The statistics, on their face, are sobering.
According to Fortune (2016): One ad research firm estimates that 80% of Super Bowl commercials do not boost sales or purchase intent. A survey by marketing analytics agency Adlucent shows that 87% of viewers who watch Super Bowl ads are doing so solely for entertainment or social purposes, and only 6% watch to discover new brands, products, or services. Less than 1% watch to influence any kind of purchasing.And, as we all know, Super Bowl Ads to not come cheap. The same Fortune piece estimates "$5 million for a 30-second spot, and over the last 10 years, the average cost of an ad spot has increased by 75%."
With those kinds of dollars on the line, it's obviously critical that companies plan and execute campaigns that maximize the benefit of expenditure. In today's marketing world, social media buzz generated from Super Bowl ads has to be considered as an essential component of deciding whether any given ad was a winner or loser...doesn't it? And wouldn't one think that in the places where the social media "rules" are followed--focusing on engaging people and stories, not traditional push advertising--there'd be the most success?
And this is where what I call "the weird mix" comes in. Super Bowl ads come from the tradition of product-marketing. Push folks right to what you sell. Social media users eschew that type of pitch. So, how does a company achieve necessary social media buzz with a Superbowl ad?
The Right Mix & Timing Wins
Super Bowl 50's "ad wars" really highlight the way social media has shifted us from what Scott (2015) calls old rules, to the new rules. Under the old rules, creativity truly ruled the day. If any of us think back over many years of Super Bowl commercials, the ones with the most "stickiness" stand out in our minds. We had our personal favorites, and entertainment value reigned. With social media, timing mattered more this year than simple creativity. Many of the companies that created buzz prior to, during, and after the game itself came out as winners.
Jeep
Jeep boldly optimized for mobile, as evidenced in this screenshot from AdWeek (2016):
AdWeek calls it "radical in its format" and reports that spot creator iris's Sean Reynolds wanted to focus television viewers on the eyes in the shots, while also creating something that "would look great" on mobile devices.
But looking great on mobile, YouTube, etc. doesn't a great ad make. AdWeek also called the spot emotionally "evocative." Ah, the happy marriage between creating something that will play well digitally yet still stir the human emotions that creative ads always could.
Esurance
This Forbes (2016) piece is a must read. It analyzes how esurance "engineered" the massive social media mentions it garnered with a sweepstakes during the Super Bowl.
This Forbes (2016) piece is a must read. It analyzes how esurance "engineered" the massive social media mentions it garnered with a sweepstakes during the Super Bowl.
For me, perhaps the biggest win here is that esurance leveraged social media to win--without payingfor a spot during the Super Bowl.
According to Forbes: As of Monday morning, Esurance said the sweepstakes, which end tonight, generated about 2.5 million hashtag mentions and 1.5 billion impressions. Esurance managed to dominate ad-related hashtags without any in-game TV commercials or official NFL sponsorship.esurance did great lead up to the big game, great social sharing (with the public doing most of thepassing along) during the game, and follow-up after.
A quick look at esurance's past social media efforts shows not a whole lot of great story telling. Yet,they sought (and I would argue found) the emotional connection they were seeking with a good old-fashioned sweepstakes, coupled with a deft social media campaign.
Here is an example of making that personal connection on Twitter:
One More Thing to Consider: Does Ad Success = Social Mentions?
And Do Mentions = Profits?
While ad folks and financial directors, alike, continue to analyze who won and lost short and longterm in this Super Bowl's ad wars, it's interesting to note that social mentions don't always aligncompletely with marketing success stories.
Forbes shares an analysis of social mentions on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Check out some of the surprising "winner and losers" by that measure alone, here.
References
AdWeek. (February 2016). Why Jeep ran a vertical ad on the Super Bowl with 112 million watching horizontal screens. AdWeek. Retrieved from: http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/why-jeep-ran-vertical-ad-super-bowl-112-million-watching-horizontal-screens-169555
Archer, J. (8 February 2016). Super Bowl 50 ad wars. forbes.com. Retrieved from:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/#1b3ef99b58e9
Chaykowski, K. (8 February 2016). How esurance engineered its way to winning the hashtag bowl. Retrieved from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2016/02/08/how-esurance-engineered-its-way-to-winning-the-hashtag-bowl/#719492ad266e
Chew, J. (2016 February). Here's what spending millions on a Super Bowl ad gets you. Fortune. Retrieved from: http://fortune.com/2016/02/06/super-bowl-ads/
Scott, D. M. (2015). The new rules of marketing & PR. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Chew, J. (2016 February). Here's what spending millions on a Super Bowl ad gets you. Fortune. Retrieved from: http://fortune.com/2016/02/06/super-bowl-ads/
Scott, D. M. (2015). The new rules of marketing & PR. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
April,
ReplyDeleteGreat link at the end of your post! It's interesting to look at some of those rankings after the discussions we've been having this week. Colleen went into detail on the Colgate ad on her blog and it looks like the Forbes article reinforces some of the discussion we have been having over on her blog. Although they may be getting some social mentions, it seems they are not doing a good job to respond, which could impact their profits like you mention. I have to wonder how Esurance would land on that Forbes chart if they were measuring both the ads that aired on TV and the ads that "aired" on social only.
