Last year when I spoke at a TEDx conference on reinventing marketing, I asked what I thought at the time was a relatively innocent question: "how many people in the audience feel that marketing is adding something positive to the world around them?" Of the few hands that went up, the majority came from people in marketing ... underscoring a gulf that has exponentially multipled in the 16 months since that talk. Today people around the world are launching full occupying demonstrations against big corporate brands and new research points to the US as the only country to see trust in all institutions decline from 2010 to 2011. The bottom line is we are fully into a modern believability crisis.
And it is not just a crisis for marketing people either. When we live in a world where people become skeptical of everything around them and wary of any type of manipulation, we all lose. Society itself becomes a tougher place to interact with others and survive in. People only consume news they agree with, compromise is seen as surrender and the bickering of politicians becomes just a precursor to a similar toxic dissent which may start to invade the rest of our lives and interactions.
If this seems like a doomsday scenario, the good news is that this week signs of hope emerged from some very unexpected places:
Though certainly colored by politics, Bill Clinton's new book Back To Work was profiled in yesterday's New York Times. In the review, reporter Michiko Kakutani says that Clinton "serves up a succinct common-sense argument for why America needs a strong national government, why both spending cuts and increased tax revenues are necessary for addressing the debt problem."
Also this week, communications agency Havas Media released a global study which showed that "only 20% of brands have a notable positive impact on our sense of wellbeing and quality of life." In the research which polled 50,000 people in 14 countries, they found that "most people would not care if 70% of brands ceased to exist (and in the US alone this number goes up to 82%)."
In a related point, they found that "nearly 85% of consumers worldwide expect companies to become actively involved in solving these issues (an increase of 15% from 2010)." The underlying message of the research is that companies must find a way to stand for more than just the products they make. The impact they have on the world around them is becoming increasingly important to increasing customer loyalty.
Today I am speaking and participating in BrandsConf, a conference all about how brands can rediscover their humanity. More than two dozen speakers will share their thoughts in short bursts of 5 or 10 minutes each on how to add more humanity to the way that large organizations communicate. It could not have come at a better time. This idea of more human brands is closely related to why companies matter more to people. Yes, a big part of it is how you choose to do business in the world and whether it is sustainable and responsible. The other important piece, however, is the people who represent your brand and the human connection they can offer.
The real battle today isn't one of perception ... but one of meaning. In a sense, this is the big problem I am writing a book about how to solve (Likeonomics) - and one that the many speakers today will likely cover. Ultimately solving it will require a new level of organizational vulnerability and commitment for them to be more human and more honest. Honesty creates trust, and trust leads to us changing the culture of business and our culture itself.
I saw this first hand last week at the Opportunity Nation Summit as well, where business, religious, political and media leaders came together to talk about the importance for all of us to create a nation of opportunity for everyone. For too long, as the summit shared, the zip code you are born in determines our future. That shouldn't be the case. Business has an important role to play in this revolution ... and it isn't to sit back and let the attacks fly.
In a skeptical world where honesty has become the most unexpected thing of all ... making your brand meaningful to your consumer's life comes first from finding a way to tell the truth when you answer the question of whether you are offering anything positive to the world. Being meaningful is the new secret to creating long term brand value.
Several years ago I had the accidental good fortune to sit next to a flight attendant on a coast to coast flight as she was hitching a ride home. As we chatted, she mentioned that she far preferred working in the economy class part of the plane because travellers expected a lot less, so "you don't really have to work as hard to be nice."
Panels at conferences usually elicit the same sort of low expectations. Generally the speakers are chosen based on job titles and companies they work for rather than an ability to share insights - and moderators follow the boring formula of asking a question and letting everyone on the panel answer it (which leads to lots of agreement and very little real discussion). The sad truth is, most panels suck - and usually the problem comes down to having an inexperienced moderator.
The best moderators are the ones who know how to conduct an interview and shine the light on their interviewees. Johnny Carson, often considered one of the best interviewers, was famous for his philosophy of always making his guests look good. In our increasingly ego driven world - being a great moderator means putting your ego into the backseat and focusing on fostering a great discussion on stage. Here are a few tips that should help:
Do your homework. You need to really know the issue you are talking about and who your panelists are, so you can focus the discussion and bring out their best points of view. This requires real preparation. Being a moderator doesn't let you off the hook to prepare just because you don't need to put any slides together. Know your panelists, their backgrounds and their companies - that is key.
