By now we’ve already met at the water cooler and discussed what ads from Super Bowl XLV we liked. By all accounts, it looks like that Volkswagen, Doritos or Chrysler won the battle.
The Winning (old) Formula.
These advertisements won because of a simple formula. No, they didn’t involve cute animals, scantily clad women, or stupid “physical” comedy. They were popular because of what I call the “Can I watch it and “get” it in a loud crowded bar” formula. This formula simply relies on the following elements.
- You may miss a few seconds of the advertisement if you look away (while you are ordering your appetizers), but you still get it.
- You can watch this advertisement with the volume turned completely down, or you’re at or party that is REALLY loud, and still get it.
- It’s simple. Let’s face it, you might have a couple cocktails on Super Bowl Sunday. Don’t make me think too hard
- It tells a story.
Now, think back on why the Volkswagen ad was so good. We all can relate to Star Wars (simple) can watch this with the sound turned down, and tells a wonderful story. And, the bonus here was that you actually are intrigued by the new car. Remote car starter? Cool, maybe I’ll check out the new Passat…
Same goes for the Chrysler ad. Sure it would have been nice with the music (if I couldn’t hear it) but you get the general message. Chrysler is rebuilding, rethinking and “restoring” itself to the glory days. I might not even know who Eminem is, but I still “get it”.
If you still don’t believe me, take a look at Apple’s 1984 Super Bowl advertisement with the volume turned down…
Where Social Media comes in
I’m still amazed and impressed at how Social Media played such an interesting part of this year’s Super Bowl. My favorite was BrandBowl 2011. Brain child of Mullen’s Edward Boches and a joint partnership with one of the heavy hitters in the social media measurement world, Radian 6. This year, they partnered up with the Boston Globe and enjoyed tremendous success by encouraging Super Bowl viewers to tweet about the ads using the #brandbowl hashtag during the Super Bowl. BrandBowl2011 counted up more than 300,000 tweets to calculate tweets AND sentiment. And that’s where the interesting part comes in- sentiment. They quickly (and in real-time) got a feel for what advertisements worked and perhaps why they didn’t work. Edward, you probably already know this, but we’re watching you closely here- can’t wait to see what BrandBowl 2012 has in store for us.
The Winning (NEW) formula for next year
So, let’s combine the old winning formula with new technologies and create a new recipe for advertising success…..It should look something like this….
1 cup of story-telling
1/2 cup of simpleness
1/2 cup of GOOD images, people, scenery
4 tablespoons of social
3 tablespoons of mobile
2 teaspoons of instant feedback/gratification.
Here’s a quick example….
Let’s say McDonald’s wants to introduce another new hamburger called “the McSuper” …In the first quarter advertisement, there’s a simple story about the new hamburger featuring six new ingredients. At the end of the ad, there’s a call to action. Choose your favorite 3 ingredients AND what city you want the McSuper to launch in. Simple, right? Everyone breaks out their mobile phone and texts or tweets their “vote” to McDonalds. If you’re not near your mobile phone, head over to your computer and “vote” on McDonald’s facebook page or website by halftime.
For the next hour, McDonald’s scrambles to collect the data, and produces the video, a la Old Spice. In the fourth quarter, McDonald’s releases the ingredients of the perfect McSuper sandwich and where it’s going to arrive.
Think it would work? Or are you just getting hungry?
I was talking to a friend the other night and, very impressively in my opinion, he quoted Sun Tzu: ”strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory” but “tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”
The concept is that having a strategy will ultimately bring you victory, but tactics alone won’t get you anything. You don’t have to be fighting a war to use this concept; it comes into play for every goal you have. As I drove home, I naturally started thinking about how the concept applies to social media and a quick search proved I wasn’t alone.
Strategy always comes first?
That was the consensus among the social media heavy-hitters (including our own Aaron Strout!) in a terrific blog post conducted by Lee Odden about a month ago. Here’s a quick review…
Shel Israel offered and enlightening quote from Louis Carol’s Cheshire cat: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” He said you need to know WHY you want to use social media and establish specific objectives first, then use those to shape the tactics you choose.
Shannon Paul added that the real trick is defining strategy: “a strategy is not a timeline or a goal, even though these elements are often included in what people refer to as a strategy document. The actual strategy piece is the spirit with which you approach others and engage with them.” She always warned that social media evangelists in an organization need to empathize with people who don’t “get” the WHY of social media strategy intutively, and work hard to articulte strategies clearly and seperately from whatever tactic is hot at the moment.
But one of my favorite comments was from Des Walsh, who said “Tactics are fun, strategy is boring” and added the second half to Sun Tzu’s advice: “All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.” His argument was that strategies allow organizations to manage a process intelligently, measure progress, and adjust as circumstances change.
What about flexibility?
And circumstances are changing in social media. Constantly. That was Guy Kawasaki‘s argument for starting with any form of social media marketing, because it’s easy to change directions. And you have to be able to change directions, because the no one even really knows what role social media will have for the long term.
The goal is to do more business. Social-media is a means to that end…Don’t focus on some kind of high-level strategy because no one really knows how to use social media yet. Focus on tactics: Get more followers, make them happy, promote your stuff to them every once in a while,” he said, and Joseph Jaffe agreed, saying the industry is still in the “bright and shiny object syndrome” phase.
But Toby Bloomberg said the overflow of new tools and tactics every quarter actually makes stragey more important: establishing that first, she said, allows a business to focus only on those tools/tactics that fit with its broader goals. She added, “You do have goals? Oh, that’s another conversation.”
What’s your philosophy?
Unfortunately, in my opinion, most of the responders didn’t focus on the points that Debbie Weil and David Alston made: if you’re not the CEO, it’s a long road to establishing any social media strategy in the first place. Alston advocated against integrating specific goals into a strategy for companies just starting down that road, saying that the C-suite doesn’t want to hear about how popular/effective/ubiquitous any social platform is today, they want to hear a strategy. He said “…borrow one if you need to. How could you go wrong with a strategy like: make listening to the voice of our community/customers central to how we make decisions as an organization.”
Weil added: “What’s tough in the 1st step in a social strategy: adopting the social media mindset”.
So what’s the bottom line?
Social media marketing is a loop that starts with internal buy-in. That creates the opportunity for developing a specific strategy, which in turn generates a method for adopting relevant tactics. You can then measure the effectiveness of those tactics, and use data to appropriately adjust your strategy as necessary. The result is a truly effective campaign that, ultimately, increases your bottom line. And that’s something we can all agree on…
