Creative Architect | Building Brands Through Immersive Storytelling

Super Bowl Ads vs the Art of Meaningful Marketing

Show notes

This year, many people thought the Super Bowl ads were a bit of a letdown. In this podcast episode, I talk with Ari Kuchar, the in-(power) house creative director behind many of our best-performing ads. I work with him daily on OOH campaigns, CTV ads, and more. But today he is on the pod giving his insights on what makes an ad remarkable, and how to make things different next year. We talked about what it means for a brand, strategies being done online, celebrity stuffing, and what’s in it for a brand.

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Transcript

00:07

Welcome to the Brand Runner podcast, where we discuss marketing, trend and tech. On this episode, we’re talking about the Super Bowl. And I have a special guest, Ari Couchard. He is part of my team here at Monday.com in the Brand Runner team, and he is known as the creative powerhouse. When I first, you know, I’ll switch to you, I thought we’d do a wrap up and discuss the ads of this year’s Super Bowl. But you told me that you didn’t really like the ads this year.

00:36

and thought they were pretty weak, and actually share a similar opinion. So you also mentioned that you had a lot of insights on how to advertise in the future. I’m very excited about your thoughts on this unpopular opinion on the Super Bowl episode. I sound like an absolute asshole. I’m a powerhouse, and all the ads produced for the Super Bowl this year were terrible. I don’t know if it’s not super accurate, but I think I can share the experiences I had watching the ads.

01:05

I think Yves, that’s a really nice introduction. Well, at the end, it doesn’t matter what it looks like or how much money is being invested in those ads, right? The ultimate point of measure is, does it have an impact? Does it have a lasting impact? And is it really moving the needles on it? Otherwise, why to do it in the first place, right? And you, amongst any people I know, especially here at Bombay, you know how to do that more than anyone else. How do you make…

01:35

an ad with limited amount of money and make like a big impression and like actually make something happen for the business, which is, you know, what is advertising is, you know? Yeah. I mean, it’s funny, like you could go to Yosemite National Park, right? And you could go through that, you know, this amazing, huge, incredible experience and then walk out and someone says, Hey, did you see that incredible poplar tree? And you’re like, which poplar? I mean, I don’t know if that’s the right species of tree, but it’s like, they were

02:05

lots of trees at the National Park there. What do you mean? They go, yeah, it was green and it had branches. Yeah, but there were lots of them. If someone asked me to think of a particular ad that stood out in the Super Bowl, it’s hard. I mean, it’s only hard if it had celebrities, was a million miles an hour, the message was kind of confusing. For that, for me, picking out one of those ads was really hard, but I had ads that I still remember and think about because they were so different.

02:34

So if someone said, I went to Yosemite National Park, and they said, well, let’s see the guy who’s standing there naked playing guitar. I’m like, yeah, oh yeah, he I saw, and he I remember, because it stood out. So I think it’s like, how do you stand out from all that noise? Yeah. And yeah. Actually, that was going to be my, one of my first question to you before we talk about your insight on how to make it better. I read that this year was a record audience, and there was like 123 million people watching the Super Bowl this year, which is amazing, and it’s,

03:04

you know, definitely a lot of eyeballs, you know? So what, to your sense, what makes a Super Bowl ad memorable? Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, so again, what makes it memorable, I think is standing out. It’s definitely being relatable. I don’t know, I look like another question in year 2024, whatever year it is, like how do people even experience these ads? Like watching live, watching on broadcast television like I did with a bunch of people.

03:33

when it came to ad break. And first of all, the younger people in the audience, like, and while I was watching, they were like, bring the ads back. Like, this game is boring. The game is very boring. I don’t understand. I understand, like, NFL American football. Like, I understand it to an extent. I clearly don’t understand it enough to really enjoy it. But the game itself is, I find, it’s so slow, so technical, so strange, and it’s such a popular American sport.

04:03

That to me, in my understanding of America, isn’t America. It’s so bogged down in rules and strategy. But then it comes to the ads and you’re like, oh, that’s America, where they’re throwing, like every brand name is trying to shove as much as possible to 30 seconds or a minute. There was so much happening, it’s happening at a breakneck speed. So when an ad would finish, you’d be like, what the hell was that? Because I think I was also being hyper aware. Like other people are just trying to enjoy the ads.

