of its global Olympic sponsorship. The central film, “Best Job,” directed by the future Oscar winner Alejandro González Iñárritu, features mothers from around the world who raise their children to become Olympians over the course of many years, until the moment of competition arrives. The film aired during the 100 days leading up to the 2012 Olympic Games in London and follows the AIDA model exactly: it captures emotional attention that only leads to the actual brand promise at the very end.
The video features the full “Best Job” film, which was shot on four continents with real athletes and their mothers and has garnered over 74 million views worldwide. The campaign won the Film Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions in 2012 and demonstrates how a corporate group with dozens of individual brands can create more customer loyalty through a single shared story than any individual product advertisement could on its own.
- Corporate Brand Based on Shared Emotion Rather Than Product
- Make the Most of Major Sponsorship Opportunities
- Real people are more believable than actors
- Using a video across multiple markets
Oatly: Provocation as a Brand Strategy
Oatly is based on an oat enzyme technology developed in the 1990s at Lund University by Swedish food scientist Rickard Öste and his brother Björn Öste; in 1994, they founded the company Ceba AB, which later became Oatly. However, the company didn’t become an internationally recognized brand until 2012, when Toni Petersson took over as CEO and, together with the agency Forsman & Bodenfors, launched a radical brand relaunch: moving away from the neutral “plant-based beverage” image toward a deliberately bold, viral communication strategy that openly challenged the dairy industry.
The best-known example of this is the jingle “Wow No Cow,” which Petersson wrote and sang himself for a commercial originally aired in Sweden in 2014—accompanied only by a keyboard in an oat field. The commercial was partially banned in Sweden following a lawsuit filed by the Swedish Dairy Association over allegedly misleading statements about cow’s milk, which only further fueled its popularity. Years later, Oatly revisited the same low-budget clip and aired it in 2021 during Super Bowl LV, one of the most expensive advertising slots in the world.
The video from Oatly’s official YouTube channel features CEO Toni Petersson himself singing in the middle of an oat field. The deliberately simple, almost simplistic style generated exactly the kind of controversial discussion Oatly was looking for: Instead of a slick, high-gloss commercial, the CEO himself became the face of the brand, sparking international conversation.
- Deliberate Provocation Instead of Conformity
- The CEO as the Face of the Brand
- Controversies generate real reach
- Using an Old Theme for a Big Moment
BMW: Building the Brand Through Short Films Instead of Commercials
BMW was founded in Munich in 1916 as “Bayerische Motoren Werke,” a manufacturer of aircraft engines, before the company shifted its focus to motorcycles and automobiles after World War I. To build its premium brand identity, BMW has relied for decades on a consistent corporate identity featuring the double-kidney grille, the blue-and-white logo, and the slogan “Sheer Driving Pleasure”—but also on bold experiments with formats beyond traditional TV commercials.
The clearest example of this is the short film series “The Hire,” which BMW launched back in 2001, long before YouTube existed. Eight films, each about ten minutes long and directed by renowned filmmakers, featured British actor Clive Owen as an unnamed driver on daring missions. The series kicked off in 2001 with the short film “Ambush” by John Frankenheimer, a director known for his thrillers who won four consecutive Emmys in the 1990s.
The video shows “Ambush,” the first episode of the series: Clive Owen plays a driver escorting an elderly man who has allegedly swallowed stolen diamonds, and must get him to safety from an armed group of pursuers. “The Hire” is considered one of the first major examples of branded content on the internet and demonstrates how BMW built its brand through authentic cinema rather than traditional commercial breaks.
- Branded content instead of traditional commercials
- Attracting Renowned Directors to Build Credibility
- Embed Product Benefits in Real-Life Scenarios
- Focus on New Distribution Channels Early On
Aldi: How a Discount Store Conquered Christmas with a Comic Book Character
Aldi began as a single grocery store that Anna Albrecht opened in the Ruhr region in 1913. Her sons, Karl and Theo Albrecht, built it into a discount supermarket chain, which split in 1960—due to a dispute over the sale of cigarettes at the checkout—into the two companies that remain separate to this day: Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd. For decades, the discount retailer was known for its radical cost-cutting—including in marketing, which was virtually nonexistent compared to the online presence of traditional supermarkets on Instagram and other channels today.
