Social media has made advertising no longer a “one-time investment” thing!

Advertising is not as simple as finding a media outlet to place your advertisement.

Although simply throwing money at it (that is, simply placing it widely) will almost certainly produce obvious results, this requires a prerequisite: there is a large amount of money that can be easily used for advertising. This premise is difficult to meet in reality.

The term “advertising campaign” in English actually contains the elements of “systematic and strategic combination”, and does not mean “spending money widely and getting as much exposure as possible”.

Therefore, "advertising" in this sense seems to include the meaning of "integrated marketing":

Strategic synergy between multiple media channels.

Integrated marketing emphasizes the combination of two aspects:

Horizontal combination + diachronic combination between different channels.

What is being discussed here is the temporal combination of advertising delivery across different channels. The specific implementation method is often:

Before the ad is released, deliver "warm-up content". But sometimes it’s called a “trailer” and sometimes it’s not.

After the ad is launched, deliver “follow-up content”.

Moreover, the "warm-up" before the official launch and the "follow-up" content afterwards often rely on social media . This is because some social media channels are free, and the public is more free and comfortable using social media. This is a major flaw in traditional mass media.

Without social media, none of this would be possible.

This application of social media is rewriting the conventions of advertising.

Skoda's "Smart People Understand": Combined Marketing via Social Media

On December 14, 2017, Skoda Taiwan released an ad called “The Smart Ones Understand”, with the creative idea coming from Publicis Taipei (please see the video below).

This ad is actually "borrowing the flow":

The two people in the advertisement are Matt Pavich and James Manzello. They form a music group called "Handsome Dancer" and released a video called "Coincidance" on June 30, 2015. The dance in the video is the "Shoulder-Shaking Dance" originally created by the two (please see the video below). As of September 23, 2021, the video has received 16,228,351 views.

Due to the popularity of this video and this dance, Skoda Taiwan borrowed the creativity of this new advertisement "The Smart Ones Will Understand".

However, before this advertisement was released, there were two waves of warm-up.

The first wave was on November 30, 2017, when a video was released on YouTube. The content was a street interview in Taipei. During the process, the two original singers mentioned above unexpectedly joined in, creating an entertaining experience (please see the video below).

The second wave was a video of a flash mob event. The flash mob event was held on December 2, 2017 in Taipei’s Xinyi District, and the video was uploaded to YouTube on December 12 (please see the video below).

In fact, these two waves of warm-up are not just simple videos, but two activities + follow-up videos of two activities.

After the release of "Smart People Understand", Skoda released two "follow-up videos":

On December 21, 2017, Skoda released a teaching video on how to do the shoulder dance;

On April 20, 2018, Skoda released a karaoke version of the shoulder dance video (please see the video below).

Therefore, the combination of steps for Skoda's advertising this time is:

It can be seen that this time Skoda's advertising campaign is centered on the advertisement "The Smart Ones Will Understand", with two waves of warm-up videos in the front and two follow-up videos in the back.

Super Bowl Ad Combination

Super Bowl ads will only appear a few times, or even just once, during the Super Bowl. This is to reduce the cost of media buying.

These ads will then appear on major video platforms.

Of course, before the event, most advertisers will release trailers of their official advertisements on video platforms in advance. This is a major feature of Super Bowl advertising.

There are two basic types of advertising trailers:

(1) Repeat the clip from the final ad;

(2) Produce additional clips in addition to the final advertisement.

Most Super Bowl ads use a combination of both types of trailers.

For example, on January 28, 2019, Head & Shoulders released its Super Bowl ad trailer “Headstrong Ads” via YouTube (see video below). This trailer combines the two approaches mentioned above: it contains clips from the final official advertisement, as well as new clips produced in addition. In fact, the tag for Head & Shoulders’ 2019 Super Bowl ad on social media was “#HeadstrongAd”. This suggests that Head & Shoulders explicitly considered the spread of Super Bowl ads on social media.

On February 2, 2019 (before the game), Head & Shoulders officially released three Super Bowl ads on YouTube (please see the videos below).

Special emphasis: The 2019 Super Bowl is on February 3rd.

On January 25, 2019, Amazon released four Super Bowl ad trailers via YouTube (see the videos below). None of the four trailers are clips from the final advertisement. All of them were additional independent productions and all of them invited well-known figures.

On January 30, 2019 (before the event), Amazon released an official ad via YouTube, titled “Not Everything Makes the Cut,” which aired during the live TV broadcast of the event (see video below).

In general, the combination of American Super Bowl ads is:

Author: Big Marketing

Source: Big Marketing