Curated by Stuart Fogarty stuart@admaticallycom for AFAO'Meara Advertising, Streamabout The Video Agency and Admatic Ireland.
All comments will be posted - promise!
It brings a joy to my heart when I hear an Agency, like giant Omnicom, advising Clients to move 10% to 25% of TV Ad "dollars" to online video. Here it is in The WSJ if you want to read it in full (not that you wouldn't believe me....) http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2014/10/06/omnicom-advises-marketers-to-move-10-to-25-of-tv-ad-dollars-to-online-video/?mg=blogs-wsj Omnicom handles about 54 Billion usd in ad spend for clients like Visa, Apple, Pepsi, McDonald's and are in Dublin as Irish International and Cawley Nea as well as, media specialist OMD.
Not just that, their CEO Daryl Simm says "If you're trying to reach against light TV viewers, the answer is to move a significant amount of the video budget to online video". And he goes on, "There is more talent....entering the online video space. That holds a lot of promise for the online video space". Of course too, he rightly points out that it's a move or a response to more measured advertising. Digital gets results that are deeply measured. Accountability. And when you get advisors of this calibre, global advisors, encouraging the switch away from traditional TV, that's more great news for online. Pretty rubbish news for TV broadcasters. Streamabout too are seeing this explosion to online video in Ireland practically daily. October will be their best month on record after three years beating their last best month - September. I'm going home to have a beer now. Might have 2. And say cheers to Daryl Simm.
PepsiMax have quite a clever Bus Shelter Video stunt - real digital ooh (out of home) making the side panel of a 4 sheet poster, interactive. It is done extremely cleverly using CGI, on London's Oxford Street and then recording the reactions for online viral video. The link to Pepsi is that it's "unbelievable" (like the stunt geddit?) but that's tenuous at best. More likely someone had a good idea and is trying to make it work.
But these things work great largely because they create talkability and moreover, generate a video which can then be shared (already nearly 2m times). Like I just have.
Superbowl commercials cost an average of 4 million usd for 30 seconds. But of course, the build-up on Social media and the 'excitement' that a new commercial brings, means that these Ads get a reach far beyond the showing on the night. This year the controversy around Scarlett Johansson's commercial for Sodastream, shows how that impact can be extended. It made the front pages of a lot of newspapers and TV/Social media comment. Most advertisers release ads, about the ads, as previews to gain Social Media traction. Doritos of course, get fans to write their Superbowl commercials, giving the campaign "legs" before airing. Justifying the return is tough without that level of cut-through because the spots are expensive (Budweiser took 2 x 60 second spots this year = circa 16 million usd) so you have to grab the opportunity as Apple did in 1984. Newcastle Brown Ale (you'll see it on this blog below) actually captured the Superbowl hype without having a commercial in the game. Real guerrilla tactics. The top 5 Advertisers in the last 5 years are Budweiser, Pepsi, Hyundai,Chrysler and Coke in that order by expenditure. Interesting data from The Financial Times which shows that in order to get a return on that investment, Coke would need to sell 5.7m cans...but I think there's a point too about brand. They need to be seen as having a presence at The Superbowl in order to be quintessentially, pro-American. Can the heritage of Budweiser for example, not be in The Superbowl? It's a brand that's all part of Americana. But is it worth it? You better believe it when it's done cleverly. In some ways, The Superbowl is a must have for brands that need the endorsement of American culture. It's more than just spot-buying, rather, an involvement in American society.
