Good Neighbours, State Farm Insurance Giant Skips The Party To Undertake A Neighborhood Watch. Through Forward-Thinking (Yet Still Vigilant) Ads That Target The Next Generation.
A Super Bowl ad for 30 seconds costs on average 6 to 7 million dollars.
Large corporations are the only ones who can afford this. But the price tag also refers to something more than how memorable your ad is; it refers to how your ad is amplified. The event itself has built a cultural reputation about what it means to be one of the few legacy brands that can pay to play. It says that you are relevant, you have the spending power, and that you are present in conversation during one of the most talked-about nights on TV. Moreover, it also says something about you if you aren’t present.
Not being one of the advertisers for the Super Bowl is a conversation of its own. Creatively riding the wave of the much-anticipated event without paying the hefty price tag. This is social hacking, and it speaks volumes to the shift we are seeing in how we diversify, consume, and ultimately engage with branded content.
Brands like State Farm have decided to take a pass on having an ad in this year’s event and instead opted for a Tik Tok campaign where duet videos with a brand hashtag were created to serve as an audition video to be in a State Farm commercial. Tik Tok is the fastest-growing social media channel that offers a unique take on content sharing, where its user base consists of the majority being Gen Zs and young millennials.
State Farm is choosing to be present in a conversation with an audience that may still not be considering an insurance product in this current moment of their lives. They’re participating and carving their way in this new wave of building trust early on and over time, so when this audience is ready for their product they will already be familiar with the brand. In other words, repetition creates trust. Their decision to forego the Super Bowl is still relevant because it created a conversation around the fact that they are not showcasing an ad. It's relevant to the moment. It’s word of mouth.
The initiative to leave the creative output to the community also speaks volumes to the impact that creator-led content has on a successful campaign. (More on the Creator Economy in our next article)
The creative challenge of creating a good Super Bowl ad is a massive undertaking. Coupled with our multi-tasking, and often multi-screen consumption habits, with seconds to entertain and capture the audiences’ attention while being creative is extremely hard. By bringing in the audience to join the effort the volume of output and creativity is endless. Leaving the brand and the audience with much more than a fleeting ad, but rather a story from the audiences’ point of view.
So the next time you are leveraging on a popular event, trend, or key moment - consider how you will not join the same conversation, but rather how you are going to expand, and create your own narrative around it.
Next stop, we're dishing the latest on the Creator-Economy. In the meantime if you want to explore how to diversify your content from a creator lens let's chat!
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