04:31

But I’m being hyper aware of what are people trying this year, how they’re doing it differently. And I think in a lot of cases, they weren’t doing it differently. Obviously, celebrities were going to be huge this year because of the strike. And they were there. I mean, maybe I expected more celebrities than usual, but there were a lot. And it’s like if there was an ad where it didn’t have a celebrity, which is really rare, even the littlest members of the audience who I was watching were like…

04:59

is that guy a celebrity? Because why are there no celebrities in this ad? And it’s almost like a where’s Waldo, where’s Wally. It’s like find the celebrity. And with that, it’s almost like, yeah, I guess you remember the brand involved in each ad, but you’re thinking more about the celebrities and the gags. I was very overwhelmed by all the ads. But to your question about how do you stand out in the Super Bowl.

05:26

I’m just going to think about the example of one ad that really stood out to me, which was the Jesus ads. They were like, they were, look, they were beautiful. I mean, they were stunningly shot. Regardless of your views on Jesus and religion, it’s kind of besides the point. I think it’s just that what it did to me, and it’s actually, I am religious. I’m not religious Christian. I’m like Jesus, Jewish. But

05:53

But you have these ads just flying at you, and they feel so empty. The jokes were tired and done. And it’s like, OK, yeah, same old ads. Nothing here is super exciting. And I guess, what are you expecting, really? You’re not really expecting anything. You’re kind of hoping for an ad that really blows you away, and that never happened. And then the Jesus one came on. And just to kind of give you a bit of context, the Jesus ads, which may have caused some sort of controversy for being religious or whatever.

06:20

But I think also some of the content was actually pretty interesting as well. But just to kind of picture it for you, in case you haven’t seen it, it was a series of photographs. I think one of them was like washing the feet. Like there’s a pastor washing someone’s feet. And in all different scenarios, I think there was one where it was a homeless person or an unhoused person. Sorry, I was just in California. That’s what you’re supposed to say. Sorry. But all different scenarios where people were getting their feet washed

06:50

And very like 2024, very modern, very contemporary scenes, but shot beautifully, almost like something out of a Baroque painting, with a beautiful chiaroscuro lighting, but in like kind of this beautiful technicolor of like, you know, that’s not what you expect in like a digital kind of era. And I thought it was just so beautifully shot, but what was most beautiful about it is that it was just very, very a single theme.

07:16

And each photo was almost the same composition, but with different cast of characters. And it reminded me of Caravaggio, who tried to, like, you know, think about the, like, at the time in which he kind of came to the front and it was very, very popular, science had just come in and people were leaving religion en masse. And the church was like, okay, how do we get people to be excited about religion? Well, let’s get this guy who’s, you know, this bit of a troubled character, but he paints these beautiful scenes, super hyper-realistic and very theatrical paintings.

07:46

Let’s get him to paint pictures of the Bible. And he did, and they were like, but they featured real people. Like, you know, they didn’t feature people who didn’t like these holier and lofty characters. They represented those, but they looked like the people you would see down at the local tavern. And that really was really popular because it was popular. First of all, like a lot of religious clergy people were like, what is this? This is like, you know, what’s he doing to our to our to our holy characters? This is a an abomination.

08:13

But to the everyday folk, they were like, oh, that’s us. And this is relatable. And so these ads did a very similar thing. And whether or not they’re relatable is another question. But what they did was have this kind of idea, which I thought was really, really fascinating. But also, not just that, it just slowed the pace down. You’ve got ads coming at you like every 30 seconds. It’s another ad. Or every minute, it’s another ad.

08:40

filled with, I mean, a thousand scenes. These things cost a lot of money to produce. I can only imagine, like, the producer element in my mind was like, wow, wow, these are expensive ads. And it’s almost like, for what? It’s so much that I can’t even stop and understand what’s happening. And then it just slows down for the Jesus ads. And it’s just like, it’s just slow shots. And it’s the static shots one after another. And I just felt calm. And I think, and I don’t know whether this was their intention as well, but I felt at peace almost. And like, again,

09:10

I’m prefacing it, I am somewhat religious, right? Obviously I don’t kind of fill an affinity with Jesus and the New Testament, but I think that’s besides the point. I think like what this did was, like almost it was like a Sabbath from the ads. It was like a break from the break. And I thought that was really cool. Like that was so effective. And that stuck out for me more than anything else. And I almost, I found myself wanting that ad to come back in the ad break, because otherwise I was like feeling a bit nauseous to be honest. I mean, maybe I’m just getting old.

