15 examples of brands with great local marketing campaigns that actually work

Updated on August 10, 2025

Local marketing goes far beyond simply putting a regional spin on national campaigns. A truly impactful local strategy means immersing your brand within the community;  understanding regional nuances, listening to local voices, and designing campaigns that speak directly to neighborhood audiences. Connecting with your customers at a local level can take many shapes, from tailored promotions and community-driven events to adapting products and services that reflect local preferences and culture. When brands approach local marketing with authenticity and creativity, they earn genuine connections and inspire loyalty where it matters most.

→ Why is local marketing important for international brands? 

1. The Big Biscuit's "Stuff the Bus" keeps every donation hyperlocal

The challenge every growing franchise brand faces: How do you stay authentically local when you're expanding to 29 locations across four states?

The Big Biscuit solved this with their "Stuff the Bus" school supply drive by making one crucial decision that changes everything: every single donation stays hyperlocal. Not just to the city or region, but to the actual school district where each specific restaurant sits.

Most brands think local, then centralize the impact. Smart brands centralize the program, then localize the impact. Those school supplies aren't disappearing into corporate charitable programs - they're going to the elementary school down the street where Saturday morning regulars' kids go.

This approach works because authentic community engagement scales through intention, not automation. When you're earning a spot in someone's daily routine, you're becoming part of their community, not just their consideration set.

2. Taj Mahal Tea celebrates monsoon season with culturally resonant billboard

Taj Mahal Tea, in collaboration with Ogilvy India, launched a remarkable billboard campaign called "Megh Santoor" to celebrate the monsoon season, which is deeply cherished in Indian culture. The billboard, measuring an impressive 210.86 square meters (2269.75 ft), holds the Guinness World Record for the 'Largest Environmentally Interactive Billboard'.

What sets this billboard apart is its unique ability to interact with the weather. When it rains, the billboard plays 'Raag Megn Malhar', a classical Indian musical composition traditionally associated with the monsoon season. This innovative feature creates a multi-sensory experience that deeply resonates with the local audience.

The campaign and billboard are stellar examples of local marketing due to the combination of local music, the timing of the billboard (which was gone October 16th, when monsoon season ended), and Taj Mahal Tea's connection to its origins, which informed the placement of the billboard. 

3. British Airways is here for business, leisure, or...

The question "Are you here for business or leisure?" is one ubiquitous with airport travel. It's also a question that can be hard to answer when your reason for travel doesn't neatly fit into those categories. British Airways cleverly played into this with their campaign.

The campaign features 500 unique print, digital, and outdoor executions, each showing the classic binary choice between business and leisure, but also featuring a third choice. Some are geared to specific locations ("warm gusts of air that don't come from tube trains."), others to weather conditions ("Because this weather sucks."), and others are more general ("Mischief."). 

4. How Land O'Lakes highlights California's local dairy community

We often talk about being an active part of the local community when we talk about local marketing. Adding true value and authenticity is very important when it comes to connecting with your local audience.

Land O'Lakes, an agricultural cooperative based in Arden Hills, Minnesota, has done just that. Its recent campaign by Human highlights the tight-knit community of its members, talking about their social connections, the farm-to-table way restaurants in the area work, and how they came together after the Tulare basin flooded in May 2023. This campaign is extremely impactful and shows the power of authenticity in local marketing.

5. Lunar New Year collections

The Lunar New Year is an opportunity for brands across different markets to appeal to the part of their audience that celebrates the Lunar New Year. This form of local marketing focuses on a group of people rather than a specific location. Lunar New Year celebrants are spread across the globe, after all. 

As the Year of the Snake took flight in 2025, a wide array of American brands unveiled captivating Lunar New Year collections to honor the widely-celebrated holiday and resonate with Asian American communities. 

Bvlgari’s new Serpenti 2025 collection featured intricate, multi-faceted watches and fine jewelry that showcased snakes’ ever-changing, shape-shifting identity. Along with this collection, Bvlgari’s hotel and resort properties will each be preparing to launch a special Serpenti Suite to whole-heartedly honor the holiday, just in time for the occasion. 

Beauty brand Charlotte Tilbury launched exclusive packaging adorned with delicate snake motifs for their new Chinese New Year collection lipsticks, offering their customers a touch of festive glamour. Adidas also joined in the festivities by launching an Adidas Originals X Edison Chen pair of shoes featuring a snake skin pattern as well as a pioneering silk print.

