9 Successful PR Campaign Examples, According to the Data

This list is a real mixed bag of PR examples – from newsjacking, to content repurposing, exclusive research, and kooky brand stunts – but one thing they all have in common is measurable success.

In each section, I’ll do a post-mortem of campaign performance, share some analysis tactics, and round-off with a couple of quick tips.

Sound good? Let’s jump in.

This is another great PR example of a brand capitalizing on a film, and waiting for post-event discussion to pick up before newsjacking.

Following a veerryy controversial bath scene in the film Saltburn, UK cosmetics retailer, Lush, jumped on the opportunity to insert their brand into a cultural moment.

In February 2024, three months after the film’s release, they released the “Saltbomb”, a special edition, Saltburn-themed bath bomb.

Parodying some of the film’s most risqué moments, Lush didn’t hold back with their product marketing.

And we loved it.

The campaign led to 135 links, many coming from high DR (Domain Rating) publications, driving real, tangible organic traffic – including Global News, New York Times, Pop Sugar, and BBC.

Press coverage actually went above and beyond this, because Lush’s products are part of a few publisher affiliate programs – but affiliate links are a little trickier to track.

Here’s an example of what I mean.

The site Allure wrote up a feature piece on the Lush bath bomb, but their affiliate link navigates to a third-party platform before redirecting to Lush’s product page.

For that reason, the link doesn’t show up in Ahrefs’ Backlinks Report.

Instead, I found it by monitoring campaign-specific keywords in Content Explorer.

Beyond press and affiliate publicity, the Lush PR campaign was a winner on social media.

The photography and product descriptions made it perfect for meme-ification, which added thousands of views and impressions.

It also won big in search, with global keyword volume reaching 1.3K…

And the product landing page earned up to 800 monthly organic visits in its first month.

Traffic has remained steady since, averaging between 500 – 600 monthly visits, despite the product having been archived – pretty good going for a bit of trendjacking.

Every year, Pinterest taps into their internal platform search data to post their trend forecasts in what is known as “Pinterest Predicts”.

Real estate marketplace, Zillow, surveyed 1,815 homeowners and found that those with lower mortgage rates are twice as likely to stay put vs selling their home.

By creating firsthand research tackling an issue close to their audience’s heart, Zillow earned 235 backlinks from the likes of Bloomberg, Yahoo, FoxBusiness, and Money.com.

Sites referenced the survey for multiple reasons; not just quoting one stat, but a whole variety, as evidenced in the anchor text of their backlinks.

LinkedIn tends to keep their data under lock and key, but in their Future of Work report they released proprietary insights on the growth of AI conversations on the platform, plus the impact of AI on careers.

A great example of exclusive PR, LinkedIn’s report made a splash, landing 383 links in Forbes, Microsoft, Harvard Business Review, and CNET.

Personal finance company, WalletHub, compared the 150 largest metropolitan statistical areas, or MSAs, across 11 key metrics.

Combining primary data with third-party sources like the U.S. Census Bureau, GreatSchools.org, and Yelp, WalletHub created an interactive study ranking the most and least educated cities in America.

This is an example of a PR campaign that doubles as great content marketing.

It snagged 604 unique backlinks from heavy hitters like Wikipedia, Forbes, Business Insider, Bloomberg, and Yahoo – as well as tons of state publications.

Location based PR campaigns are an especially powerful form of PR, since they have both local and national appeal.

Krispy Kreme rode the wave of Olympic interest this year by developing two special edition doughnuts: “Go USA” and “Passport to Paris”.

As we’ve seen already, popular PR campaigns don’t always neatly track back to the sources you’d expect them to.

Krispy Kreme earned only 11 links to their USA doughnut press release, and 20 to their Paris doughnut launch announcement. Not exactly groundbreaking.

But when you filter for mentions of campaign keywords (e.g. “Go USA” and “Paris”) at the domain-level, you find a whole lot more coverage; 95 links, to be precise, from major publications like Yahoo, USA Today, People, and the Food Network.

The special edition doughnuts also drive a cool 45K monthly searches, according to the Matching Terms report in Keywords Explorer.

This next PR example is a campaign of multiple parts. It began with a pair of McDonald’s themed Crocs, and has extended to a full blown footwear collection…

And a novelty product: McDonald’s happy meal mini-crocs keyring.

The coordinated PR campaign has generated huge awareness for both brands, but tracking all the fragmented assets is no mean feat.

To get a better idea of overall brand awareness, I opted instead to search for co-citations at the domain level.

Searching in the Backlinks report, I applied filters for each brand name in the other’s backlink profile.

McDonald’s earned 260 links for “Crocs” related content, but Crocs was the real winner, landing 416 links for “McDonald’s” related press from media goliaths like Business Insider, Fast Company, and Entrepreneur.

From studying the campaign’s individual assets, I noticed something interesting: social posts have the ability to attract links.

Duolingo leaned into their weird yet wonderful brand of marketing with a hilarious superbowl ad featuring Duo, the brand’s menacing owl character.

In 5 (wild) seconds, we witness the explosion of Duo’s butt, and the growth of a mini Duo in its place, accompanied by a reminder to do our Duo Lingo lesson.

The ad creative was repurposed from a widget design that went semi-viral – Duo Lingo knew it worked, so they built on it.

And in a stroke of coordinated PR genius, they simultaneously sent out a push-notification to app users as soon as the ad went live.

“We decided to pair the ad with a coordinated push notification, which would hit learners’ phones right after the commercial aired, reinforcing the idea that Duo is always watching 👀.”

The YouTube commercial has earned 5M views and 130 links from Gizmodo, Lifehacker, and Indy100.

Plus 24M plays on TikTok.

I spent a lot of time:

There were so many awesome examples of PR, but I narrowed it down to the ones that drove either press mentions, links, search volume, traffic, or all of the above.

The best PR campaigns aren’t just about links. They’re about creating conversations, driving awareness, and making a lasting impact on your audience.

Here’s a quick recap of some of the top takeaways:

• Time it right: Launch your campaigns when conversations peak
• Tap into unique data: Use exclusive insights to stand out
• Track holistically: Monitor links, mentions, searches, and social
• Rank and compare: Engage multiple audience “tribes” through rankings
• Take a local angle: Analyze multiple locations to win more press
• Collaborate creatively: Brand partnerships can amplify your reach
• Repurpose winners: Turn successful content into new campaigns

Success is predicated on a campaign meeting its goal(s), and while we don’t know exactly what these brands set out to achieve, their campaigns have enjoyed results that most of us would be pretty happy with.

Hopefully they’ve given you some inspiration for your next project.