09:39

But here you’re talking a lot about how it stands out compared to the other ads, right? Yeah, look again, yeah, whether or not that would that stand out on its own? Probably not. If I saw that, if that was a YouTube ad, I’d probably skip the hell out of it, you know? I’d probably be like, I’d probably roll my eyes and say, oh, like, you know, I really just add, I really just add that it’s kind of, you know, it’s too slow for this medium. I’m just not interested. Like I want to see my content. But I think if you know you’re going to sit there, you want to watch the ads.

10:05

You kind of, it’s weird, you want to watch the ads because you’re expecting something to blow you away or this is where everything happens, night of the night, so I heard someone say like the Met Gala of advertising. So you want to watch the ads, but this one was a, it just, cause it slowed things down and it was beautiful. You can be cynical and be like, oh, this is all bullshit religion, but it was beautiful. And so that, but so to your point, again, it’s, it was, it stood in contrast to the rest of the ads. It seems like, you know, this year, the trends were a lot of the celebrity use, as you mentioned.

10:35

But it’s funny because I don’t think it was always the case. If you think about ads like 20 years ago, 15, 20 years ago, it wasn’t necessarily about trying to stuff celebrity in there and the goal being like, oh, do you remember this ad with XYZ in there, and et cetera. So there was definitely a lot of celebrity this year and a lot of being visually enticing and creative, popping out, et cetera. And then you also had all the standard brands, like brands that do it for the past.

11:05

forever, the Budvisor and the Bud Light that were there. And then you also had a lot of presence related sports ads, like ads relating to football or other things. And then you had maybe like 90% use of comedy in those ads. And sometimes creative is just an excuse to be part of these brands that did it. You know what I mean? But there’s no clear conveyance of what the brand is or what it does or the values. So to your point, what do you think?

11:35

can be improved next year, how would you do it? Yeah, that’s a good question. Just one interesting note about what part of your question about like, you know, just being there. It’s like the high street in London or Fifth Avenue in New York, or the first 20 pages on Vogue. Some brands just need to be there because if they’re not there, they’re not relevant. And it seems so like old fashioned and old world. But I once interviewed,

12:04

the managing director of Condé Nast. And he said, these brands need to be in these pages. And you open up Vogue, and it takes you about 15 minutes to get to the index page. You’re like, did I just look at all these? What the hell is this? But it’s like, they need to be there. Because this defines them. And it costs a ton of money to have a brick and mortar store on Fifth Avenue. And these things may not even be, you know.

12:27

They may not seem to be or may not be profitable, but these are almost lost leaders for the company in terms of marketing. They need to be in these places in order to be crowned as one of the top fashion houses or fashion brands or whatever. But how do you stand out? And I think you stand out by being disruptive and being like, and so how would I do it? I try to work out, okay, first of all predict what’s gonna happen next year.

12:55

Will there be celebrities everywhere? Yeah, I’m sure there’s gonna be celebrities everywhere. Like, celebrities every single week, it’s a trend that I think that’s not gonna go anywhere. The world is like in this really weird place where collaborations and celebrity, it’s like it’s a dime a dozen now. I still remember like 20 years ago when if a brand collaborated with some sort of like, when two brands collaborated, or when a brand collaborated with like, a cartoon that you loved or something, it was a really rare occasion.

13:25

Like I’m trying to think of a specific example and I can’t even think of it now because now we are inundated all the time with cross collaboration. And I think like Supreme does it a lot. And I wonder if they’re like, it’s a satire or it’s like the kind of paradigm, it’s a satire of the idea of overly collaborating or that’s just like, they’re just kind of part of the problem. So again, what I think I would do is, and I think everyone loves a good story. Like comedy is hard.

