Beyond the “can Colts quarterback Peyton Manning win the big one” theme, Super Bowl XLI viewers within the advertising community will be following a different storyline: Hot on the heels of Advertising Age’s naming “The Consumer” as its Agency of the Year, several advertisers will submit commercials either voted on, or in a few cases created by, consumers.
So now, my Super Bowl prediction, which carries past Feb. 4: The increasing role of consumers in choosing or creating advertising does not represent a trend or a tipping point, nor is it a portent of things to come. It is a gimmick.
To be sure, the first brands that are embracing this (count Frito-Lay’s Doritos, General Motors’ Chevrolet and Anheuser-Busch among them) are reaping buzz as a result of their program’s novelty. They might even get $2.6 million — the asking price for a single 30-second spot — worth of buzz. And they’ll certainly save on production costs.
But I don’t see consumer-generated spots becoming the norm. If they do, they will be held to professional standards. I suspect most homemade spots that haven’t been worked over by professionals will be long on their own cleverness, and short on sales effectiveness.
So before the advertising industry panics over the socialization of advertising design, I have a few questions to which I’d love to hear brand advertisers’ answers:
1. Will you be measuring — and announcing — the impact of these ads on either consumer recall patterns or spikes in your brand’s sales?
2. Would you consider running your consumer-generated spot after its Super Bowl showcase once the fuss about homemade ads dies down? Would you be willing to commit to a three-month TV schedule on a highly rated — and therefore expensive — network show? A one-month schedule? A week?
3. If your answer is “no” to any of the above questions, do you admit that this year’s buzz regarding amateur media was behind your decision to run these spots? Does it further demonstrate that you’re not prepared to make these messages a long-term strategy?
4. If the ad does prove immensely popular, and you want to extend the campaign with different spots on the same theme, who will design the spots — the consumer creator of the original ad, or your agency of record? How do you think your agency of record will react to being handed an outsider’s work with the mandate to build on it?
The above are all brand-advertising questions. Direct marketers wanting to deliver a coup de grace can toss in one more: If this campaign works, is your consumer prepared to design and implement a fully integrated multi-channel marketing campaign, or is this just a case of a dilettante creating a pretty picture ad and walking away, leaving others to do the heavy lifting?
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In the Loose Cannon column for the week of Feb. 12, I will be offering thoughts about how Super Bowl advertisers used, or missed opportunities to use, direct response marketing. Readers are invited to assemble their own thoughts into letters to the editor. Like me, you’ll have a week after the game to pull ’em together, so fire up the video recorder for a bit of Monday morning quarterbacking.
To respond to the opinions in this column, please contact [email protected]
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