6. Gymshark's "Londrette" pop-up solves real community needs

Gymshark created a "Gymshark Londrette" pop-up: a retro laundrette/tailor shop where Hyrox athletes could get their achievement patches stitched onto hoodies during a Bank Holiday event.

This outstanding local activation works because it solves a real community need (what to do with those achievement patches), creates an experience people actually want to share and wait in line for, blends nostalgia with functionality, and partners smartly with complementary brands like GYMSPIN and Puresport while honoring both brand roots and local history.

The best local marketing doesn't feel like marketing at all. It feels like you're giving the community exactly what they didn't know they needed.

7. Ikea uses dialect to promote nNew Malaysian store

For its store in Penang, Malaysia, IKEA developed a local marketing campaign that celebrates the city's culture through the use of wordplay. 

The city's dialect, Hokkien, is used for this local opening campaign. Many Hokkien words end with "Kia", so the campaign uses phonetic similarities between some popular Hokkien words and the word IKEA. 

For example: showing side-by-side images of a chicken and a cabinet with the words “We are not Kay Kia. We are IKEA.” Kay Kia is the Hokkien word for chick. Another execution features a tall guy and the Billy bookcase with the lines “We are not Lo Kha Kia (a tall guy). We are IKEA.”

The campaign was launched on digital, print, social platforms, and Out-of-Home.  This opening campaign is a perfect example of well-executed local marketing; they have immersed themselves in the local culture and designed a quirky, funny, and original campaign based on that. With this campaign, IKEA pays tribute to the culture of Penang, which is a great start in connecting the residents of Penang to the new IKEA store.

8. Neighborhood beers from Singapore's local brewery

In 2022, Singapore's iconic Tiger Beer collaborated with the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) to launch the "Unexpected Singapore" campaign, showcasing the city-state's hidden gems and lesser-known aspects. The campaign featured a series of short films directed by local Singaporean filmmakers, each focusing on a different facet of Singapore's culture, heritage, and modern-day attractions, such as the vibrant street art scene and the thriving indie music community.

To complement the films, Tiger Beer and STB created interactive walking trails and maps that guided visitors through the featured neighborhoods and attractions, offering special promotions at local businesses along the way. The campaign also included limited-edition Tiger Beer packaging featuring artwork by local artists, further emphasizing the connection between the brand and Singapore's creative community.

By partnering with STB and focusing on authentic local stories and experiences, Tiger Beer strengthened its position as a beloved Singaporean brand while supporting the city-state's tourism industry, demonstrating the power of localized marketing in creating a win-win situation for both the brand and the community it serves.

9. Dutch beer brand Bavaria targets local carnival celebrations

Local events are the perfect opportunity to initiate a localized marketing campaign. Bavaria, a Dutch beer brand, created a special campaign specifically targeting the Dutch Carnival, a festive event celebrated primarily in the southern provinces of North Brabant and Limburg.

Bavaria came up with a clever idea that resonated with many carnival enthusiasts in these regions: official days off during the carnival season. The brand launched a campaign called #carnavalvrij (which translates to "a holiday during carnival") and urged all carnival celebrants to sign an online petition. To make the message locally relevant, Bavaria encouraged towns and villages throughout the two provinces to join their campaign. The initiative was widely promoted on social media channels and supported by a national TV commercial.

The campaign was a resounding success, making national headlines for days and sparking conversations throughout North Brabant and Limburg. It even culminated in a large march to The Hague, the administrative capital of the Netherlands. By focusing on a cherished local tradition and aligning their message with the desires of the community, Bavaria captured the hearts of many people in these regions, effectively strengthening its brand position among the local audience. The campaign's content garnered over 4 million views, reaching nearly a quarter of the Dutch population, and generated hundreds of thousands of likes, comments, and shares on social media platforms.

10. Localized McDonald's menus

If we have to mention a textbook example of local marketing where the product range is adapted to different markets, it's the McDonald's menu. Anyone who thinks McDonald's only sells Big Macs, Chicken Nuggets, Cheeseburgers, and McFlurries is wrong. McDonald's has been adapting its range to the countries in which it operates for years. To name a few examples: in Spain, they have the "Patatas Deluxe", in India, the "Dosa Masala Burger", in the Netherlands, the "McKroket", and in South Africa, they have replaced the standard BBQ sauce with the McBraai sauce.

Do you have a multi-location restaurant? Check out these 7 local marketing ideas.