13:55

Like, you don’t always nail the jokes. It’s not, it’s sometimes, and if comedy doesn’t work, then it really doesn’t work. So like, I think again, and I’m just gonna kind of go back to what I think didn’t work. Again, this is totally my opinion. Like, honestly, completely subjective. But there were a lot of these ads that were just like, a bunch of just scenes like hackneyed together. Like, the neighbor one with Schwarzenegger.

14:24

Like, yeah, it’s cute and they brought back the cast of Junior and Twins. That’s nice. That’s like really, there was actually a lot of that. Throwbacks to the 90s, nostalgia. There was a lot of nostalgia and a lot of throwbacks to the 90s. Almost like brands were like, yeah, well, the people who we want to buy our brand are people who are in their 30s, that they have all this purchasing power in their 30s and early 40s. So let’s do a lot of throwbacks to the 90s.

14:53

that kind of get them by nostalgia. That’s how we’re gonna connect them emotionally. Cool, but I thought that was so obvious for a lot of stuff. You know, the Dunkin’ Donuts ad as well. But at the beginning, for these things, there wasn’t really much holding together. Like it was just kind of a bunch of random kind of gags, like stitched together really, really weakly. And then there were some ads, and I’m honestly trying to think what those ads were now. But the ads had told a bit of a story.

15:20

and weren’t just a bunch of gags. Stay with you longer. Oh, sorry. Well, the Google Pixel ad, which to remind you, is essentially everything is blurry. And it’s a guy who’s visually impaired, and he’s using his camera to take photos. And because the AI assisted voice is telling him when things are in frame. You should really watch the ad. I kind of don’t want to ruin it if you haven’t seen it. So I would watch it if you haven’t watched it. I’m just going to keep talking.

15:47

If you haven’t watched it yet, you can pause this. This is a podcast, so you can actually pause this. No, you should really watch it. I will put the link in the bio, but I have a question for you about this specific ad. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. So I’ll keep telling you why I love it. Because, first of all, it grabbed me from the opening moments, because first of all, this voice is not a traditional ad voice. It sounded like a Spanish speaker, like maybe Latin American. I’m not sure.

16:13

But it was just it was atypical and that was lovely because it totally grabbed you first of all you just struggle a little bit To understand because you’re not you’re not used to hearing voice like that Which is great the fact that it’s it’s opening that up is diversifying in a really good way an important way But then again it continued on to about this guy with his very very visually impaired Ironically, that’s without my glasses. That’s how I’d see as well. So I could really relate to it I’ve really have really bad eyes, but I have glasses. So that’s a

16:40

Thank you. There’s no way I am in these glasses. No, but like it was a really beautiful story and it really built up to an emotional peak where you know, it’s kind of, to tell the arc really quickly because you would have watched it by now. And it’s on you if you haven’t watched it. And I really apologize if you still haven’t watched it because you don’t have access to the internet, yet you’re listening to this podcast. You can still pause it and watch it now. You can still. Last chance.

17:06

But basically, the AI voice is saying, you know, one face in frame, and he’s taking selfies himself. And I think also, whenever people take selfies, it makes me very, very depressed, because it’s like they don’t even have someone to take a photo of them. That’s whatever. So that’s the beginning of it. Then there’s two faces in frame, because he’s met someone that he’s fallen in love with. And then at the end, there’s three faces in frame. And you hear the sound effects and the atmosphere of a hospital. They’ve had a baby. And it’s so beautiful. It’s like something. I’m honestly.

17:36

semi-tearing up because I’m facing somebody in a small podcast booth. So the emotions kind of drained out of this room. But it’s a beautiful story and that stays with me. That stays with you because it really hits you emotionally. Humor hits emotionally too, but only when it’s super relatable. This was beautiful because it’s the human condition. My God, tell a story. Take time to tell a story if you can. Obviously, a lot of companies have time and budget.

18:05

or really budget for 30 seconds, which is so hard. I can say it myself, doing a 30 second ad and trying to tell a story is so incredibly difficult. I’ve seen one example of it that was done really, really, really well. Because oftentimes you might see a 30 second cut down, but the one minute version is always better, because they can build tension and drama. And I’m trying to think of the other ad that was a, they’re kind of trying to tell a story. Let’s pause on this one. Yeah.

