Between all the strategic pre-game leaks, Twitter’s Ad Scrimmage, and the NBC/YouTube partnership that created the Ad Blitz channel, the actual 30-second Super Bowl on-air spot is now the center of a more prolonged, immersive advertising experience. Often these experiences are so focused on the spectacle or story of a campaign that the real merit of the brand gets lost in them.
Marketers have done a great job of capitalizing on the one opportunity each year where people are actually anxious for commercials. And in turn, an estimated 54% of those watching last year’s game were actually more excited for the ad breaks than the game itself, according to a 2011 study by Harris Interactive.
But where advertisers think they’re speaking to people asking to be “advertised to,” most viewers are really just anticipating a series of performances.The commercials that people generally “love” (the ones that will appear on most bloggers’ “Top 10” list and the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter) aren’t the most effective, they’re just the most entertaining. While raw amusement is awesome for viewers (who doesn’t want to watch a series of 30-second comedies?), most of today’s Super Bowl commercials probably aren’t getting the job done for brands.
For a spot to be at its most effective and worth its $3.5 million price tag, it has to do more than entertain. It has to tell a worthwhile story about the brand in a way that gets attention for an appropriate reason. It also has to teach us something about the honest values and unique feel of the company it promotes.And it has to do all this strongly enough to inspire us to engage with that brand in the future, not just re-visit its commercial on YouTube.That’s an important distinction that often gets overlooked on this night.Pure entertainment gets the most hype (and yes, leads to temporary brand awareness) but it takes more than that to win true fans.
After the game (or now, since you’ve probably seen most of the commercials already), we’d love to hear your thoughts on which brands had the most effective commercials (not just the ones that made you laugh the hardest).In turn, we’ll share our own thoughts in an upcoming post. Comment below, on Facebook or tweet @wolffolins.
To watch the commercials with a more critical eye this year, here are a few fundamental characteristics to consider:
Is it entertaining? Is this commercial captivating enough to get a million views on YouTube?Does it put you in a good mood?It could be funny, surprising, dramatic or just plain cute, but a Super Bowl commercial today needs to meet a baseline level of entertainment just to meet viewers’ lofty expectations.
At its best: Audi’s “Escape from Old Luxury” (2011)- This commercial was funny, a tiny bit suspenseful, and in the end, staked out a real position for the brand.It proved that a commercial can use comedy without being completely empty.
Is it emotionally on brand?Did watching the commercial give you the same feeling you get when you’re in that brand’s store, using/consuming its products, and reading about its actions in the news?The commercial should create expectations that are in line with the rest of the brand experience and make a case for the importance of the brand’s own values in people’s lives.
At its best: Google’s “Parisian Love” (2010)- In addition to showing how easy and helpful its search features are, this spot simply oozed of the optimism and delight that characterizes Google at its best.
Is it Inspiring?Did the commercial realistically change your behavior?Did you quickly look up the new Mercedes models after (or even during?) the game?Did you buy a Pepsi Max the next day because you remembered it has zero calories?Did you rethink the value of an electric car?A spot doesn’t need to lead directly to a sale but it should inspire a viewer to do more than just watch it again and again.
At its best: Chrysler’s “Imported From Detroit” (2011) - Though I didn’t buy a car last year, this commercial definitely changed my perception of the brand, as well as the American auto industry as a whole.The day after the game, I remember spending a few hours reading all about the revitalization of Detroit, almost entirely due to the fact that I saw this commercial.
Time Warner is opening a 9,600-square foot media laboratory in Manhattan today, to research and analyze how people consume media and respond to advertising. Viewer-specimens will play games on iPads and watch 3D TV in a faux living room with infrared cameras that record their actions in the dark.
Time Warner and other media companies have always relied on consumer research to see how viewers might respond to new programming, but the intention with this new lab is really to partner with marketers to test how consumers experience and respond to advertising as part of today’s new media landscape. Time Warner hopes the lab’s Madison Avenue location will lure marketing partners into working with them.
So far, some big brands seem receptive. The New York Times quotes L’Oréal USA CMO Marc Speichert:
“As we continue to think about how the media landscape is changing and how to best prepare for it, having a lab down the street is extremely helpful.”
The lab costs anywhere from $50,000 for basic focus groups to $120,000 for research using biometrics. CNN and HBO are on board and marketing executives from MediaVest and WPP’s GroupM have already toured the facility.
