A Simple “Advertising” Story

March 25th, 2011

When Skadaddle Media first pitched the Aha Moment Campaign to Mutual of Omaha in early 2008, we called in a number of consultants to help us craft the pitch. In particular, we spoke with a friend who had more than 25-years of advertising under his belt and who had won numerous awards. Although we started Skadaddle to do things differently, and although we shuddered at the idea of even being considered “an agency,” we felt that because Mutual lived in the insurance business, we might need to talk more “traditional” than some of the crazy thoughts we had. So, in came our consultant.

In our very first meeting, we introduced the idea that now makes up the broadcast spots of the campaign: Real people sharing their real stories. No real bells and whistles. Just the stories, “My name is Bob and this is my aha moment.” Our consultant bristled. He told us that he’d work on something and get back to us. He did. And, although Jon, in particular, didn’t feel like the scripts that were written worked for a campaign based on personal truth and one’s possibilities in life, we went ahead and pitched them because, as our friend told us with great drama and impact, “You know what this is? It’s called advertising!” Fortunately, after we pitched the spots, the client hated them and we were able to go back to our original idea – no bells & whistles…just stories.

The CEO of trendsetting, earth moving, juggernaut, Groupon, recently admitted to what went wrong with the company’s controversial Super Bowl Spot. As he described it, “We turned off the part of our brain where we should have made our own decisions.” While that certainly may be true, what is also true is that Groupon and its agency (who no longer work together) perhaps made another error in judgment: they forgot the story. They forgot why Groupon was there in the first place. They forgot why people flock to Groupon. And, in doing so, they created, advertising. The spot was successful in that it generated a ton of exposure for Groupon and the agency can argue that its KPIs were based on that exposure (so the spot can’t be called a failure), but it just wasn’t true to “Groupon’s brain.”

We’ve all read the stories about the death of the broadcast TV spot. Social media is king (although that attitude may be waning as well, as demonstrated in Bob Hoffman’s interesting post on the Pepsi Refresh campaign) . Online is king. Facebook is king (maybe G-d is more appropriate). And yet, the broadcast spot doesn’t go away. What is happening, however, is a trend, a thirst and an absolute need for authenticity. For story.

I have an entirely different post in my head regarding authenticity, so I won’t harp on it here, but “authenticity” doesn’t have to be serious – it just has to be true to the brand’s story. The Snickers spot featuring Betty White from the 2010 Super Bowl is a perfect example. It was funny, poignant, memorable and completely authentic to the Snickers message. That spot told a great story. (It was so good, in fact, it was impossible to duplicate in 2011.) The Chrysler “Motor City” spot with Eminem is another example of a great story, in my opinion.

The point is that broadcast TV isn’t going away, advertising is. In its place are short 30-second branded stories.  So much is made of branded entertainment and web series, but truthfully, the best branded entertainment of all is an effective TV spot. The Snickers spot was awesome. The Chrysler spot was awesome. That Volkswagen Darth Vader spot was so good that my five-year old son made me play it for him over and over and over again (and if he had access to our account numbers and passwords, may have purchased a VW online). The VW spot had more impact and exposure than the highly promoted VW branded entertainment series that featured Brooke Shields a few years ago (interestingly conceived of and produced by the same company that did the Groupon commercial).

Social media has created a powerful platform for everyone to share their stories. We blog. We post Facebook updates. We Tweet. We share. The result of this is vulnerabilities are exposed, support is expressed, connections are made…and trust is developed.  Brands need to do this, as well. Zappos customers have an absolute love affair with the company. The customers feel as though they’re a part of the organization because they share in the online retailers story (in fact, customers ARE the Zappos story – and their spots are true to that). Brands need to get away from being “edgy” first and look to “true.”

We made a huge mistake when we first pitched our campaign to Mutual of Omaha. Giving into our own insecurities for a brief and memorable moment, we forgot our purpose.  We weren’t here to start a new advertising agency. We started the company to be storytellers. Based on our experience, Groupon’s Super Bowl experience and countless others, maybe it’s not broadcast TV, it’s advertising that’s dead. Long live the story.