18:35

First, I agree, it’s one of my favorite ads of this year. It comes back to what you said earlier about this, about how it has to be relatable. And I hope everyone falls in love, everyone have kids, and you can relate to this story. The one issue I have with this ad, but maybe I’m the only one, is you’re basically telling the story of a guy who’s visually impaired trying to take pictures. And this guy is, he cannot see pictures.

19:03

So why is he taking pictures in the first place? Yeah, honestly, I thought about that for the first time as I was telling the story right now. I was like, hang on, how’s he gonna watch these? How’s he gonna look at these pictures? Really good point. I don’t think many people thought of that. What I’ve heard a lot of people criticize it for is like, well, why do I care about that feature? I don’t know, bad eyes. Well, first of all, screw you, you perfectly 2020 vision person. But I think, and it’s not just that, it’s the fact that it’s…

19:31

Think about who it’s from. It’s from Google, right? The product is Google Pixel. I mean, not many people have a Google Pixel. Do they even want people to buy the Google Pixel? I don’t know. I think the opportunity here is a brand ad. Google can’t go out. Google has done ads about Google. What is Google? Google’s a monolith. It’s huge. But the Google Pixel is a tangible product that you can hold in your hands. And through that, they can tell a very emotional story that you can empathize with. If you can’t empathize with it, like,

19:58

I mean, of course, when are you, 2020 Vision? I mean, I can give you my two cents about it. I think Google doesn’t really need to make an ad about a phone. Every phone pretty much does the same thing. You take a picture, especially an ad about a phone taking a picture. And it’s true that while most people are not necessarily visually impaired, and you could think, oh, but it doesn’t cater to the mainstream that people are watching the Super Bowl ads, it also…

20:25

indirectly contributes to the values and mission of the company, of Google. And then them addressing accessibility is also part of building their own brand, independently from like, oh, look, we have a new phone. It’s cool that there is this feature to aid, sell fee for people that are visually impaired. But I don’t think it’s the primary goal of the app to sell this feature. It’s about showing that it’s a brand that cares.

20:53

beyond the fact that they were able to build an ad that is, you know, like it’s a good story. Yeah, for sure. No, no, absolutely. It’s about humanizing Google, which would be a really hard brief. Humanize Google? What do you mean? It was so weird. They used to have this tagline when they were like 20 years ago. It’s like, don’t be evil, or something like that. It was this kind of unofficial tagline. But Google can be seen as pretty bad. They’re in our lives.

21:19

Interweb, and what good are they doing? I mean, obviously so many of us rely on Google for so much, for more than we even know, right? But no one’s gonna admit it, no one’s gonna give them the props. But this is a really lovely show of how like, you know, even AI, which is so evil and scary, can really help. And it’s, again, they’ve humanized the brand, I think in a really effective way. Yeah, that’s a good way to close it on them. Any other additional insights you want to give?

21:48

Yeah, I mean, like, again, there was a, I saw an Adweek article about this, I think even you shared it with me, but I agree. The idea of like all these brands trying to pull you away from the TV, and this kind of like fight to like get you to interact with something else and yada, yada, yada, which would be really, really hard. I think if you’re watching the game by yourself, not so hard. You’ve got your smartphone, you can pretty much access anything, scan a QR code, type in a 300 word promo code. Yeah.

22:18

Good luck. People did it. How do you get people away from there and to actually actively start interacting with your brand instead of the Super Bowl? As I’ve already said, I wonder what percentage of those 126 million who tuned into the Super Bowl actually really wanted to watch the game who were super actively invested. I don’t know. I honestly have no idea. And I think a lot of it, just like if I watched a grand final of a sport that I actually liked.

22:47

I’d watch it even if I didn’t have any team in there that I cared for. But besides that, how do you get people off and interacting? So DoorDash did a great, it was a fantastic idea. People, I don’t know how TiVo works, all this sort of stuff. I don’t even know who has TiVo and who’s automatically recording, but like, you know that people are going back there and scanning over and writing in that promo code. And I wonder how that would work with many people because like, it’s like, hey, go back to the game. Why are you freeze frame on this bloody ad still?