This blog has often talked about the tidal wave of Big Data and a macrotrend we call #QuantifyMe, a recent, but persistent consumer hunger for metrics, dashboards, and data about their personal activities. For brands, being smart about Big Data is the next major challenge. In an increasingly quantifiable business world, where technology has become deeply personal, the most accurate consumer engagement and experience metrics remain a sort of holy grail of market intelligence.
Now, Time Warner’s lab can get businesses one creepy step closer. If you are a media-consuming specimen at the lab, a biometric belt and recording device will transmit your heart rate, skin temperature and facial reactions to marketers and researchers, so they can decipher your “engagement” as you watch TV, play a video game, or swipe through a branded iPad app. In other rooms, your eye movements will be tracked and a two-way mirror will be used to look over your shoulder as you browse the web or make selections in a fake grocery store.
Some have raised that Manhattan’s heartbeats and sweat might not represent the best cross section of American consumers. Then again, maybe the new methods are enough to put traditional focus groups and industry research to shame.
The lab is so new, we’re yet to see reporting of any great insights or projects it’s inspired. Ok Time Warner, we’re watching you…
This post was originally published on Morgan Holt’s Digital Content Blog. For for of his thinking, follow @MorganUK.
How does the News International brand stay alive? It is clearly suffering, and the risks — as The Times in particular seems to have recognised — is that the weight of the News of the World could drag all the company’s assets down with it. The brand damage for the group isn’t for focused on the group, but on the sum of its parts. And the pay wall has made recovery more difficult than ever.
Brands take years to build and moments to destroy. The tarnishing happens very fast in today’s media environment because digital media has made the flow of news and personal opinion almost effortless:
Stories are heavily linked
Readers have a strong social voice
News is not limited by space or time, so is always looking for something new to say
All of which makes it painfully difficult for any organisation that is experiencing negative PR to respond to the situation.So it’s even more painful when a media organisation like The Times is not able to cash in its positive investments when it needs them.
Times writers like Caitlin Moran and Matthew Parris are much-loved by readers and have a healthy digital presence. They have been nurtured by their employer and are now powerful, effective (and very funny) voices in the digital space. Unfortunately, they are handcuffed in their ability to remind the public that The Times brand is independent of the mucky world of its sister title. They discuss their personal views but they cannot make that discussion a part of their employer’s own voice because they cannot link behind the paywall. I have written about how paywalls limit non-commercial benefits elsewhere.
Media companies do themselves a valuable service when they invest in talent. New journalists are promoted to leads, to section heads, to columnists and to eminent ‘voices’ of the title. They are promoted because they are loved by their audiences.
In good times these voices amplify the goodwill their audiences feel; and in bad times they reassure audiences (and potential audiences) that they are valuable.
Social is the most powerful tool any organisation has to redress negative PR, but News International has cut itself off from the conversation. The talent that it has invested in are cut off as spokespeople for the title.
Creating a definition of the word brand seems to be both the easiest and perhaps the hardest thing to do. The challenge is not that the existing definitions aren’t correct (or more accurately weren’t correct). The challenge is that the environment in which brands live is inherently Darwinian.
As the environment changes brands must adapt. Once brands have adapted enough then what you get are effectively new species - entities unlike what have gone before and that must now be defined in completely new ways.
This has been a constant process over time, but I think we could now define ourselves as being in the third age of brand.
1. USP
The first age was the product age. The environment was post war baby boom America and the defining factor was the rapid growth of the middle class.
In this age brands were built from functional attributes of the product, which spawned the concept of the Unique Selling Proposition or USP.
The technology that enabled this age of brand was television and the platform was television advertising.
In this age the Creative Director was invented and their role was to find creative ways to communicate this USP to the consuming public at large.
2. ESP
The second age was the marketing age. The environment was one of 1980’s excess and the growing demands of Generation X.
In this age the realization was that functional attributes were not enough. It spawned the concept of the Emotional Selling Proposition or ESP, which was defined through the mechanism of Brand Positioning - the technique of identifying and then owning an emotional territory for the brand.
The technology that enabled this age of brand was the desktop PC and the platform was consumer research.
In this age the Account Planner was invented, and their role was to more deeply understand consumer wants and needs in order to understand which emotions to manipulate for each of the brands audiences.
The second age represented a logical progression from the first. Marketing followed product. The connective tissue was that brand owners retained an information advantage relative to brand consumers. In both these ages an information asymmetry benefited the brand owner at the expense of the brand consumer.
