While, the Super Bowl blackout helped those marketers worried that a one-sided blow-out would undercut the millions spent on second-half TV commercials, it was Oreo marketers who will be happiest of all after their quick Twitter reaction to the power outage saw the brand come out on top.
The Oreo team’s agency, 360i, was flexible and quick-witted enough to turn around a blackout tweet in a matter of minutes. Its quick witted reaction to unexpected live events resulted in a branded tweet that read ‘Power Out? No Problem’ coupled with a single Oreo image that said ‘You Can Still Dunk In The Dark’.
By the time the Mercedes Benz Superdome’s lights returned, the Oreo response could boast more than 10,000 retweets and by the time the Baltimore ravens lifted the trophy it had been retweeted or favourited 18,000 times.
Positive replies came flooded across Twitter, praising the brand for its ‘quick thinking’ and ‘smart response’.
Its post game earned media numbers will certainly be impressive too.
Oreo wasn’t the only brand to jump on the tactic. Indeed, Audi (9,000 retweets), Tide (1,500 retweets) and Calvin Klein (several hundred retweets) all exploited the blackout. But it was Oreo that gained the most traction.
Twitter reported that marketers began bidding on the words ‘power outage’ as a search term a matter of minutes after the lights shut down. A smart move as the entire social platform lit up with 231,500 tweets responding to the blackout.
So, despite Oreo also being one of the brands that paid CBS somewhere in the region of $3.8m – $4m for its own Super Bowl TV spot (which also looks like being a success in its own right), it may turn out to be a free tweet that was the game’s most talked about piece of marketing..
Oreo’s new commercial, which revolved around the theme of a dispute between those who prefer the chocolate outside or the creamy filling, used the tagline ‘Something we can all disagree on’ and then followed with a strong call-to-action – ‘Choose your side on Instagram @Oreo’.
Indeed, the brand began building its marketing around its Instagram account on Facebook on Thursday, but had gained only 2,200 followers before the game kicked off. The combination of the spot (and its quick-thinking tweet) saw this number jump to 30,000 by the end of the game.
Comment:
Certainly $4m is a lot of money to pay for 30,000 new followers, but its rapid Twitter growth may well have turned its overall Super Bowl initiative into a success.
Which goes to show that being flexible enough to respond to events in as close to real time as possible can lead to extremely economical marketing success.
The Dentsu-owned 360i says it designed, wrote and obtained approval for the Twitter response in a matter of minutes. Showing that quick and clever thinking needs to work in tandem with smooth lines of communication between brand and agency.
Sarah Hofstetter, president of 360i, explains that the creative and tactical decisions were made in real time, as marketers and agency staff sat together in a ‘mission control’ centre watching the game unfold.
‘We had a mission control set up at our office with the brand and 360i, and when the blackout happened, the team looked at it as an opportunity,’ said Hofsetter. ‘Because the brand team was there, it was easy to get approvals and get it up in minutes.’
Links:
Oreo Twitter
Oreo Facebook
Oreo Instagram
Oreo Super Bowl TVC YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6kMWLYYcAYw
Oreo Brand Website
http://brands.nabisco.com/oreo/index.html
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