Posted By
Digital Marketing Unfiltered on 08/09/2010
Ed: White Horse’s podcast series is
a great way to get the unvarnished truth about all your digital marketing
questions—listen to all of the episodes whenever you like. Below is Part 1 of a
recent three-part episode on Super Bowl advertising. To have your question
featured on a podcast, please send your question to contactus@whitehorse.com
Eric
Anderson: Hello, and welcome to the White Horse weekly podcast series,
Digital Marketing Unfiltered. I'm Eric Anderson, VP of marketing at White
Horse, and I'm joined today by an esteemed panel.
Craig Schommer: On his left is Craig
Schommer, Director of Analytics.
Jamie
Beckland: Jamie Beckland, Emerging Media manager.
Avery
Kohn: Avery Kohn, Account Manager.
Jeff
Hulbert: Jeff Hulbert, CTO.
Jen
Modarelli: Jen Modarelli, Principal.
Brian
Unflat: Brian Unflat, Creative Director.
Daniel
Griffin: And Daniel Griffin, Account Manager.
Eric:
So, for our first topic today, we want to talk somewhat smugly, from the
perspective of digital marketers, about Super Bowl advertising and its slow
decline, which we think is symbolically most represented by the fact that
Pepsi, one of the stalwarts of Super Bowl advertising, this year decided not to
go up against Coke in their annual battle, and instead to take that money...what
was it, 40 million?
Jamie:
About 20 million.
Eric:
20 million, and put it into digital instead. And Jamie's actually written a
blog post about this. I'll ask him to go first in talking about this.
Jamie:
Well, I thought this was a really interesting concept, right, because the idea
is that the Super Bowl gets the ads in front of so many people, right, but so,
what Pepsi did was they shifted those dollars into a social experiment called “Refresh
Everything,” and it's much more participatory, right, so people can go onto the
site and submit their ideas for how Pepsi can refresh their community. So, from
my standpoint, the 30-second or one-minute, or even two-minute brand hit that
Pepsi gets on the Super Bowl is fleeting. And what they get here with this
"Refresh" concept is much more engaging, much more deep, and much
more relevant to the person that's using it. So, to me it seems like, the bell
has been rung, the death knell has begun. This was a big loss for the Super
Bowl.
Eric:
And I think it's partly, too, a matter of recessionomics [sic]. People expect
brands to be frugal in tough times, and the kind of splurge that you do on a Super
Bowl ad starts to look bad; it starts to look like you don't care about what's
going on with consumers.
Jeff:
Well, 20 million for a minute versus 20 million for all the rest of that,
digitally.
Jen:
Did you just say “recessionomics?” Did you make that up?
Jeff:
Yeah, I made that up, you can use it if you want.
Jen:
I think I will.
Avery: Well, it's interesting, too,
that the messaging...as you said, "Refresh Your Community." So, it's
advertising at the end of the day, but it's a very grassroots, it's very,
"Get involved and help your community," which somehow feels better, I
think, from the advertiser perspective.
Jen:
Well, I think also... the thing I find interesting about the Super Bowl lineup,
again, is that we started seeing this about two years ago, but it's continuing
to be crowd-sourced. So a majority of the ads that are going to be run are
going to have already had an Internet presence through contests. I can't
remember exactly how many, but I know it's like double or triple last year's.
Well, actually, the crowd‑sourced winners that were not actually developed from
professional agencies. I find that to be interesting, too.
Brian:
Well, I guess if I were the creative director on that campaign, I would make
sure that our media group was buying on Hulu and AdCritic. Where, no doubt, all
of the videos will be rebroadcast starting that night after the Super Bowl,
where everyone is going to be watching them. Where? Online, because that's how
I get them and start tweeting and blogging about them after, where I can really
sit down and look about them. Because, yes, I am still interested in TV
advertising, I always will be. I do find some of the commercials be it on the
Super Bowl, or TV in general, occasionally inspiring, to use a strong word like
that, or also influential in regard to just trends, look and feel in design and
messaging, and going out there, because we still are following trends on TV.
We'll continue to do so and in the movies as well. But we're all watching them,
all in one big place, at one time, online. And the strategy to do that is
brilliant.
Eric:
I think that is an interesting idea, to advertise on Hulu, because essentially
you get to be in the company of your Super Bowl advertising peers, without
having to pay the Super Bowl advertising costs. That would be a great move for
Pepsi.
Brian:
Hopefully, they did that. You know, maybe people are out there listening, I
hope you did that.
Jamie:
The social media sites have already voted. I mean we're recording this before
the Super Bowl has been broadcast, but they've already voted on what are the
best Super Bowl ads this year. Because they've all been released online at this
point, I mean, so it's already out there. It used to be an event, the
advertising itself was an event, but now there's all this pre‑game action from
the advertiser’s standpoint.
Craig:
Well, they become entertainment, more than they have really brand push on any
of these things, more than anything else. I watched a bunch of them on the news
this morning; they already had them on the news.
Tags: Media Planning & Buying, online brand development
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