Yesterday evening the Green Bay Packers won their ninth game of the NFL football season after winning the Super Bowl last year. They are the only undefeated team in the NFL and their quarterback, Aaron Rodgers managed a near perfect rating on the scale used to rate quarterback performance. It was the ninth straight game where he managed a rating above 100.0 - a recordmaking performance by football standards and took another step towards securing his place among the great NFL quarterbacks in history.
The man he succeeded, Brett Favre, was also on that list ... bringing back memories of a similar feat more than a decade ago where a quarterback named Steve Young took over from legendary San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana and led the 49ers to similar success. They are both great stories for football fans, but the bigger question anyone might wonder is what made both of these guys so good that they could overcome the considerable shadows of their immediate predecessors?
According to a recent article published in Pyschology Today, it might have something to do with a factor known as "mental practice." In a study with medical students, researchers found that students who had 30 minutes of guided physical practice on a new procedure followed by either 30 minutes more practice independently, or 30 minutes of "mental practice" performed equally well on tasks. In fact, one researcher even noted that "mental rehearsal can be even better than physical practice because it activates more abstract neural representations of physical skills (with less specific detail about the muscles used)."
Both Steve Young and Aaron Rodgers spent time on the sidelines watching two of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history. They worked with them and learned from them. Most importantly, when their respective chances came to perform, they seized them. Of course if this were a perfect explanation, then any quarterback who plays backup to a legend would emerge as well - but they usually don't. Still, the idea of the importance of mental practice is one that can apply far beyond football.
Some of the greatest public speakers actively despise actual rehearsals. Instead they would rather "practice" in their minds. Champions of mental games such as professional poker, or spelling bees, or even TV game shows like Jeopardy seem to use a similar type of technique. The point is, when we think of practicing or rehearsing, we generally think of real life work. And that work is still important. Sometimes, though, the most important thing to improve performance might be more mental practice instead. In other words, there may be value in sitting on the sidelines even though it doesn't seem like it.
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.
Most of us have several different kinds of credit cards in our wallets. I have one of each of the most popular three (Visa, Mastercard & American Express*)and tend to use them for different things. Consumers who use multiple brands is a common situation replicated across many other industries, from fashion to automotive. While people may prefer certain brands, in many cases they don't typically remain exclusive. How many of your customers are also customers of your competitors? Likely more than you think.
When you think about this, it also means that if a good portion of your customers are also customers of competitors - then your challenge is NOT to get them to choose you instead of the other, but rather to get them to choose you more often than they choose your competitors. If you run an Indian restaurant, for example, you want your customers to eat Indian food more times in a month than they eat Chinese food ... but you are never going to stop them from eating Chinese altogether so why try?
This weekend I had the chance to attend a brilliant new show from Cirque Du Soleil in DC called OVO. It was a colorful flash of light and movement performed to a packed house. As many others did after the show, I browsed the obligatory gift shop after the show and picked up a few colorful hats and toys for the kids. At checkout there was a sign sharing that if you had an AMEX card, you could get $5 off your purchase - a nice benefit. It reminded me of a time a month ago when I was travelling by train from Paris to London and was able to access the lounge in the train station thanks to my ownership of an Amex Platinum card. Their tagline of "membership has its rewards" actually came to life for me twice in the last few weeks.
Contrast this with an experience I had ten years ago at the Summer Olympics in Sydney where I had been in line at the Beach Volleyball venue at Bondi Beach to buy some drinks for a few friends. When I got the front of the line, I realized that the venue only accepted VISA cards - and I had not brought mine with me. I had a similar experience at the Olympics in Beijing where I was travelling for work, but could not use the credit card I had for work because it was an Amex and they only accepted VISA. This exclusivity has angered many others as well. The irony in both cases is that I am a VISA customer - but in those cases I had the choice of which credit card to use removed.
Ten years later, this experience has made me a much happier customer with my Amex cards than my VISA cards - because Amex has focused on providing value for me while VISA created a series of negative experiences through their draconian exclusivity arrangements with events like the Olympics that they sponsor. Are your policies unintentionally turning your customers off in the same way? What Amex knows is that if you provide more value than your competitors, they will choose you. Forcing people to choose your product, on the other hand, will alienate your customers.
*Disclaimer - Amex is a client of Ogilvy and I write for Amex's Open Forum website, however this post was not solicited in any way or compensated by Amex and reflects my personal view based on personal experiences I have had with both cards.
Note - I was provided with a press pass to attend the Cirque Du Soleil show DC. All other expenses for food or merchandise that I purchased at the show were paid for by me personally.