11. Peps Mattresses’ transcreation for India’s diverse markets

Peps Mattresses nailed local marketing by going far beyond simple translation; they embraced transcreation. Instead of running a one-size-fits-all campaign, they developed seven unique ads in five different Indian languages, each reflecting culturally specific, highly relatable sleep scenarios:

• A couple sleeping so well that their child misses the school bus
• A wife waking up from her husband’s mattress movements
• A newlywed bride nervously hopes her mother-in-law doesn’t overhear the “oohs and aahs” (yes, from the mattress comfort, obviously)  

The campaign started in Tamil and Malayalam, then was "transcreated with heart" for other markets. They understood that different regions have different ways of expressing humor, different family dynamics, and different cultural references around sleep and relationships, and they made sure to reflect that in every version. While competitors shouted features, Peps whispered emotional truths. Their soft, story-driven approach showed that quiet authenticity often outperforms loud generalization. 

Key takeaway for brands: Localization isn’t about copy-pasting a campaign with city-name swaps. True impact comes from understanding local behaviors, humor, and values. Peps shows that when you speak to people in their own cultural language — and not just their spoken one — you win hearts and attention. 

12. Royal Caribbean Mother's Day campaign

International cruise line brand Royal Caribbean already has different social media accounts for the different countries in which it operates, which is already a good strategy when localizing your marketing.

However, Royal Caribbean searched for a European social media strategy that took the markets' particularities into account while following the same strategy for each country. For their Mother's Day campaign, they came up with typical "mother's phrases" linked to experiences within the ship that users could enjoy. Many brands would roll out the same content in different languages, but Royal Caribbean adapted the content to the particular market: the phrases were culturally adapted to the most commonly used "mother's phrases" for each country, equalizing the overall concept particularity of each market. A simple execution of a smart social media strategy by delving into the local market to localize and personalize the content. 

Source: Goodrebels.com

13. Share a coke in China

In 2017, Coca-Cola launched a localized version of its globally successful "Share a Coke" campaign in China. The original campaign, which featured popular names and phrases printed on Coca-Cola bottles and cans, was adapted to suit the unique cultural context of the Chinese market.

Instead of using individual names, Coca-Cola China printed popular Chinese nicknames and phrases on its packaging, such as "Classmate," "Close Friend," and "Sweetheart." These terms resonated with the Chinese audience, reflecting the importance of social relationships and hierarchy in Chinese culture.

Source: ogilvy.com

To further localize the campaign, Coca-Cola partnered with Chinese social media platforms WeChat and QQ, allowing users to customize virtual Coca-Cola bottles with their own nicknames and share them with friends and family. This digital integration tapped into the immense popularity of social media in China and encouraged user-generated content and engagement.

The localized "Share a Coke" campaign was a huge success in China, with sales volume increasing by 19% compared to the previous summer. The campaign's social media popularity also helped strengthen Coca-Cola's brand presence and consumer engagement in the Chinese market.

14. Snickers: the best global local campaign ever? 

The Snickers "You're not you when you're hungry" campaign, running for an impressive 6.5 years across 58 markets, is arguably the best example of a global brand campaign that was brilliantly adapted and executed in local markets to ensure cultural relevance. 

From the iconic Betty White Super Bowl ad in the United States, which generated a staggering 91 days of media coverage worth $28.6 million, to the innovative "Hungerithm" promotion in Australia that monitored the mood of the internet and offered discounts on Snickers when the internet was "hungry," each market put its own spin on the global idea, making it resonate with local consumers.

In Puerto Rico, the campaign featured popular DJs playing out-of-character music until an announcer revealed that the DJ was hungry and needed a Snickers, reaching 3.2 million people. The United Kingdom leveraged timely tweets, such as one related to Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson's infamous bust-up with a BBC producer, generating 5,000 retweets and 390,000 media impressions. The Snickers "You're not you when you're hungry" campaign demonstrates the power of a universal insight that can be adapted to local cultures, resulting in a truly global success story.

15. Metro trains Melbourne's viral hit: the "Dumb Ways to Die" campaign

Another creative local marketing campaign that gained significant attention was the "Dumb Ways to Die" campaign by Metro Trains in Melbourne, Australia. The campaign aimed to promote rail safety and reduce accidents on Metro Trains' network. They created a catchy song and an animated video featuring colorful characters dying in various absurd ways, with the message that the dumbest way to die is by being careless around trains.

The campaign went viral, receiving millions of views on YouTube and spawning a successful mobile game. By using humor and a localized approach targeting Melbourne residents, Metro Trains effectively delivered a serious message about train safety while engaging its audience. The campaign's success demonstrates how a well-executed local marketing strategy can not only resonate with the target audience but also have a global impact.