That changed fundamentally in 2016 with the British branch of Aldi: The agency McCann UK created the character Kevin the Carrot for the Christmas commercial—a talking carrot who has since starred in a new Christmas short film every November. Within just a few years, Kevin became one of the most recognizable advertising characters in the UK and now attracts just as much media attention as the lavishly produced Christmas commercials from department stores, which invest many times the budget.
The video shows Aldi’s 2023 Christmas commercial, in which Kevin the Carrot is once again sent on an adventure. The campaign proves that even a company that has positioned itself for decades through deliberately simple advertising and low prices can attract attention year after year with a single, consistently developed character—all without straying from its identity as a discount retailer.
- Consistently developing a comic book character over the years
- Make a big impact even on a small budget
- Annual rituals generate recurring media attention
- Don’t stray from your brand identity, even during a campaign
Patagonia: How a Mountaineering Brand Made Sustainability Its Core Value
Patagonia was founded in 1973 by American climber Yvon Chouinard in Ventura, California, after he had been forging his own climbing gear since 1957. From the very beginning, Chouinard aligned the company with his own conviction that business and environmental protection must go hand in hand—a “purpose-driven” marketing approach that didn’t even exist under that name at the time, but which continues to shape Patagonia’s entire brand identity to this day.
Patagonia provided the most well-known example of this on Black Friday 2011: A full-page ad in The New York Times featured the company’s own R2 fleece jacket under the headline “Don’t Buy This Jacket” and listed the product’s environmental footprint, ranging from 36 gallons of water to two-thirds of the jacket’s own weight in waste. Instead of urging people to buy it, the ad called for conscious consumption—and, according to media reports, generated advertising value worth several million dollars, while the ad itself cost only about $57,000.
In this interview—which runs just over an hour—from the documentary series “The Green Interview,” founder Yvon Chouinard explains how his passion for climbing evolved into a sustainably operated business and why Patagonia views its environmental campaigns as an integral part of corporate governance rather than merely a marketing tool. In 2022, Chouinard finally transferred all of the company’s shares—valued at approximately three billion dollars—to a trust and a foundation, the proceeds of which are directed entirely toward the fight against climate change—the ultimate expression of a stance he has credibly communicated for decades.
- Making Corporate Values the Core Brand Promise
- Arguing against one’s own revenue as well
- The founder explains his stance himself
- Ensure that this approach is structurally embedded for the long term
LEGO: From Near Bankruptcy to the World’s Most Valuable Toy Brand
Ole Kirk Christiansen founded LEGO in 1932 as a small woodcarving workshop in Billund, Denmark; the name comes from the Danish words “leg godt” (“play well”). The iconic plastic bricks with studs were introduced in 1958. After years of diversifying into theme parks, video games, and model lines, the company was on the brink of insolvency in 2003 and 2004—it was only under new CEO Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, starting in 2004, that the company returned to its core brand essence: the building brick itself.
Part of this return to its roots in 2019 was the first major group-wide advertising campaign in about three decades: “Rebuild the World,” developed with the French agency BETC. The central film depicts a chase between a rabbit and a clumsy hunter through a world made of LEGO bricks, switching back and forth several times between real children and animated brick-based worlds. The campaign garnered nearly four million views on YouTube in its first week alone.
The video from the official LEGO YouTube channel features the full-length campaign film and conveys the brand’s central message: creativity and childlike play as tools for overcoming entrenched ways of thinking. The campaign was complemented by the LEGO Ideas platform, where fans can submit their own models and vote on which set will actually be produced—proof of just how closely LEGO now involves its fan base in its own brand-building efforts.
- Returning to the Brand Essence After the Crisis
- Launching the first major campaign in decades
- Combining Real Children and Animation
- Actively Involve Fans in Product Development
Nine companies, nine completely different approaches—and yet the same principle: A strong brand is built when advertising doesn’t rely on chance, but consistently focuses over the years on a clear image, an event, or a credible face. Anyone who wants to build their own brand doesn’t have to copy this approach, but they should learn from it: repetition, focus, and authentic stories will ultimately outlast any short-term advertising trend.
Market Positioning: Strategy, Differentiation, and Competitive Advantages
Manufacturer Brand: Definition, Structure, and Strategy for Successful Product Brands
History of Marketing: From Early Advertising to Modern Campaigns
Marketing Language: How Brands Speak, Persuade, and Trigger Reactions
Short Films in Marketing: Branded Shorts, Storytelling, and Emotional Impact
DTC (Direct-to-Consumer): Definition, Benefits, and Examples
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