Help your panelists shine. When professionals agree to speak at an event, they generally have a point of view about something that they want to share. Maybe they are launching a new product, or trying to position their brand in a certain way. Knowing what motivates your panelists can help you to make sure they get to share their big burning issue, and are engaged in the discussion as a result.
Never allow slides. Generally slides are conversation killers. If you want to moderate a great a lively discussion, force your panelists to lose their slides, and come ready to participate in a conversation instead.
Use directed questions, not "down the line" question. This is perhaps the single biggest thing that separates great moderators from crappy ones. When you ask questions, tailor them to a specific panelist and ask for their point of view directly. Instead of asking them the same question, you might say "I know you have invested a lot of time in xxx, talk about whether you feel like that is working or not." Doing this helps get to some deeper insights and lets you avoid having your panelists all agree with and repeat one another. Of course, doing it also means you need to be familiar with your panelists and what they have done - which comes back to tip #1.
Offer direction, not a script. The best panels have an element of free flowing discussion. It is fine to share some starter questions with the panel, but be ready to follow the path of the conversation as you start to ask questions and guide the conversation in a natural way.
Stay on topic. There is nothing worse than a panel which goes completely off topic and doesn't talk about the issue which is promised in the program for an event. In many cases, your audience chose to be part of your panel instead of attending another talk in the same time slot. Respect your audience's choice and make sure you do cover the topic promised in the description of your panel.
Try to bring out different opinions. Part of doing this depends on your having some input in the selection of who the panelists will be ... so as much as possible try to have a hand in selecting panelists for any panel you agree to moderate. If this is not possible, try to find some areas where your panelists have different philosophies so you can try to bring those out.
Master the basics. There are some basic moderator tricks that you should learn and remember. For example, state your theme for the panel at the beginning, repeat all questions from the audience if they don't have microphones to make sure everyone can hear, give audience members a warning for questions (ie - "in 5 minutes I'll be asking for questions, so you should start thinking about what you want to ask now").
Be the voice of the audience. At various points, you will hear topics or statements that will surely have the audience thinking about the same thing (ie - a panelist shares that there are "only three brands that really use social media effectively.") In this case, be the voice of the audience and follow up to make sure the panelist shares who those are and why. Everyone will be wondering, so you need to make sure you can empathize and ask those questions.
Share a recap. After an on stage discussion, it is really important to recap the key messages that were shared during the panel and what the big takeaways should be for audience members. This is ideally done at the end of your panel, but can also be done through some sort of recap after the event itself (I love to do blog posts as recaps of events).
In case you'd like to see my best effort at putting some of these tips into action, I'd love for you to come out and join me at the upcoming Social Media For Customer Service Summit where I'll be moderating two panels on Day 1. The team at Useful Social Media has kindly offered up a discount for readers of the Influential Marketing Blog to get 20% off registration by using the code "ROHIT11".
Yesterday I spent the day at the Corporate Social Media Summit, a big gathering of some of the best minds in leading social media efforts on behalf of large corporate brands. The event was put on by the team at Useful Social Media - and that indeed was the theme of the day as panelists offered real case studies, answered tough questions and generally demonstrated that there is real hope for large corporate brands to actively use social media to generate real business value in multiple ways. Here are some of the biggest lessons that 10 brands featured on Day 1 of the event shared in their presentations:
1. American Express* - "Altruism has a long tail."
Uniquely qualified to talk about the impact of altruism, American Express Open Forum VP of Social Media Laura Fink went behind the scenes of the hugely successful "Small Business Saturday" campaign that American Express launched back in November of 2010 to create a day where consumers could get rewarded with a $25 statement credit for shopping at a small business location. According to Fink, the campaign engaged more than 1.2 million small businesses around the country and also helped those businesses to see a 28% sales lift on the day of the promotion. Perhaps more importantly, it showed that doing something good can generate a real business impact for customers as well as for the big brand putting on the campaign.