Now that the Round of 16 is over and we are down to the final 8 teams that will be playing in the Quarterfinals of the World Cup - most of the marketing that has accompanied the games has been played out and it's a good time to try and look for some lessons from the International phenomenon that is the World Cup. To help, here is my round up of 10 of the most interesting marketing campaigns from this World Cup as well as some marketing lessons that they offer:
#10 - ESPN3 Live Streaming
Offering live streaming for sporting events is certainly not new, but the way that ESPN has integrated their streaming with cable providers has been excellent. For many soccer fans, watching the World Cup Live might have been their first experience at a "pay for streaming" service online. Hulu is paid for by ads, and YouTube is omnipresent - but ESPN3 took the riskier step of integrating with cable providers. By doing so, they not only managed to prove their value to their cable provider partners/subscribers - they also managed to create a great user experience because they didn't force consumers to pay again for something they were already paying for through their home cable subscription. Big win for ESPN.
#9 - Coca-Cola History Of Celebration Coke is an official sponsor of the World Cup and has the stadiums plastered with their logo as you would expect. Continuing with their theme of happiness that was so nicely brought to life through viral videos such as "The Happiness Machine,", their World Cup spot focuses on the story of Roger Milla and his dance of celebration during the 1990 World Cup that sparked a revolution in goal celebrations (as the ad claims). The video is set to the official theme song of the FIFA World Cup 2010 and the voice over is from an announcer with a South African accent (nice touch). The last shot of Roger Milla in the stands enjoying a Coke while the voiceover talks about how he "showed the world how to live" is pure World Cup melodramatic magic.
#8 - KIA Motors South Africa As the official automobile sponsor for the World Cup, KIA had fertile ground to do a lot of great things around the World Cup. Unfortunately, their actual effort seemed uncoordinated and confusing - with KIA Motors South Africa running a promotion all about offering an exclusive experience to people who engaged with the South African page or Twitter account, while the global marketing team seemed to focus on the new Soul car with a 1 minute video (embedded below) asking "what's your soul app?" and randomly talking about anti-gravity apps. The US KIA Twitter page doesn't even mention anything about the World Cup, the global Facebook page offers disconnected polls and the pieces of this campaign just seem out of sync in the unique way that can easily happen when global teams work in their silos and never collaborate. One commenter on their YouTube video summed it up best in their response to KIA's question ... "My soul app is the one that blocks these kind of ads." Ouch.
#7 - Cisco Around The World Continuing their Human Network campaign* Cisco uses an engaging ad showing a soccer juggling trick they call the "around the world" that spreads from country to country through young soccer fans watching a video and trying to recreate that moment. As a kid, I remember watching Jürgen Klinsmann in 1994 score an amazing goal against South Koreans and spending months practicing and trying to perfect the same move. Cisco managed to tap that moment that many soccer players and fans could relate to, and demonstrate how their global network makes sharing moments like that possible in a faster and more real way than ever before. (*Full Disclosure - Cisco is an Ogilvy client, but I did not work on this campaign).
#6 - CristianoRonaldo.com
Voted the FIFA World Player Of The Year in 2008, Cristiano Ronaldo (and his often photographed abs) may also be the best looking player in this year's World Cup ... or so I'm told. To capitalize on the attention, he relaunched his website during the World Cup and last week I got a launch announcement from a PR team announcing his new site as a place where they would be "pulling dialogue between Cristiano and his 5 million fans on Facebook and Twitter." After Portugal lost a close Round of 16 match against their neighboring rival Spain, Ronaldo was featured heavily in the news for his comments about feeling like a "broken man." Unfortunately, he isn't sharing this despair in any sort of dialogue with his fans and his Twitter feed has been silent since before the Spain match. The lesson it brings to light is the central pitfall in creating this "revolutionary" new model for dialogue between a celebrity superstar and his fans: the whole thing falls apart if the superstar just doesn't feel like talking.
#5 - CNN + FourSquare World Cup Promotion CNN jumped into the geolocation bandwagon around the World Cup and launched a promotion with Foursquare where they are offering special badges to people who check in at locations within South Africa as well as at viewing parties at various locations around the world. Though they are not broadcasting the games, this is an interesting chance at experimentation for the brand and if it works I imagine we will begin to see this used by other Turner Network channels like TNT around college basketball, as well as potentially around large newsmaking events that draw a crowd at viewing parties as well, such as national elections.
#4 - Bud United House Party You have to give Budweiser credit for not giving up on the BudTV idea even though their idea of a 24 hour online network fell flat. Around the FIFA World Cup, they leveraged their sponsorship to create the Bud United house where they invite one person from every one of the 32 finalist teams to live in a house together during the World Cup. The only rules were that when your team was eliminated from the World Cup, you were too. The result is an engaging online reality show that has a great premise, interesting content and a unique sponsorship activation. The only problem to see with this campaign is that they focused all their TV budget on running the same ad over and over where the fans try to distract the soccer player with an mosaic image of beer in the stands. If they used some of that budget to drive TV audiences to check out Bud United, they would have likely increased their engagement dramatically.
#3 - Pepsi "Oh Africa"
Pepsi was one of the sponsors that some felt "ambushed" the games to take away attention from the official soft drink sponsor (Coke) and got great buzz for their TV spot and viral video featuring people making a soccer pitch for several soccer superstars to play against kids in a soccer challenge. The not so subtle message is that Africa can achieve great things (like defeat international soccer stars) if her people can work together.
