Do you follow the Super Bowl brand creative advertising strategy? Do you follow the ads because you find them entertaining, or because you are interested in what is new in marketing campaign ideas?
The secret of all effective advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships.
Leo Burnett
We enjoy the entertainment value of the ads for sure, but we really fall into the second category and look forward to new advertising strategy ideas and design concepts.
What works best for advertising in your business? We would love to hear what it was. Would you do us a favor and post it in the comments section below? It would be greatly appreciated by us and our readers.
The ultimate goal of all the points I list below is this: eliminate the fluff from your marketing strategy and focus only on the things that work.
Every once in a while a brand and its agency try something new on the Super Bowl and fundamentally changes the marketing game. Apple’s Super Bowl spot “1984” falls into this group. This Super Bowl commercial is regarded as a key creative moment for Apple and Super Bowl advertising generally.
It borrows from George Orwell’s tale to suggest that Apple users could smash the PC oligarchy.
Ten years ago, social media was in its infancy. Nobody even heard of mobile marketing, content marketing or big data. The iPhone hadn’t even been launched yet. If you took a reasonably competent marketer from 2007 and transported her to today, much of what she knew about her job would be irrelevant.
We’re at a similar point now. Many of the most powerful technologies that will shape marketing over the next ten years are just emerging and many marketers will be left behind. Clearly, anybody who thinks that they can get by doing more of what they’re doing today is kidding themselves.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to perfectly predict the future, but we can look at today’s technology and make some basic judgments. Big data and artificial intelligence will become much more powerful and interact more completely with the physical world. That, in turn, will transform how we identify and serve customers to something very different from today.
Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl also falls into this group. Here Doritos used customer engagement to crowdsource the ad design through a competition. For Super Bowl XLI, Doritos launched a contest, Crash the Super Bowl, to allow consumers to create their own Doritos commercial. The general public was allowed to vote for their favorite of five finalists.
According to Doritos, the vote was so close that just before the game the company decided to run two of the ads rather than just one. Both commercials finished highly in ratings of commercials during this Super Bowl
It is becoming clear that Chrysler’s 2011 spot featuring Eminem also falls in this group.
Chrysler broke a lot of informal Super Bowl advertising rules with this 2011 ad. The spot was dark and gritty, not a funny, catchy piece of film like so many other Super Bowl ads. The ad didn’t prominently display a logo.
And it ran for a remarkable two minutes. On the Super Bowl, when every second is worth more than $75,000, buying such a long spot was in the rarefied air.
But Chrysler’s ad worked exceptionally well ( see our article ). It stood out in a very unique way and the story ultimately connected to the brand. The ad generated an extraordinary amount of buzz.
Most important, the ad became the foundation of a marketing campaign that has helped revitalize the Chrysler brand. By breaking the rules, Chrysler built interest and transformed its brand image.
So what should you expect from this year’s Super Bowl’s creative advertising strategy? Here are our strategy predictions:
Marketing campaign ideas … advertisement length
Just like the Chrysler ad last year, we expect more lengthy ones this year. In fact, we know that many will be a minute in length and at least 3 greater than a minute.
Creative storytelling
Storytelling is growing in marketing importance … watch for many brands to tell their story. This is one reason that advertisement length is growing.
One of my favorite experts in the field of creative advertising is Edward Bouches and Creativity Unbound. You’ll find lots of good examples and case studies to learn from in his blog.
Doritos will continue their strategy this year (we will have another blog on this subject before the Super Bowl) … their continued success will influence other brands.
Creative marketing campaign ideas … engaging people
There is no better example of engagement than the Doritos contest. We expect to engagement grow this year and into the future.
Creative advertising strategy … create the unexpected
Just like the ads that have been most successful in the past … all did new and unique things. We should see many strategies this year that is different by design.
The name of the game is to be talked about. The advertisements that are remarkable get talked about the most.
Related post: Case Studies to Evaluate New World Marketing Concepts
Remember, it is not what advertising does with the consumer; it is what the consumer does after seeing the advertisement.
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Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Case Studies to Evaluate New World Marketing Concepts
How to Frame Marketing Messages for Optimum Engagement
