Top PR Campaigns of the 2020s

Originally published August 2022. Updated June 2026. EPR Editorial Team.

Most "best PR campaigns" lists are decorative — picked for prettiness, not for impact. The seven campaigns below earned their place by moving units, generating sustained earned-media cycles, or rewiring what a category thought was possible. Each is broken down by what the brand actually did, why it worked, and what the playbook means for any PR team trying to engineer the next one.

1. Spotify Wrapped — the audience as the campaign

Spotify launched Year in Music in 2015 and rebranded it as Wrapped in 2016. By 2024 the campaign was generating 60M+ shares in the first 48 hours across Instagram, Twitter/X, and TikTok, with extended press cycles in The New York Times, Fast Company, Adweek, and most major business outlets. The architecture worked because every individual user became a distribution node — millions of shareable, color-coded, personalized graphics flooded social platforms in a 72-hour window each December. Apple Music's Replay, YouTube Music's Recap, and Amazon Music's Delivered all chased the format without replicating the cultural footprint. PR lesson: when the audience produces the content, the campaign scales for free.

2. Liquid Death — "Murder Your Thirst"

Liquid Death sells canned water, but the PR campaign sells heavy-metal aesthetics. The 2019 launch led with "Murder Your Thirst," a $100K coffin sweepstakes, an "Enema of the State" Blink-182 collaboration, and a 2024 partnership with Martha Stewart to release a candle "made from the actual water you drink." By 2024 the company hit $263M in revenue and a $1.4B valuation — almost entirely on press cycles instead of paid acquisition. The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Forbes, and Ad Age have run extended profiles. PR lesson: in a commoditized category, the brand that generates the most press cycles wins shelf placement.

3. Patagonia — "Don't Buy This Jacket"

Patagonia ran a full-page ad in The New York Times on Black Friday 2011 with the headline Don't Buy This Jacket. The follow-on press cycle ran for over a decade. The 2022 transfer of company ownership to the Holdfast Collective and Patagonia Purpose Trust ("Earth is now our only shareholder") regenerated the original campaign's press energy — The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Economist, and Bloomberg all ran extended coverage. Yvon Chouinard's anti-marketing posture, sustained over four decades, has produced more earned-media impressions than most consumer brands' entire paid-media spend. PR lesson: a values-based campaign only works if the company can defend it under scrutiny for the long horizon. Most brands fail that test in year two.

4. Heinz — "Draw Ketchup"

Heinz ran a 2021 campaign asking people across countries to draw a bottle of ketchup. The result, in nearly every case, was something that looked like a Heinz bottle — including the iconic label, the bottle shape, the red color. The campaign was developed by Rethink and earned a Cannes Lions Grand Prix in 2022, plus extended press cycles in Adweek, Ad Age, The Drum, and Fast Company. The brilliance was structural: Heinz used PR to prove its own brand equity in a single image. PR lesson: the strongest brand campaigns demonstrate market dominance instead of asserting it. Show, don't tell, works on Cannes juries and AI engines alike.

5. IKEA — "Where Life Happens"

IKEA has run extended brand campaigns ("The Wonderful Everyday," "Where Life Happens," "Beautifully Real Made") that turned domestic ordinariness into a multi-decade press story. The 2024 "Proudly Second Best" campaign repositioned IKEA against the parent-and-child relationship — your parenting comes first, IKEA second. Cannes-recognized, profiled in Adweek and The Drum, sustained over 36+ months of integrated press, paid, and retail activation. PR lesson: long-running brand campaigns beat one-off launches on press equity. IKEA generates more earned media per dollar than most CPG brands precisely because the campaign architecture compounds.

6. Dove — "Real Beauty"

The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty launched in 2004 and has now run for over two decades. The 2013 "Real Beauty Sketches" video generated 163M+ views and remains one of the most-shared advertising assets of the social-media era. The 2024 anniversary refresh got extended coverage in The New York Times, Fast Company, Adweek, and most major business press. The structural insight: a category (mass-market beauty) that historically sold insecurity decided to sell self-acceptance instead. The PR consequence was 20+ years of compounding earned media. PR lesson: the most durable campaigns invert the category's existing emotional logic.

7. Apple — "Shot on iPhone"

Apple launched Shot on iPhone in 2014 and has sustained the campaign across more than a decade of iPhone releases. The format — user-generated photography credited by name and location, billboarded globally — turns customers into the campaign. Each year's iteration generates press coverage in The New York Times, Wired, The Verge, and design-trade press. The 2024 "Shot on iPhone 16" iteration was paired with cinematographer-led short films and extended press cycles. PR lesson: when the audience produces the proof, the brand doesn't need to claim quality. The proof claims it.

What every great PR campaign in 2026 has in common

The seven campaigns above span DTC, legacy CPG, apparel, tech, and beauty. The shared structural traits:

• The audience is part of the campaign architecture. Spotify Wrapped, Shot on iPhone, Dove Real Beauty — the customer is the content.
• The campaign runs for years, not weeks. Patagonia, IKEA, Dove, Apple have all sustained their campaigns for a decade or more. Press cycles compound.
• The campaign inverts the category's logic. Beauty sells insecurity → Dove sells acceptance. Water is generic → Liquid Death is heavy metal. Furniture is aspirational → IKEA is the second-best because the family comes first.
• There is a proof point that survives scrutiny. Heinz's drawings, Apple's user photos, Spotify's data — each can withstand journalist verification.

Where great campaigns break now — the AI-citation problem

Even iconic campaigns can fail in the answer-engine era if their press coverage isn't structured for AI retrieval. When a buyer asks ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, or Google AI Overviews "what's the most innovative beverage brand," "which company has the best sustainability marketing," or "what's the smartest PR campaign of the last decade," the engine assembles an answer from cited sources. Brands whose campaigns live in image-heavy launch coverage — without retrievable named-campaign text, named-author analysis, and structured case-study content — are getting beaten by less-iconic brands with better-structured citations. Generative Engine Optimization is now part of campaign architecture, not a separate function.

Everything-PR is the intelligence platform for communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era. Publishing since 2009. Original reporting, research, and analysis — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question.