2. Union Pacific - "Never underestimate local communities."
One of the largest railway companies in the United States, Union Pacific has also been around for nearly 150 years. To celebrate this heritage, Senior Manager of Media Technology Tim Mcmahan shared a case study of a crowdsourced competition that Union Pacific held to get people to vote on the ideal route for one of their old steam engines to take on the "Union Pacific Great Excursion Adventure." The voting was split into several rounds, with some fierce competition from unexpected locations. Through each round, Mcmahon shared that the consistently surprising result was that smaller towns like Tuscola, IL were routinely outpacing big metro markets like Chicago. The point, he noted, was that sometimes the most passion for a campaign like this can come from smaller local communities for whom winning may be a bigger deal. Across the campaign, there were nearly 200,000 votes recorded, over 100,000 email addresses captured and the brand plans to reprise the campaign next year.
3. Coca-Cola* - "The most important number in social media is 360."
Through the brilliant video below, Coke's Director of Digital Communications Ashley Brown told the story of a big ambitious PR idea which turned into the largest social media campaign the brand had ever done. The mission was to send three lucky travelers on a journey to all 206 countries around the world where Coke was sold. The trio embarked on their journey on January 1, 2010 and anyone could choose to follow their travels and adventures on the website Expedition 206 (which sadly doesn't seem to be available online anymore). Their goal in each country was to find what made people happy - which Brown noted was perfectly on strategy for Coke to build on their existing brand platform and marketing campaign centered around the idea to "open happiness." The answers they got ranged from family to music to dancing to soccer (yes, they made it to the World Cup in South Africa). Through the lens of this beautiful social experiment disguised as marketing, the team managed to reach what may be the most profound conclusion of all ... that happiness is always simple, whatever form it takes.
4. Best Buy - "Nobody owns social media."
In one of the most eye-opening talks of the day, Gina Debogovich shared some big lessons learned from her time over the last 3-4 years building up the Best Buy customer service and social care center to what is now called the "Twelp Force. As a former customer care person herself, she talked about how Best Buy uses the overarching mission of "creating meaningful communications in the virtual world" to guide all of their efforts. They have an inner circle of about 26 team members dedicated to social media at their team, and then an extended 3000 employees who are actively encouraged to use social media and offered lots of different forms of training on how to do it. Her team is a resource that individual stores can use for advice on such tasks as how to effectively use Facebook specifically for their store. In addition, their team is the only customer care team in the world who currently has their own production studio for creating content such as their Best Buy Unboxing feature. In one case, Gina shared the unheard of stat of how they managed to reduce the volume of one "call driver" (customer service lingo for a top reason that people call a contact center) by 50% simply by producing a video to answer that question.
Disclaimer: I moderated this panel where Gina spoke.
5. Samsung - "Negative experiences are our biggest opportunity."
Samsung is a brand that has made lots of strides recently in integrating social media into their customer service, and has been very active in joining conversations about their brand online. One of the leaders of this, Jessica Kalbarczyk (@samsungjessica) shared her insights about how her small team of four colleagues manages to engage people online about Samsung, and help solve their problems. For Jessica, coming from a marketing and PR role into one more focused on customer service was a fulfilling role because every day she manages to address real problems and change consumers experiences one by one. Anyone in a marketing role who has suffered through never ending meetings about social media without a real vision or tangible outcome will easily be able to imagine how nice a feeling it much be to actually solve real problems and the sense of accomplishment that would offer on a daily basis. As part of that, she shared a point of view which is common among customer service pros ... that they would much rather find negativity and have a chance to fix it and change that consumer's perception. Marketers, on the other hand, tend to run scared in the opposite direction from any negativity. There is clearly a lesson here about the necessity of integrating marketing and customer service more closely.
Disclaimer: I moderated this panel where Jessica spoke.
6. Dell - "Forget ROI and focus more broadly on business value."
At the top of most analyst's lists of brands that have managed to integrate social media into their operations in a real and tangible way would likely be computer maker Dell. During his talk, Richard Binhammer from Dell shared a historical perspective of how social media became integrated into the organization, and one of the most powerful points in his presentation was where he shared the six business areas which have fully embraced social media for different business reasons - marketing, product development, sales, online presence, customer service and communications. While other brands focus on one of these at a time, Dell has reached a point where they can "inhale and exhale at the same time" as Richard shared in his talk. Ultimately, his biggest point is that "ROI" is such a restricting term when it comes to describing what social media can offer and there is a much stronger way to describe the real value behind it that we need to think about including in more of our discussions.