#2 - Nike Write The Future Nike's online long form ad with the tagline of "Write The Future" can only be described as epic in how it manages to take all the top tier talent they sponsor and roll out a story that not only talks of their impact on the game and culture, but how what happens on the World Cup stage often does write the future for all of us. The World Cup is special in its significance to the world and watching this ad helps you understand and live that. If there is one ad most closely associated with this World Cup, it has to be the Write the Future campaign. Adidas still had a strong global showing and for "real soccer players," Adidas remains the brand most focused on soccer and stands to realize big revenue gains from merchandising as a result of the games. They made the uniforms and the often debated . But for Nike to grab just a bit of the spotlight through great creative and storytelling isn't bad for a brand that was not the official sponsor.
#1 - Brand South Africa After the games finish and the world turns its attention to the next big sporting event, the biggest winner from these games may very well be Brand South Africa. The country has had an ambitious nation branding and marketing effort in place since 2002 - and one that in part led to their selection as the host nation for Africa's first FIFA World Cup. The games have gone off perfectly and the biggest controversies to date have been the Jabulani ball and the inconsistent officiating - both having little to do with the host country. Using music and dance as a way into their culture, coverage of the games online and on television were filled with African rhythms and clearly stood out from anything else. Though the South African's didn't progress in the tournament as far as they liked, the country invited the world to their doorstep, brought out the vuvuzelas, did a disika dance and showed the world what Africa was truly capable of.
Amongst a World Cup filled with good and bad marketing lessons, South Africa deserves to stand at the top of the list with pride. Good marketing helped them get selected to host the games, and great marketing will help them inspire people to visit and invest in their country long after the final match is played and a champion is crowned.
There is a company called Brand Affinity Technologies (BAT) that is profiled in last month's issue of Wired magazine which is worth a look for anyone who is interested in how advertising and endorsements in particular in athletics work today, and how this could apply in the future. BAT focuses on what the article terms the "long tail of athlete endorsements." They connect brands not with the superstars who are almost household names, but the local stars. Through their database of 3500 athletes, they can connect smaller athletes to more local advertisers with a smaller budget.
Imagine for a moment if such a network existed in the world of social media. There are certainly more than a few enterprising efforts to do something similar through larger blog networks of specific niche groups, such as MomCentral, or even a model like Ad.ly that does something similar around helping people monetize their Twitter streams. The problem with most of these is that they remain insular to the online world. The power of BAT is not that they have brought all these athletes together, but that they do it under the umbrella of acting as an agent for these players to represent them in multiple types of marketing opportunities ... from showing up at the opening of a car dealership to using their image as part of an online banner campaign geotargeted to a particular region.
The premise that makes the whole system work is that every athlete is famous somewhere. And if a brand can use that athlete in the markets or areas where they are famous, and change them out for another athlete who is bigger elsewhere, then they can roll out a region by region marketing strategy in a way that can scale. For the most popular bloggers, chances are their audience spans across geographic regions - still you could imagine the value of using a popular tech blogger for a campaign for a new mobile phone targeting geeks based on benefits and changing the endorsement to a popular fashion blogger if the same phone were promoted based on design and style. What do you think - could the BAT model help open a new world of opportunities for brand to connect with popular bloggers, or is it too different from athletics to work?
Perhaps you've managed to catch some coverage of the Winter Olympic sport of Curling over the last two weeks during the Vancouver Games? The sport has been covered almost nonstop on CNBC here in the US and been enough of a sensation to even have an entire episode of The Simpsons (arguably America's most popular TV show) dedicated entirely to it. Even more impressive is that the sport has managed to accumulate all this attention in spite of three relatively big strikes against it:
It's not intrinsically exciting.
America has no hope of a medal.
No one you know plays it (and you probably haven't either).
This is quite a mystery if you were to consider it in marketing terms (which, of course, I can't help doing). A sport that no one has grown up playing, with little inherent tension or excitement and a national team that is lacking (at current count, they have played 9 games and lost 7 of them) still manages to be among the most popular Winter Olympic sports in the US. Why?
The answer, I believe, comes from an interesting phenomenon that was profiled in another popular American television show - Seinfeld. In one episode, the character George Costanza talked about his ability to be initially annoying and irritating, but to grow on you until eventually you can't stop thinking about him. A similar phenomenon accounts for that moment we have all had where we can't get that awful song out of our heads, but eventually start singing it and even (on some level) liking it.
Your first reaction to curling was probably one of misunderstanding, or ridicule. Let's face it, it's an easy sport to make fun of. But as you see those guys (or girls) furiously sweeping the ice in front of that granite stone - you can't help watching. Yes, sweeping is actually an Olympic sport and as the ratings will show, it's one of our favourites here in the US. The marketing lesson here is simple: Sometimes being sillier than anything else can actually make you the most memorable (and successful). Need more proof? Just look at the success of the Snuggy.
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.
