This moving three-minute ad from Dove about women's views of themselves has accrued more than 50 million view on YouTube. It has also inspired a few parodies, like New Feeling Time's video showing how different the same concept works with men.
Gross. Sexist. Awful. Those were just some of the words used to describe this GoDaddy ad that aired during this year's Super Bowl. It may have been a conversation piece, but most of that conversation was negative. Indeed, GoDaddy announced in October that it would ditch this type of controversial ad for the 2014 Super Bowl.
When the power went out during this year's Super Bowl, Oreo's social media team quickly turned out this tweet. It has since been retweeted more than 15,000 times, written about in countless publications and mentioned in Twitter's IPO paperwork as a shining example of how marketers can use the platform. It has also inspired brands to engage in real-time marketing on Twitter, sometimes with mixed success.
Many brands took to Twitter to commemorate the 12th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. AT&T's attempt to do so didn't go over so well. Its tweet was quickly deleted and an apology issued.
Samsung's Galaxy Gear smartwatch may have received mixed reviews, but at least this commercial introducing the product earned some positive press. Samsung recently revealed that it had shipped 800,000 smartwatches in its first two months on the market, beating estimates.
BlackBerry placed its first Super Bowl ad this year with the goal of stoking interest for its new Z10 smartphone, but for many, the ad missed the mark. Sales of the Z10 languished, forcing BlackBerry to take a massive $900 million writedown.
It's not every day that an ad longer than three minutes goes viral, but this animated short from Chipotle did just that. The video looks like a Pixar film, features a song from Fiona Apple and focuses on a cause rather than promoting the company.
Pretending that your brand's Twitter account was hacked may generate conversation, but it won't earn much good will from customers or followers. Chipotle learned this the hard way when it confessed to faking a Twitter hack as part of a 20th anniversary promotional stunt in July.
Volvo scored a hugely viral success with this deceptively simple video showing actor and martial artist Jean-Claude Van Damme doing a split between two moving trucks. The video has been viewed 40 million times in just more than a week.
Samsung released several clever ads this year, but this wasn't one of them. The video was reportedly only intended to be aired in Korea, but it surfaced online and was widely criticized for its sexist innuendos.
Kmart struck gold multiple times this year, starting with its "Ship My Pants" commercial and continuing through to this recent "Jingle Bells" ad, featuring six men in suits and Joe Boxers.
Sports apparel company Pearl Izumi thought it would be a good idea to promote its shoes by suggesting wearers could outlast man's best friend. Unfortunately, the image of people giving CPR to dogs didn't go over so well with customers.
Oreo kicked off the year with a brilliant, impromptu online ad during the Super Bowl, the success of which inspired countless other real-time marketing campaigns, many of which fell short.
Tech companies like Samsung and Google aired clever commercials to introduce new products to consumers, while BlackBerry struggled to reintroduce itself in a make or break marketing campaign.
See also: 10 Brands Dominating on Google+
Chipotle received a fair amount of criticism for an online promotion that involved faking a Twitter hack, but earned widespread praise a couple months later for an animated video about the perils of processed foods.
This year held plenty of successful marketing efforts as well as plenty of flops. We collected a few memorable examples.
Image: Flickr, hjhipster