Disclaimer: I moderated this panel where Richard spoke.
7. Southwest - "Have fun and be human."
Fun and airline are not two words that anyone would typically use in the same sentence, yet Social Media Manager from Southwest Airlines Alice Wilson devoted a good part of her talk about how Southwest creates a more human brand by using an irreverant voice. The questions that keep many other large brands up at night in terms of making sure they have backup for employees who are running social media channels, or mapping everything back to some specific campaign or column on a spreadsheet don't seem to matter as much for Southwest. They have guiding principles around their social voice, yet Alice shares that most people who speak out for the brand "just get the hang of it." Without that formalized training or overly bureaucratic approach to managing every aspect of Southwest, the brand succeeds because they have such a strong culture that people start to take it on as their own from day one and this translates into social media.
Disclaimer: I moderated this panel where Alice spoke.
8. Kodak - "Real time listening pays off."
Kodak is a brand that has won a lot of respect for how forward thinking they have been in moving into social media over the past several years, even publishing a guidebook which was available for the attendees on how to use social media and what they had learned. In his talk Tom Hoen, the Kodak Director of Interactive Marketing, shared a number of examples demonstrating the power of listening. In one example, the brand awoke to a barrage of negativity from fans of a Nickelodeon TV show called Degrassi because there was a rumor that the brand had pulled all their advertising due to the show's sometimes adult themes. Fairly rapidly, they were able to use social media to diffuse the rumor (it was actually just a natural pause in flighting for their ads) and engage those angry voices - leading one person to share on Twitter "Now I feel bad. I told the Kodak people to eff themselves sideways, and they sent me a tweet being all nice." Aside from the newly found good feelings, Degrassi and Nickelodeon offered up 2 free spots to Kodak during their season premiere. Not a bad ROI for engaging a few irate teens.
9. New York Life - "Brands need to trust their people."
An unexpected voice at the event came from Gregory Weiss, the AVP of Social Media for New York Life. He started with an entertaining look at the hypcritical nature of business, and how many large brands are afraid of what their employees might do with social media even though they let those same employees have phones and use fax machines and talk to people outside of the company. His main point was that if you can't trust your employees to do the right things and make the right choices, then maybe you need to hire better people. He offered several real tips for using social media in a corporate environment, including supporting your existing sales force, getting on the agenda of new hire initiations so you can tell them about social media, and even simple things like encouraging people to add your social media properties to the end of their email signatures. A point I took away as well, though he didn't mention it was about the importance of picking your battles. Apparently, New York Life also has a vetting process they use internally before any social media property can link to an outside website. That might seem like overkill for many brands, but Greg manages to work around it without making it a big issue.
10. Pepsi - "Reward people for everyday behaviour."
The last presentation of the day came from Josh Karpf, who focuses on an area that more brands should consider having as part of their marketing efforts ... digital research and development. His group runs many forward thinking experiments on how to use social media to engage consumers, and he shared some real examples and hard data from a few of their efforts around trying to offer couponing as a layer on top of geolocation and encouraging people to check in. For one campaign with Hess convenience stores, they found that using a Foursquare promotion in a particular location offered a 47% boost in volume of purchase over previous weeks where the campaign was not running - a great result for the retailer. On the Pepsi side, they interesting learned that coupon redemptions were much higher when offered to people as a reward for some type of behaviour, which seems to offer the logical conclusion that people are more likely to follow through a claim the discount or product from a coupon if they feel they had to "earn" that coupon in some way such as by checking into the gym for 10 days in a month.
*NOTE: Several of the brands mentioned in this post are current or previous Ogilvy clients. In particular, Coca-Cola and American Express are both clients and some Ogilvy team members may have worked on both of the campaigns mentioned. In both cases, I did not work in either campaign and also have not been compensated or encouraged in any way to write about these two brands or these campaigns. I am also a contributor to the American Express Open Forum website.
