Name five Super Bowl ads from last year and describe what they were about. If you can’t, do it from any year… and the Apple ‘1984’ spot doesn’t count. Or anything with Clydesdales 😉
Of those five (or less) how many of them led you to buy those products or use that brand’s services?
If the ad didn’t cause you to go out and act, does that mean the ad is worthless?
Definitely not. Here is the reality of advertising (or PR/media relations and marketing in general).
It often takes time and repetition for the message to sink in. I didn’t see the Apple ‘1984’ add live, but I know about it because it’s so regularly highlighted over the years. And its content was very different.
Think about GoDaddy’s ads. The ones with the women having wardrobe malfunctions. Regardless of your personal taste, they also are (were?) different enough to get attention and have people talking about them.
Creatively, both of these ads were different than the norm at the time. That’s an important thing to keep in mind.
Creativity is incredibly important in marketing. It helps cut through the clutter.
Because of advertising, and our love of 'The Walking Dead' a lot of us here have a pretty strong awareness of Mazda as an automotive brand. They seem to consistently have spots airing during ‘The Walking Dead’ that look pretty good and catch our attention when we forget to reach for the DVR's remote. That said, no one in our office has a Mazda. Does that mean the ads weren’t effective?
No. As an example, the last person to buy the car in our office wanted an all-wheel drive sedan. Mazda didn’t make one at the time, so their ads, while they were memorable, were for products that we just didn’t need.
However, Mazda consistently runs ads during a show we watch and because of that, we were am pretty aware of of some of the cars they’re selling. Budweiser usually does something with Clydesdales.
Consistency, or repetition of message, are almost as important as creativity, if you want to boost awareness, and later sales.
‘Consistency’ and ‘creatively’ should be the words you dwell on here.
We hear all the time from friends and colleagues – at both big brands and small – that advertising didn’t work for them. Or PR didn’t work for them. Why? Because they didn’t see sales. When I ask how they measured awareness, I tend to get blank stares. When I ask if they directed their agency partners or let them lead, I get uncomfortable silence.
What is almost always missing when a marketing program falls short is some sort of creativity or consistency in activity. Vanilla tastes good, but it doesn’t stand out. One and done is rarely enough.
Sales come from awareness, as well as availability. Marketers can’t control availability, but they can help build awareness, which will lead to sales if done right.
Despite what case study you read, marketing success comes from creativity and consistency/repetition of message. There are exceptions to the rule, but if you're going to play the odds, are you going to put your money on the 99 percent favored to win or the long shot?
BTW - If you're interested in the creative background of that Apple '1984' ad, check out this piece from Bloomberg.
Questions about the health of your PR or marketing campaign? Drop us a line at PRCheckup@remedypr.com. A consultation is always free!
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Do Super Bowl Ads Work? A Lesson in Public Relations, Advertising, Creativity And Consistency
Should You Buy Followers On Instagram?
The answer really goes back to your views on advertising and how you measure success. Does being the biggest make you the best? Or is there more to it?
Long before social media and the World Wide Web were so dominant, print media was a major component in many brands’ marketing budgets. And much like Super Bowl ads, an ad in a national publication, such as USA Today, would guarantee you a lot of eyeballs.
Or would it?
We hear from colleagues all the time that “advertising does nothing” for their brand. While we thoroughly disagree with that (usually it’s bad advertising that’s to blame, or the lack of time/energy/ability it takes to measure awareness and results), we understand where they’re coming from. They bought an ad, people supposedly saw it and nothing happened.
How many times have you left your hotel room and even looked at the free paper left there?
We are not criticizing USA Today, but we’re bringing this up to set the stage for our point that metrics such as circulation maybe aren’t always as valuable as things such as engagement or particular demographic information.
Here’s an example we can call upon from our own experience with PR and editorial.
In April we a financial client in the New York Times on some changes that were going to happen that would affect home buyers. Big news and a great piece. Did that correlate to more phone calls for the client? Hard to say, there wasn’t a real call to action there since the changes are months away. But people saw it, we’re sure of that. How many? No idea.
Back in January, the same client was also featured in a regional newspaper for another, a more consumer oriented story, in a newspaper about five times smaller than the New York Times. About two months later, a regional associate in that market received a phone call from a customer regarding a very large deal.
By no means are we saying we should never call the Times again to pitch a story, but it’s interesting to see what measurably moved the needle for the client. Keep“measurably” in mind.
Ok, back to Instagram. Should you buy followers? It really depends on your goals.
On social media, there’s followers and then there’s engaged followers.
Eyeballs are nice, but eyeballs that care about your brand and are incentivized to act nicer.
Many marketing departments judge success based on impressions. Buying an ad in USA Today, while more expensive than a regional newspaper, will probably get you more impressions to show to the higher ups. That doesn’t necessarily correlate to actions, awareness and what most brands really want… sales.
Buying followers on Instagram can make your brand look more popular than it is and as a result cause others to consider it to be somewhat important, which may cause others to follow and hopefully, engage with you.
However, we have to strongly recommend judging the success of a social media campaign strictly on the growth of followers alone. If that’s your criteria for judging success, then you’re driving down the wrong street.
What’s the best way to grow your presence on social media? Advertising can help you get fans (again, advertising works, if it’s the right kind), but above all, you need to have great content that people actually want to engage with and share with their network.
All it takes is strategic thinking and typically, a great deal of effort. This is why companies have social media managers with decades+ years of experience in strategic marketing and, unfortunately, why sometimes our proposals for social media programs are as much or more than in fee than our traditional PR proposals.
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How many times have you left your hotel room and even looked at the free paper left there?