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We call it rocket fuel!
From the week long build-up and crazy press conferences, to the corporate tie-ins and highly sought after advertising slots broadcasting to over 110m Americans – It’s a serious business, but it’s also an innovative one, which often show glimpses of the future of TV advertising.
Given that it costs $100,000 a second to advertise on TV during the Super Bowl itself (a 20% increase on last year), it’s no real surprise to see this year that ads were encouraging viewers to tweet about their brand with hash tag prompts at the close of the creative, to make it work a little bit harder (and for longer). Audi were the first to do this in 2011 and continued their Super Bowl advertising innovation this year with an ironic Twilight-themed commercial that not only trended on Twitter, but had 6.5 million YouTube hits inside 48 hours and various social media spin-offs on Facebook and the like.
So how does this and can this influence the UK? Well, X Factor is about the closest the UK comes to country-grinds-to-a-halt TV – Audi (again), dairy giants Yeo Valley and Muller and British stalwart M&S have all had very memorable recent slots, but a formula for success which the Super Bowl has (ie. obscure messaging and the brand not taking itself too seriously) has yet to emerge for the UK market. Indeed, these brands with seriously hyped ads during X Factor have had, to be honest, pretty mixed success.
While advertisers may want to create a Super Bowl equivalent on this side of the pond, I think the UK might just remain an enigma. X Factor viewers remain demographically skewed towards females and 16-34s, while the Super Bowl audience is hugely varied. Other massive events like the World Cup only come around every 4 years (and, let’s face it, often don’t last too long) and are frequently broadcasted by the BBC to some extent anyway, much like 2012’s biggest event. We also suffer from having a number of ads which aren’t made for the British market.
What we should look to do is take some of the best bits from the new Super Bowl ads each year, like the increased online interactivity we saw for 2012. Oh, and while we’re at it, probably try to get on board with this slightly strange egg-chasing game – It certainly seems here to stay.
Tom Wakeman
All opinions expressed are those of the author and not HPI Research.
If you think about ‘rational’ communication there will always be a problem of different levels of receptiveness across subgroups:
Making your case through the emotions neatly sidesteps these problems because we can all respond - wherever we are in the buying cycle and whatever our proclivity for absorbing rational information. The nature of much emotional response is that it is beyond our control to avoid being affected - it goes straight through!
Does this pose a problem for communication response research? Not in our experience, because within commercial probabilities (i.e. excluding wider emotional events that may cause trauma) an emotional ‘hit’ will not be hidden from our rational selves. We know when an ad has really moved us and will respond accordingly if the research is sensitively conducted.
This is not to decry the value of recording direct biometric responses per se but to give context - the depth interview, the focus group and a good quantitative survey are still quick and effective safeguards against putting large budgets behind ineffectual work.
Terry Prue
All opinions expressed are those of the author and not HPI Research.
Latest report from IBM says that 13% of online Christmas shopping in the US was done via mobile devices, up from 4.5% a year ago. The majority of these transactions came from iPhones and iPads. However, is ‘mobile’ a rather optimistic term to use for this channel? How many of these transactions came from consumers actually out and about, standing in a shop, riding the bus, waiting for a friend in a bar?
Alas, the way the data were collected meant IBM couldn’t ask the killer question: “Where were you when you placed your order?” My hunch is that a goodly proportion would have said ‘on the sofa’. We know from other US research that over 60% of iPads never leave the house. So why the huge increase in m-commerce, apart from just the sheer availability of the devices? For me, being able to shop from my phone or my tablet means I can shop in private with no one looking at my browser history or looking over my shoulder. Even better, with John Lewis click and collect, I can slope off to Peter Jones and bring back the goodies when I know Him Indoors isn’t around. No more battles with Yodel/Home Non-delivery Network, and fewer brown boxes eliciting comments from our ever-vigilant receptionist.
And another thing: shopping from my tablet or phone means that behavioural ads then don’t follow me around the rest of my browsing. (Yet.) Again, I don’t think Him Indoors has cottoned on to the fact that sites such as telegraph.co.uk is showing him the edited highlights of my browsing history for various purveyors of footwear and handbags.
All in all, great news for advertisers. Your customers are now slumped in front of the telly with their iPad, tweeting their views on the nude scene in Sherlock, all ready to click across to an offer, a competition, or just find out more about your newest washing machine/fabric conditioner/cold remedy. So, forget about the fact that it’s being reported as ‘mobile’ and just consider it another way of pinning consumers to the sofa with interesting content, relevant offers and an easy-to-use experience. Oh yes, and plenty of stock!
Source: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/reference/ibm-reports-a-big-rise-in-mobile-shopping/256
Sarah Ramanauskas
All content my opinion and not that of HPI. Or my husband.
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