If you believe most global media, in less than 24 hours we will all witness one of the landmark historical moments of the past century: the Royal Wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton. The importance of this wedding goes far beyond engaging those with an extended case of royal fever, though. Photographers are angling for the perfect career-making shot. Fashion designers are enjoying the spotlight as they get interviewed about the glamour of the event. Everyone, it seems, wants their own piece of the global hysteria around the wedding.
Over at the Harvard Business Review website, writer Rosabeth Moss Kanter made a convincing argument for the business value of the wedding and "Why CEOs Should Watch The Royal Wedding." One interesting effect of this attention on so many levels is that it has demonstrated a value in the little things which so often go unnoticed. For a brief moment, while the Royal Wedding captures the attention of the world ... the insignificant will take center stage. Who designed Prince Wiliam's cufflinks? What will the royal horses be fed? How long is the red carpet?
Each of these alone are completely trivial questions but in the context of a frenzy of excitement, they add dimension to an event that everyone can be part of. You may not camp out for days outside Westminster Abbey to secure a good vantage point for the wedding, but you can surely enjoy a bit of the trivia and perhaps even share it with your social network.
The Royal Wedding is reminding us that insignificance can be a form of social currency. When you know the secret of Prince William's cufflinks (whatever it may be), you are likely to share it wth others. And this effect is not just confined to the Royal Wedding either. The thing about insignificance and trivialities is that we often cannot help sharing them with others.
The brands who do a good job of sharing these types of stories (from the meaningful to the insignificant) are the ones who can more effectively arm their most passionate customers and believers with intesting ideas and content to share.
This is not a piece about politics, it is about marketing. Earlier this year, Google announced that they would launch a new product that was widely reviewed by those in the know about the consumer electronics industry as a brilliant money loser. The product, called the Nexus One, was anticipated to be the ultimate contradiction in the closed and monopolistic world of mobile phones and carriers in the US ... sold unlocked and open for any network.
It failed in part because the price point was more than any normal consumer was willing to pay in a country where most phone purchases are subsidized. Still, the Nexus One served an important role for Google, it showed other phone manufacturers what an Android phone could and should do. Today, there are many more phones available with the Android platform, in part because the Nexus One and its predecessor (the Google G1) inspired that innovation.
What does any of this have to do with Donald Trump? I believe he is using the same strategy as Google to inspire innovation and action in the world of politics. Disagreement and the inability for politicians to work across parties is causing a deadlock over just about every issue in Washington. It takes a crisis for any decision to get made. Added to that, the definition of a politician seems to have become anyone who is afraid to have an opinion about anything. Into this world, Donald Trump is the ultimate opinionated non-politician. For example, here are a few choice quotes from a recent piece about his bid for President published in this weekend's Washington Post:
“I would go in and take the oil. I would take the oil and stop this baby stuff.” Otherwise, he would not go into Libya at all. As for the Libyans, “I’d give them plenty so they can live very happily,” he says.
He longs for the times when empires acted like empires. “In the old days,” he told [Candy] Crowley, “when you have a war and you win, that nation’s yours. This country is a laughingstock throughout the world.”
He believes that, despite the amount of U.S. debt held by the Chinese, the United States has a stronger hand. “They have some of our debt. Big deal,” he says. “It’s a very small number relative to the world, okay?”
If the Chinese did not respond to his overtures, he says, he then would impose a 25 percent tariff on all Chinese products coming into the United States. “As soon as they believe it’s going to happen, they will behave so nicely because it would destroy their economy,” he says.
You may admire his no-nonsense approach, or you might consider him a media-savvy opportunist - but he has proven himself a skilled negotiator and direct businessman unaccustomed to the usual politician double talk. The Washington Post article referenced above even notes that other politicians should "take him seriously." Which leads to the big question ... will he win President, or even run?
I think not, because it is simply not a profitable business decision for him to run. But will his threat and voice in the media force politians to emerge from deadlock and actually work together to accomplish something? Let's all hope so.
Until our modern day, humanity had never made useless tools. When archaeologists found "tools" while unearthing history, they would find hammers or arrowheads - tools that were clearly designed to solve some sort of problem. Useful tools. When historians look back at the exploding universe of social media tools that we are building today, they will clearly uncover considerably less usefulness. Being useful has become a forgotten virtue.