23:17

But that was a really cool idea, because you could win a lot. And I think it’s just a great challenge. Who’s going to be the first person to do it? And you can imagine all the subreddits and all sort of stuff that opened up afterwards, and the chats, and the Whatsapps, and this and that, that kind of spurned off that ad. It would have created so much activity. But one that I really liked was the five second ad from Duolingo. And I don’t know if you used Duolingo? I think more people use it than we know. I think people are either like,

23:46

Oh yeah, I’m on Duolingo every day. Or you’re like, oh, you’re learning Italian with Duolingo. That’s kind of cool. And I think that it’s created this community of people who are now learning a language who would never ordinarily learn a language. And I think when you find someone else who’s using Duolingo, it’s kind of cool. There’s a common ground there. There’s a community. That’s kind of cool. So with that five second ad, which was so short and so kind of nothing, like he’s turning around. Can you sum up the ad for us? Yeah, yeah.

24:15

five second animation of Duo, which is the owl from Duolingo. He’s kind of turning around, his butt starts to protrude, and you’re like, what is gonna happen? Because you know, if you’re familiar with their ad, with their marketing and their brand, they’re cheeky. And you know, it’s, you know, cheeky, very cheeky. It showed the cheeks of his butt. And then another Duo, a baby Duo pops out of his ass, one of his cheeks or something, and says,

24:41

Do your duo, or whatever it is. It’s pretty much a call to action to do your lesson. Because these lessons are like five minutes, really short. Short enough, or less than five minutes, two minutes. Short enough to do in the ad break. There’s no reason not to do it. The ads are all craps, like who cares, if you carry my opinion. But it also puts a bit of guilt on you, like, oh, god, I haven’t done it today. I think all Duolingo users are like, oh, god, I need to do it, whether they want to or not. Because the end game is basically learning a language, right? It’s not really like.

25:11

Oh, I feel bad having engaged with their app. No, I’m trying to get something out of this. There’s a value here. I’m going to learn a language. But what happened was this ad, this five second ad plays, and at the exact same time, they did a push notification to all duo apps to say it with the same image of him with his butt and the face. It’s so ridiculous. But they are. They’re just so cheeky and they’re fun. They’re kind of lovable and affable or whatever. But that happened at the same time. That was really interesting. That kind of tie in. And I’m sure people would have tapped it.

25:40

and maybe either tap it or showed everybody else who was with them. Because a lot of people watch the game with other people, right? And it’s a loud environment, but you would have seen, and if you didn’t even hear anything, you didn’t need to hear anything, it was all on screen, no sound really. And there was a little, the notification sound actually. I actually wonder, sorry, I’m thinking, I’ll say it quickly, my thought, and then move on to the next part. But they’d probably pick up their phone and say, oh my God, I just got a notification at the exact same time. It’s Duo from Duolingo. People are saying, what’s Duolingo? Like, well you…

26:10

Like, what are you, living under a rock? Or what do you speak? One of the languages that aren’t supported by it? I don’t know. Everyone knows about this by this time. But it would’ve just spurned the conversation. And then also, I don’t know, even the sound, if you could hear the sound, it would be the same sound as a notification. So that’s really cool. And it’s five seconds. And it’s so cheap, because they already had that animation. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that on the app before. I thought that was so smart. And it was about retention. But because…

26:38

think, and maybe I’m giving them too much credit, because they know they’re surrounded by a bunch of other people, there’s a virality there, where the person picks up and says, oh my gosh, like, my app just, the notification went off at the same time, oh my gosh, how funny, and it’s like, oh my god, what even is that? Oh, it’s a language app, what are you learning? I’m learning Estonian. What a stupid language to learn. Screw you, what are you learning? I’m learning Japanese. Okay, fair point. Whatever. No offense to Estonians. No, that’s just a terrible example. But I’m just saying, like, it could start a conversation, and that’s…

27:07

And that’s really cool. Like a lot of other ads would start conversations, but maybe about Christopher Walken and not about the ad, and not about the car that he was advertising. What was it? Mercedes, BMW? I forgot. Like it was BMW because I’m just, I could do them a favor. But I don’t know. I think that’s amazing. They started a conversation and it was, everything was, I mean, it started for us, but every single thing was connected to what the app is offering, learning a language. So like, I think that’s really effective.

