What makes a great 'tentpole' marketing campaign?
January is the best time to plan your 2026 tentpole. Have you got one in the diary yet?
Budgets are still fresh, clients are open to 'new year chats', and you’ve still got time to build something ambitious without it turning into a last-minute scramble. Done well, a tentpole becomes an engagement magnet: one central campaign that concentrates attention and creates momentum for weeks, and sometimes even years!
From key 'moments' like Vogue's Met Gala, Apple's product launches to John Lewis's Xmas adverts all keep their customers waiting to see whats announced across channels, year on year. The best ones aren’t just big. They’re intentional: multi-format, cross-team, and launched with a proper activation plan.
Here are five tentpole project ideas to get you started!
Ocean Hour Farm's Composting Guide
Ocean Hour Farm — Educational resources for a whole state
Not every tentpole has to be an event. Sometimes the strongest tentpole is a definitive resource that earns trust.
For 11th Hour Farm, the Composting Guide was a large-scale build combining research, copywriting, illustration built into a beginners guide — designed as a PDF for local schools as well as a digital 'scrollytelling' piece to share globally it made complex topic feel approachable and genuinely useful.
From the initial PDF, the campaign went on to be launched on OOH ads on billboards, bus stops and water stations at festivals to share the message of ocean health.
Why it works: it’s evergreen and campaignable. You can relaunch it seasonally, expand it, update it, and keep it performing.
Link: https://composting.hlabs.co.uk/
Aldar — Annual reports that share stories too
We’ve built Aldar’s digital annual report for four years in a row (alongside Emperor our partner agency) and the scopes grown year on year to include more stories.
When annual reporting is treated as a tentpole (not just a compliance document), it becomes a single, high-importance moment that can anchor wider comms and stakeholder storytelling. You can gate the content to download, add to newsletter and reduce to a teaser for online skimming to capture attention too.
Why it works: it’s time-bound, senior attention is already there, and it’s naturally suited to rich storytelling (data, narrative, video, interactive summaries).
Atlas Obscura — “Where to Wander” an annual travelling ritual
Atlas Obscura’s yearly Where to Wander campaign is a perfect example of a tentpole designed to repeat — similar energy to Condé Nast Traveller’s “Hot List”, but reimagined with more immersive functionality.
It’s an immersive, updateable, with a Webflow CMS, and features interactive maps, carousel randomiser and linked to editorial storytelling pages.
Why it works: it’s recognisable year-on-year, scalable, and has built-in replay-ability
Kiwi.com — User generated content for a year
Kiwi.com’s Travel Hackers competition flips the production model: the audience becomes the engine.
Travellers submit video entries for Instagram/TikTok, driving global reach while creating a library of reusable content, all for the chance to win
Why it works: participation creates distribution, and the campaign output keeps paying off long after launch.
What’s a Rich Text element?
The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
Static and dynamic content editing
A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!
How to customize formatting for each rich text
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
Quanta Magazine — Super specific insight on a singular topic
Quanta has trusted us to collaborate on their hero tentpoles, two years running: the first being The Unraveling of Space-Time.
The approach wasn’t just “one article”. It was multiple pieces of crafted editorial, collated into a central no-code illustrated hub, supported across socials and homepage takeovers. Every Quanta touchpoint was considered for their audience.
Why it works: it feels like an event, rewards depth, and builds anticipation when it becomes a series.
3 things that make tentpoles work
- Build a clear “home base” - A tentpole needs one central destination — hub, microsite, interactive report, guide — that everything else points back to. Without that, the campaign fragments.
- Design it as multi-format + cross-team from day one - The strongest tentpoles combine formats (words, visuals, video/audio, data, interactive) and involve multiple departments. That’s what makes them feel “big”, and it massively improves distribution.
- Treat launch like a product release - Have the activation plan ready before you finish production: channel plan, schedule, cutdowns, email modules, press angles, and “week 2” content — not just launch day.
If you’ve got a big moment this year HLabs can help turn it into an engagement magnet that really delivers.
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