Without it, new platforms pop up every day to try and capitalize on some sort of micro-issue ... all adding to the sense of overload that many of us are now feeling when it comes to how social media fits into our lives. In the business world, this has translated into an overload of advice and confusing array of options. Running a marketing campaign for any product or service is much more complex because media channels themselves have become more complex.
So how do we solve this problem? Getting better and more useful advice has to be part of the solution, which is why I am so excited by the Corporate Social Media Summit, an event coming up in June in New York run by a company called "Useful Social Media." I have partnered with them to participate in their events before, and unlike many other "guru-centric" social media conferences, their events feature real corporate marketers from brands like Coke, Best Buy, HP, Marriott, Southwest and sharing real case studies on how they are using social media.
It is a useful format in a world that is plagued by a rise of uselessness - and I am pleased to share that they invited me back to once again moderate a panel on the first day of the event. As many previous attendees have shared, it is an event worth attending. To make the deal slightly sweeter, the organizers have kindly offered a discount code for readers of this blog and Ogilvy clients - just use "ROHIT10" for 10% off registration.
There was a time when there were only two types of thoughts: those that you shared and those that you kept to yourself. Call it discretion, or social etiquette ... but learning to interact in any culture mostly meant learning the unwritten rules about how much to share and how much to keep to yourself.
Social media has led to a third type of thought: one that you share with a virtual social network instead of those who you may be interacting with in person. This might lead people, for example, to post a review of a menu item at a restaurant on Facebook instead of sharing that same thought with those who they are dining with.
When you have and share this type of "third thought," the big cultural question is whether this is anti-social behaviour, or just a new kind of social interaction. How much should we focus on being in the moment versus amplifying our experience by sharing and interacting with our virtual social network to add context to our real life interactions and activities? In other words, where is the line?
Each of us needs to answer this question for themselves, but below are some "visual notes" (thanks to Sunni Brown) from a panel discussion I led yesterday at SXSW where we explored this exact question and came up with some interesting conclusions.
On Monday morning at 9:30am, there are 27 other panels or discussions scheduled for the exact same time slot as mine at the SXSW Interactive show this weekend. This is not unique to that time either. Over the three days that the Interactive festival will be held, there will be hundreds of panels and discussions about interesting topics - and a nearly impossible additional number of "unofficial" talks and events and will easily overwhelm even the most experienced conference attendee.
So how can you avoid getting completely overloaded, or consistently feeling like you are always missing something? The biggest thing you can do to help is to prioritize the people and not the content. Who do you really want to meet or hear in person? At an event as large as SXSW, this is really the only way you can maximize your time and decide between a panel, a lunch or just hanging out in a hallway.
To help make sure you can still benefit from the content, even if you aren't able to attend every session that peaks your interest - this year Ogilvy is partnering with a great group of visual illustrators from ImageThink to create visual notes from nearly 100 panels and discussions at SXSW. Every day we will release more than 30 of these illustrations on www.ogilvynotes.com and distribute limited edition prints of the illustrations at the Day Stage if you happen to actually be AT SXSW.
It's our chance to help with the overload by sharing information in a useful visual format, while you're off doing the most important thing you can do at an event like SXSW ... making real connections with real people.
This is not a blog post about the funniest ads. Or the most popular. If you're reading this post, you probably care about the marketing lessons you can take away from the Super Bowl. So, without further ado - here is a roundup of the best and worst of the Super Bowl marketing from last nights game.
Best Marketing Strategy: Volkswagen
From their choice to release their "The Force" ad before the Super Bowl and rack up more than 13 million views before the game even aired, to how they brilliantly managed to promote the 2012 VW Beetle without showing a single image of the car, Volkswagen was the big winner of the big game. Their advertising was focused, strategic, memorable and well distributed. They were even using their Twitter account live during the game to point people online to see the full :60 second version of The Force ad.
Worst Marketing Strategy: Groupon
Groupon is a brilliant site with an amazing team behind it. I have corresponded personally with their team and know for a fact that the organization is filled with dedicated and personable employees ... which makes their Super Bowl effort even more disappointing. The strategy behind their campaign is explained well by founder Andrew Mason on the Groupon Blog ... however without the context of the thinking behind the ad, their 30 second spot in isolation came off as offensive, amateurish and insensitive. These are not qualities which represent Groupon at all, yet the ad has gone virally wrong, which is a reminder that sometimes the same creative developed as part of an online campaign can't simply be translated to another environment and retain its meaning. The Super Bowl needed a different creative execution, and it's a lesson Groupon is learning the hard way.
