The Zero-Spend Marketing Genius thatgot 5 crore impressions

Hello, awesome marketers and founders.
This is Luv, and here’s your weekly Marketing Shot :)

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Marketing ideas for marketers who hate boring

The best marketing ideas come from marketers who live it. That’s what The Marketing Millennials delivers: real insights, fresh takes, and no fluff. Written by Daniel Murray, a marketer who knows what works, this newsletter cuts through the noise so you can stop guessing and start winning. Subscribe and level up your marketing game.

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A chocolate brand had pulled off what might be the smartest marketing move I've ever seen and they spent almost nothing on it.

It was November 2022. Diwali season was in full swing. Every brand in India was spending crores on ads, TV spots, digital campaigns, influencer collaborations. Everyone was fighting for attention during the biggest shopping season.

Then Cadbury 5 Star did something that nobody saw coming.

Instead of spending money like everyone else, the 5 Star team had a brilliant thought. They looked at their logo, five stars in a row and realised it looked exactly like the rating system we see everywhere. On Swiggy, Uber, Amazon, Zomato, BookMyShow, everywhere.

They redesigned their chocolate wrapper to look like app rating sections so their actual product looked exactly like the digital experiences people had been absorbing all day.

Think about this, every time someone ordered food and rated it, booked a cab and gave stars, bought something online and reviewed it they were looking at what looked like a 5 Star ad, without knowing it.

The campaign claimed it became "the biggest ad campaign ever" and they might have been right.

We give over 2.5 crore ratings daily on apps in India.

That was 2.5 crore brand touches every single day, on every platform, without paying anything for ads.

What got me excited wasn't just the money they saved (though getting 5+ crore impressions in the first week with zero spend was pretty amazing). It was how psychologically smart this was.

Normal ads interrupt us, the banner that blocks your reading, the YouTube ad before your video, the hoarding on the road. But 5 Star did the opposite. They became part of what we were already doing.

Every rating became a small brand moment. Not annoying, not pushy, just there. Fitting naturally into our daily routine. The result? People remembered it 30% better than regular ads because it felt normal, not forced.

P.S. What's the cleverest low-budget campaign you've implemented? Hit reply and share your thoughts. I'm always collecting examples of brilliant campaigns that prove creativity.

That's a wrap for today! Stay tuned for the next edition.

Thanks,
Luv