I really liked the Jeep ad - like you mention the old rules around creativity, I think the Jeep ad is a perfect representation of the new rule - People want authenticity, not spin (Scott, 2015). For me that ad was authentic as it gets - the real (and many) faces of Jeep.
Scott, D.M. (2015). The New Rules of Marketing and PR. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Trista, you raise a great point about responsiveness. I would carry the point even more broadly to a discussion of how brands maximize (or neglect) key opportunities. Timeliness can now be measured in minutes--often not hours and certainly not days. A company can invest heavily in something like a Super Bowl ad, appear to be gaining traction from it, and then through a lack of digital follow-up truly squander a tremendous opportunity. Thanks for the insight.
ReplyDeleteApril, I can't imagine spending all that money for a Superbowl ad and not following through with the follow-up!!
DeleteApril,
ReplyDeleteColleen brought up a great point over on my blog about Pantene. They seemed to "win" in many peoples' eyes the Super Bowl ad for being one of the more memorable ones, but they have fallen flat on their website and not completely reinforced it on social media. While they have a presence, it's not as strong as it could be. I, too, mentioned Jeep. I felt they did a good job of putting together social media, the product, and the viewers. Esurance was an interesting one. I guess I didn't realize they didn't have an ad during the Super Bowl. So many people were talking about them after, that you would have thought they did!
The percentages you mentioned at the top are not shocking to me, but rather surprising that companies still pay that much to influence purchase, if about 1% act on it. I work in television news, and advertising is what pays the bills. Our ad salespeople work hard to get ads on television. I think companies are realizing they have to do more than just put an ad on TV. They have to put it on social media, they have to push it out before the big game (like the Bud Light commercials on the Today Show days before the Super Bowl), and they have to have memorable ads they take them further. You asked if social mentions = profits? I think the answer is yes. As Sami mentioned in her post, I watch Netflix and flip channels during commercials and check my phone. On my Twitter account are paid for ads, that I am forced to see. They have influenced me in several ways to buy a product. Or just a tweet back or a "like" from a company could make the difference if I buy their product! Great post and thanks for getting me thinking about how ads impact us and their engagement factor!
Allison - I didn't realize until after that they didn't have an either! I saw their name a lot, but assumed they had an ad airing. Smart on their part to save all that money!
DeleteI find the esurance example really interesting. This to me is the epitome of a successful social experience. While there were a lot of great ads and brand campaigns during the Super Bowl I thought a lot of them lacked good social follow-through. The live tweeting experience with well planned content and a focus around user engagement are what made it so successful. In David Scott's book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR, he talks about the key being a complete focus on the buyers of your product/service. Devoting your attention to them will pay off in the long run. Esurance's campaign wasn't about a car insurance quote, it was about a sweepstakes giving away money in exchange for people's time and social attention. Did it generate a bunch of insurance quotes during the Super Bowl, doubtful, but the successful engagement is surely to leave consumers with a different perspective of esurance and that may be enough to maybe, put them in the running the next time that audience is shopping around for insurance.
ReplyDeleteApril,
ReplyDeleteWhat a great discussion! This fits really well into what we've learned so far in previous classes, that measurement is, in some ways, harder than ever. While it's true that most people aren't watching the super bowl to get an idea of what to buy, people rarely ever deliberately look at ads. What those articles call "entertainment value" may also be described as top-of-mind recall. The longer people remember the commercial, the more it gets shared and talked about, the more people that company can reach. The more it can reach and stick in someone's mind longer, the better chance they have to be the company people turn to when they do think of buying a product in their category.
I do think something a lot of advertisers this year missed were the personal connections. People like to do business with companies they like on a personal level; Jeep had that, but so many others did not. And Esurance definitely showed that, if the way they dominated social media during time slots their ads were not running is any indication.