Best Ongoing Marketing Strategy: Doritos
This year, Doritos continued their leadership in airing consumer generated ads with 3 being shown in the first half. They were funny, on brand and the fact that they all aired during the first half was a repetition that worked for the brand as they stood out in post game reports and shot to the #2 spot in terms of positive sentiment in the "Brand Bowl" tracking of conversation in social media. They have officially established ownership over what was a hot trend a few years ago that multiple brands were flirting with: getting consumers to create ads. Parent company Pepsi, smartly capitalizing on this, also aired several consumer generated ads for Pepsi Max as well.
Best Marketing No-Show: Pizza Hut
A few days before the game, Pizza Hut chose to pull out of the game after having agreed for the first time ever to run a Super Bowl ad. To compliment their universally hated product integration with the sportscasters from Fox artificially getting excited about feeding their crew Pizza Hut pizza - they chose to run extremely boring, but price focused ads. In contrast to Domino's great campaign promoting their substantial transformation, Pizza Hut seems to have abandoned their focus on product quality from last year and went back to gratuitous images of fat laden pepperoni coated breadsticks. You could almost see the actor's spit bucket off stage to make sure they wouldn't have to actually swallow any of that stuff during filming. Unfortunately for the obesity epidemic in America, that is probably exactly what people want ... and ads during pregame likely helped to stimulate sales.
Most Significant Actual Announcement: Best Buy
For anyone who has sat in an advertising pitch meeting, it is easy to picture the discussion that led to the Best Buy spot featuring Justin Beiber alongside Ozzy Osbourne. This kind of "celebrity mashup" can only come from an ad agency brainstorm. The commercial was not bad, but the excessive focus on trying to do something cool creatively obscured the fact that Best Buy was one of the few Super Bowl advertisers with something significant to announce. Their BuyBack program where you can trade in outdated technology is a concept that many consumers will LOVE. In this case, with news this good - it would have been nice if they found a creative execution that let them focus a bit more on the actual announcement instead of all the theater around it. Now they can just hope that in between all the glitz, consumers actually remember that this is a very cool program worth visiting Best Buy to find out more about. Or they could run lots more advertising in the coming months to remind consumers about it.
Best Product Placement: Chevy
Chevy was all over the Super Bowl, and several of their ads were good and worth watching - however the best aspects of their sponsorship were the moments where they used deep product integration to promote their products. Unlike Pizza Hut, their product placements were relevant and memorable. From the beautiful shot of the Chevy Camaro that Aaron Rodgers won for being the Super Bowl MVP to the integrated ad with the cast of Glee (including dialogue from the cast as part of the ad) all worked. You knew Chevy was sponsoring, but it wasn't offputting or intrusive. It worked. Combined with their additional engaging ad featuring voiceovers telling the story of a dream ad, and their partnership with external communities like BzzAgent to help promote their ads - the overall strategy supported Chevy creating big buzz from their huge investment in the games.
Best Smackdown Of A Competitor: Audi
Audi created a great spot following on a theme they have used before of defining their brand as "new luxury" in contrast to competitor brands like BMW and Mercedes which they define as "old luxury." During the Super Bowl, Audi first ran their ad called "Release The Hounds" directly targeted at Mercedes, and then in a piece of good luck, the Mercedes ad later in the game played perfectly into Audi's hands by taking a more historical look at the evolution of the Mercedes brand. The end result was the Mercedes ended up proving the perception that Audi was trying to create that their brand was "old luxury." Great strategy from Audi, helped by a bit of luck, made this strategy stand out.
Most Poetic Ad: Motorola Xoom
While the reference to Apple's groundbreaking 1984 ad may have been a bit too deep for Super Bowl Sunday, I loved the philosophical message behind this ad ... making the point that Apple may be becoming everything they had promised to fight against back when 1984 first came out. The moment in the ad where the girl takes out her signature white ear buds to truly see the guy in front of her was perfectly filmed. Fan boys won't get this ad - but for anyone who has felt they are walking against a sea of people wearing the same white hood and listening to the same white headphones, this ad will strike a strong emotional chord.