3. XSP
Today we are in the third age, the experience age. The environment is one of unprecedented choice and transparency and the defining factor is a fickle Gen Y audience who demand more from less.
In this age brands must be built around their Experiential Selling Proposition (XSP). Unlike the simplicity of USP’s and ESP’s, the transparency of the third age demands that brands manage complex systems of value - understanding how all of the actions of the brand owner (product/service, societal, environmental, technological, marketing) interrelate to create the experience.
The technology that enables this age is the Internet and the platform is Social Media.
The definitive role that this age will invent is not yet clear, but so far we see Innovation leaders, Engagement leaders, Digital leaders, Social Media leaders and Experience leaders.
The fundamental and exciting shift is that the third age represents a sea change from the other two.
The brand owner no longer benefits from an information asymettry over the consumer. Instead this relationship has been reversed. As such, the old rules and indeed the very definition of how brands must behave in order to succeed has also changed.
The tools of brand positioning and advertising that have held such strength for so many years must now be replaced by both new tools and new rules.
XSP demands integration of product, service, social, environmental and marketing layers. It demands the creation of value across the system of the brand. And fundamentally it is built from a trust that brand owners will have to earn from their consumers on a daily basis.
The implications of this change for many brand advisers are potentially dire. Entire industries optimized for the more effective communication of a brands ESP now find themselves facing a systemic decline in efficacy and indeed value.
This will mean one of two things:
1. Brand advisers will need to focus less effort on how a brand communicates its ESP through marketing communications, instead focusing their efforts on helping brands to innovate across the entire system of the brand in order to generate revenue driving XSP.
2. Brand advisers who choose to remain focused on marketing communications will need to find ways of innovating and re-engineering their business model and offer for a lower value, lower fee world. Seeking structural change to create value both for themselves and the brand owner.
Wolff Olins have chosen to follow the first path: Our focus is increasingly on helping brands create new revenues and new value across the entire system of the experience.
Victors and Spoils on the other hand appears to represents an innovative new model designed to deliver the second.
Whichever model wins, whoever defines the new role(s) that will represent the third age, there is no doubt that this is an incredibly exciting time to play.
We may even get a new definition of what a brand is.
So Cadbury’s have now decided to go one step further with their Dairy Milk ads and have released their first ever single, along with a full-length music video (see above).
I’m surprised more brands haven’t released more music. I can only think of Levis with Flat Eric … there must be some others. Always strikes me that brands with great stories can do more to spread the word and celebrate what’s special about them.
Anyways, back to this one. The video and track are as random and wonderful as ‘Gorilla’ and ‘Eyebrows’. Full of optimism, joy and cheekiness… music is a big part of the Dairy Milk expression but this time it’s not classics from Phil Collins or Queen.
‘Glass and a Half Full’ Productions have teamed up with Ghanian superstar Tinny to create ‘Zingolo’. A track that very much captures the heart and soul of Ghanian music and culture. The idea is about celebrating Dairy Milk’s Fairtrade status… didn’t even know it was Fairtrade…. as well as Ghana, the heart of their Fairtrade cocoa.
All profits from the single will go to CARE International, a charity that will fund education programmes in cocoa communities in Ghana.
It was with great interest that I read the current issue of BusinessWeek, and in particular their article on Amazon entitled “Marketing is for Dummies”.
In it, they claim that Amazon refused to contribute to the article because executives there “don’t spend much time on branding.” An interesting statement, yes, but in reality I’d say that Amazon actually spend a tremendous amount of time on branding, just not in the traditional way.
To quote the article: “By investing back in the user experience, you get high loyalty and repeat usage.” To me, this is branding.
As our world changes, the idea of branding is also changing. In an open-source environment where Google, YouTube and indeed Amazon are the first places where people go to check out what brands really offer, then the traditional idea of ‘branding’ through image making (logo’s, identities, advertising campaigns etc) will continue to deliver lower value relative to investments in innovation, platforms and increasing the overall utility offered to the consumer.
In case we needed any more evidence, Amazon demonstrates that this truly is a world where what you do matters much more than what you say.
Beautiful ad for the Swiss snowboard apparel company Zimtstern directed by Marco Lutz. There is also a video in this link with a making of video, shows how amazing things can be created with a lot passion and hard work from a team and a brand willing to take the risk.
