Insight
If you were running a brand and could guarantee as much value for being AROUND the Super Bowl as running a commercial IN the Super Bowl, how much would that be worth to you? That’s the million dollar question, or rather the four million dollar question, the cost of running a spot in the last Super Bowl.
As with any event, you can make as much of an impact without an official spot or sponsorship as you can with one, and at a fraction of the cost. The savings you gain, though, is made up in the risk. A large number of brands run social media “war rooms” in order to react in real time and everyone else is crowding out the other spaces beyond broadcast.
Tide had earned a reputation for successfully responding to events in real time on social media, but the key was to build on its expertise in social media without becoming a “me-too” advertiser. The challenge was to demonstrate relevance and efficacy without competing dollar-for-dollar or Tweet-for-Tweet with other brands and guarantee as much value as possible.
Strategy
For advertisers with the biggest investment in the big game, the Super Bowl is won or lost before the event takes place. You have to hype and unveil your shiny new spot ahead of time so people can be ready for it, share and comment as soon as everyone else watches. In this world where advertisers need to think more like people and not advertisers, this was SMG’s approach. The real action on the Super Bowl is the reaction to its commercials.
Execution
Knowing exactly what brands and commercials were running in advance of the Super Bowl, Tide was ready with #GetsItOut, the agency developed over 20, six-second Vine videos. Quite simply, immediately as other brands’ ads aired, a series of videos showing how Tide was able to remove the stain created by that brand’s product was released.
In one example, seconds after a Heinz ketchup commercial aired, a six-second Vine cleverly reminded people that Tide was the superior way to get out that tough stain along with the message: “Ketchup squirts in @HeinzKetchup US ad? Sounds stain-y. Looks messy. @Tide #GetsItOut.”
The agency was able to move at the real-time pace of pop culture by producing and gaining approval for the Vines in advance of the game. This created instantaneous visual responses while most other advertisers relied on text-based tweets during the broadcast.
Results
Going into the Super Bowl, Tide used a little smarts and creativity to achieve results and virtually guarantee that it would get as much value for being around the game than in it. It was able to deliver over 200 million impressions, 4x more than the average Super Bowl spot, for only 1/10th of the cost.
At the same time its 4.9% engagement rate was 42% higher than last year’s game and achieved a 16% lift in brand affinity. The hashtag #GetsItOut and @Tide handle racked up 11.1 million impressions alone.
Need a Super Bowl guarantee? No need to call Joe Namath when you have Tide on your side.