Most Compelling Story: Chrysler - Imported From Detroit
As a big believer in the potential of Detroit, it was a thrill to see the city featured in a long form ad for Chrysler. In this case, the longer ad helped to tell a story that many other brands simply couldn't do - and the point was clear. As I tweeted during the game, any of the Big 3 automakers could have done an ad like this - so kudos to Chrysler for actually doing it. Detroit is reawakening and the resurgence of the American automotive industry is a big sign of that. For anyone who has spent time in a city like Detroit - separated from the hubris of the east and west coasts, this story was a powerful reminder that when the economy does rebound, it is cities like Detroit which will be reinvented.
Biggest Waste Of Money: Papa Johns
Papa Johns was the "Official Pizza Of The Super Bowl" which presumably gave them rights to put up posters in the actual venue and some other marketing rights online - but unlike the Olympics where being the Official sponsor is protected and treated with reverence ... the vast majority of people watching the game might have named Pizza Hut as the official sponsor instead of Papa Johns. There may be some hidden elements of the sponsorship that make it worth it, but on the surface this seems like a waste of money for Papa Johns that could have been better spent elsewhere.
Most Unintelligible Ads: Chatter.com
If the point of a SuperBowl ad is awareness, perhaps Chatter.com succeeded as I was curious about what it was. But the creative execution was incomprehensible, offered no details about what the site actually was or why anyone should care, and ultimately the only people who likely visited were the ones who were simply curious about what kind of site was worth spending millions to promote through two indecipherable Super Bowl spots.
Best Ad Remake: House Promo
While many younger viewers may have completely missed the reference, the promo ad for House remaking the iconic 1980 Coke ad featuring Mean Joe Greene was the best flashback to a previous ad.
The brands listed above were apparently so set on blowing their budget on a Super Bowl ad that they left no budget to actually develop an ad to air. Those brands chose to recycle old ads which people had seen before on the world's biggest stage - which is a bit like wearing an old bridesmaid's dress to your own wedding. It might be a nice dress, but when that many people are watching, save up and get something new.
Imagine the best wedding that you have ever been invited to. Perhaps it was your own, or a close friend's. What made it so great? Was it the people who were there? Or perhaps your relationship to the couple getting married? If you are like most of us, those things were likely a part of the experience ... but when you picture a wedding you typically think of the venue where it was held and the spectacle of the ceremony. It may have been a quiet wedding on a remote island or a majestic wedding in a huge church. Either way, the point is that with a wedding the environment makes a big difference.
Now how might your vision change if I told you that instead of any of those venues, the wedding had to be held in a high school gym. You could do what you like to the gym inside, but that would be the venue. A lot less romantic, isn't it? All of a sudden the most important day in someone's life has a big cage around it. While it doesn't make it impossible to create a great wedding, it does make it A LOT harder.
At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week, there were lots of big press events. Most were held on "press day" at the Venetian hotel, where members of the media were packed like sardines into clearly undersized conference rooms to hear the most significant announcements of the entire year from some of the largest consumer electronics companies in the world such as SHARP, Samsung & Panasonic. These press conferences were like weddings in a high school gym.
In contrast, two brands stood out on the day for two different reasons. SONY was the first, as they held their press conference at their suitably impressive booth on the tradeshow floor which was easily the size of a small town. Surrounded by demos of "glasses-free" 3D TV prototypes and a wall of flat panel TV screens - the announcements they made felt big. They seemed significant.
Lenovo decided to forego the entire tradeshow booth and press conference experience altogether and repeated their strategy again this year of taking over a centrally located restaurant and turning it into a showroom for all their latest products. They created a comfortable lounge atmosphere with food and drinks and invited people to enjoy their products and the entire experience in an unhurried and completely unique way.
Ultimately, both Lenovo and SONY won for the same reason ... they presented their biggest announcements in an environment where people would remember them. There is a clear lesson in this for anyone who is working on making any kind of big announcement. The environment you choose to make the announcement matters. Unless you're doing a high school graduation or prom night ... stay away from the high school gym.
Rohit works at Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, part of WPP - a world leader in advertising and marketing services. The views expressed on this blog are his personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect the views of his employer or its clients.
