The World's Most Succesful Tweet?

The other day I was telling my wife about the Oreo Superbowl tweet. You remember my wife. She doesn't work in advertising, and though she is incredibly supportive she often doesn't understand what the fuss is about. 

But back to the Oreo tweet. You know the one. It happened last year with the blackout half way through the Superbowl game and Oreo, quick as a flash, tweeted “You can still dunk in the dark”.

I asked her what she thought. She said she thought it was sweet but sounded like something unnecessary I’d said when we had the blackout because of the storm, though I hadn’t been talking about dunking cookies.

I asked if she’d seen it before.

 “Don’t be silly. I’m not on Twitter. You know that. Is anyone apart from that Matt Galloway?” (She likes Metro Morning).

“Well actually 19.7% of Canadians are on Twitter.”

"And how many follow Oreo?" (She knows more than she lets on).

"About 5000 at the time."

“Doesn’t sound that much to me.”

“Well the big thing is the number of people who shared it with their friends.”

“Well how many?”

“Over 15,000.”

“So how many people saw this ad?”

“Around 3 million.”

“And how many people saw the Superbowl?”

“About 108 million in the US plus another 7 in Canada .”

“So nearly 40 times more people saw that nice Budweiser ad with the horses than your silly tweet. Am I supposed to be impressed?”

I decided more wine was needed.

Anti-Social Advertisers

Why aren’t advertisers spending money on Social Media?

They know it’s popular. People now spend an average of around 7 hours a month on Social Networks with key target groups like young people using Social Media a lot more. And yet worldwide advertisers only spend just over 1% of their budgets on Social Media. They spend 50 times as much on TV.

Other research quoted by Scott Monty shows that marketers rate Social Media #4 in terms of ROI as a marketing channel but #6 in terms of budget allocation. Mass media is #7 in ROI but #4 in budget allocation.

Part of it is the newness of the medium. It took TV 26 years and a world war to overtake radio as a medium in terms of ad expenditure. And Social Networks only started 11 years ago with Friendster in 2002. But I don’t think that is all.

It is to do with the nature of the medium. Newspapers are primarily about information. Ads are a natural fit. They tell you something about the brand. Radio and TV’s role is entertainment. It took advertisers a while to realize this. Early ads were essential print ads brought to life. It was only when brands like Kodak and Timex discovered the power of narrative to entertain that the medium took off. Now all the best TV ads convey a message while entertaining you.

Social Media is essentially social (Duh!). It is about connecting with other people, being part of a community and sharing things. It is about conversations between people with shared interests. Advertisers find it hard to contribute to this.

We say that brands are like people but this is just a conceit. I don’t want to be friends or have a relationship with a brand in the way I do my human friends. So brands can rarely be a member of my Social Network. That doesn’t mean they can’t have a role. The best brands do. Red Bull is a curator for what I care about, providing material for my social group to form around. Oreo provides a forum for me to connect with other Oreo lovers in a lighthearted way.Converse allows me to show my creative counter-culture side. Starbucks continues its passion for coffee. As such they act more like they do as brands rather than using Social Media as a communications medium.

But the fact is that it is not an easy fit and we as advertisers are still finding our way. Until we do Social Media will stay the poor relation and not get its fair share of advertisers’ spending.

TV Advertising is Dead

Seems a lot of people are saying this 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 

But as an old school ad guy I'm been resisting the idea that TV is dead. And of course at one level it isn’t true. TV advertising is still over 40% of all ad spending and is projected to remain so. Young people still spend four times as much time watching TV as they do on Social Media. There'll be a need for mass advertising for some time yet.

But what interests me is the complete change in balance of interest creative teams have in it and other channels. A few years ago online advertising, events and social media were the poor cousins creatively. They were done by the promotional agency, the direct response agency or the PR agency. The creative teams at the ad agency would look down their noses at it. And I was with them. We threw in an ambient ad or an event but our heart was in the TV. But that has all changed. Creative teams at 'traditional' agencies are clamouring to do viral videos, events and other non-traditional approaches.

And I've had a change of heart too.

I recently asked my students (I teach creative advertising) to find ‘cool’ advertising ideas. Less than a quarter were regular TV ads. There are still some great TV ads out there they found – Direct TV and Honda CRV for example. But more, though still video in format, were viral or interactive videos e.g. the Guardian's 3 Little Pigs ad, Smart's Water's use of Jennifer Aniston (though I don't know who got the better deal) the UK’s anti-knife campaign or Skittles “Touch the Rainbow”.  

But the really interesting ones were not even lead by video.

Take NAB’s Canned Grand Prix winning campaign from Australia. People believed the banks there were all in a cosy relationship so NAB publicly broke up with them using advertising, social media, PR. It actually broke through Twitter.

And promotions and events are now cool. Take this Cannes award winner for Bing and Jay-Z which uses every channel possible to engage people. Or these variations on the flash mob idea: the Budweiser Flash Fans and the Nike Catch the Flash.

Or this ad which uses You Tube perfectly. I won’t give away the brand as that will give away the ending but check it out.

And Facebook doesn’t have to be sad ads about finding a mate near where you live as this campaign for Mix FM shows.

And as they say on Creativity.com ‘then there’s this’. Is it advertising? I don't know but I don't care either.

Why are my students impressed?

Simple.

Firstly they are great ideas whatever the channel.

Secondly they are winning awards. Many of the campaigns mentioned above are Cannes award winners. And some of the most interesting winning camapigns are interactive. Take Tribal’s Carousel ad for Philips. Or Dove’s Evolution.

And Canadian agencies are doing well in this area. Many of the above examples are Canadian. BBDO won Strategy’s agency of the year lead by non-traditional campaigns. A good friend of mine Siobhan McCarthy presented some BBDO ads to my students. The four campaigns she chose were all non-traditional: the Cannes winning Rotisserie Channel they developed for Swiss Chalet , as well as the Skittles campaign already mentioned, Tropicana Arctic Sun and BBDO Proximity’s M&M’s Find Red.  She could also have mentioned Gillette’s Personal Grooming campaign (also here).

A few years ago I could never have created a list like this of non-traditional ads I admire. Now its easy. And I've undoubtedly missed out some great examples - if I've missed your favourite let me know.

The truth is that the exciting creative opportunities exist in non-traditional media nowadays. And to that extent TV advertising is dead.