27:35

I think it’s kind of like a double-edged sword for the Duolingo ad because first it only works for people that actually use the apps. And second, a lot of people, they can put their phone down, they cannot look at the phone, it can be loud, they cannot get the notification. However, those who do get the notification can just click on it and boom, you just hijacked their attention span from all the other Super Bowl ads going on at that moment.

28:03

And in that moment, maybe they decide to do a lesson. And then poof, like, you know. And this is bouncing back on something you mentioned. You said it’s very hard to measure those ads. And it’s true that in the past few years, there’s an increase with companies wanting to have a clear understanding of how you can measure and what else you can do around the main Super Bowl ad and take it online to get an idea of what is the impact. And when Duolingo does it, then you

28:32

you know. Follow this guy, his name is Tom Orbach and he has a newsletter, fantastic newsletter called Marketing Ideas. The guy is the head of growth at Wiz, the cyber security company. He did a great article about the Super Bowl ad, it’s kind of like an anti-Super Bowl ad post he wrote. And his claim is that the best Super Bowl ads are not on the Super Bowl and that the trick is to create buzz around the Super Bowl without actually being part of it. And he gave a couple good examples.

29:02

is Doordash, but I don’t know if it’s the same one you mentioned because the example you mentioned is that Doordash bought all the products that were that were advertised on the Super Bowl. Yes. And then they decided to give everything to one guy and this created engagement and you know Buzz online for like 450 thousand dollars or something like this, which is a fraction of the cost of how it costs to advertise on Super Bowl. Like this year, like if you want to advertise

29:30

On the Super Bowl, the spot was maybe $7 million, up to $7 million or something, just for the media buy. So imagine how much you can do in acquisition efforts and how much measurability you can do if you find those line hacks. And then the other example he gave, I don’t know if you heard about this one, I thought it was pretty funny, it’s Skittles. You heard about this one? Okay, talk to me. Skittles created a musical with famous actors that took place at the moment of the ad break.

29:58

You know, so people didn’t miss the game, like they didn’t miss the game, because it was right in the ad break, and it was the length of the ad breaks. That’s cute. What, they released it online? Like how did it work? So I don’t exactly know how they did it, but they did it with Michael Seahole, for instance. This was on Broadway, OK? So beyond the whole Broadway effect, then you have also all the online engagements and you know. Oh, they did like a live. Yeah, they did a live show.

30:27

Really? Skittles? Yeah. And it’s called Skittle, the Super Bowl ad, or something like this. So I thought it was really smart. If you think about those ways to take it on. And even at Monday, I know they did it as well. The social team was on standby on the day of the game to interact with other brands, et cetera, et cetera. And they still managed to get a lot of impressions and exposure just by being part of that night.

30:54

Yeah, look, that’s the thing. You need to be a part of it. Because if you’re not a part of it, you’re out. My gosh, what was I thinking about recently where there’s either a brand or a podcast or something that just is no longer part of the zeitgeist and now it’s gone and no one thinks about it anymore. And that’s the risk that you have if you don’t keep on being a part of the conversation.

31:25

contradictory and hypocritical. But I despise content. I think we have way too much content. There’s so much content. When I was a freelancer and someone said, oh, I wanna make this piece of content. And I’m like, why? Why does the world need your content? We’re like, well, because it’s advertised. Just make an ad. I heard you say advertise, just make an ad then. Just be open with us and advertise your product and not just give us more content.

31:54

But unfortunately, and again, advertisement or content or branded content, if you’re not part of the conversation, you’re gone. There’s so much out there that we’re just going to forget about you, unless you’re incredibly memorable in what you’ve done in the past. But even then, this stuff just goes. And it’s like, if you want to be part of the conversation, you’ve got to create something, whether it’s online, hard, like a $7 million spot, or something really smart online, something disruptive, you’ve got to try. Because otherwise, you’re not going

32:23

you’re not there at all. I think that’s a great way to end this episode. Thanks, Harry, let’s do that again soon. Cheers, all the best, thank you.

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