Communication & Culture

A look at how brands leverage cultural elements, trends, and happenings in their communications.

[comm-with-culture]

Do It Yourself

IP#10 - The Oscars 2014 will be remembered for a long time—not because of any particular movie or actor that won an Academy Award, but because of a picture that is now a landmark in media history: Ellen’s selfie with superstars such as Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts and Kevin Spacey is the all time number 1 tweet with over 3.4 million retweets. The picture plus Ellen’s request to break a Twitter record resulted in more than 250,000 tweets per minute and caused the social network to crash for about 20 minutes.

The enormous popularity of the tweet and the picture come from the spontaneous and natural look of the selfie. While it was, in fact, unprompted that all these big names of Hollywood joined the picture, the moment itself was induced by the producers and sponsors of the Academy Awards.

According to the Associated Press, the producers of the show decided to do a “selfie segment.” They also deliberately chose to use a Samsung phone to do it, as the Korean company happened to be a big-time sponsor of the show. While Samsung did not specifically pay for this selfie, the company actually sponsored ten backstage celebrity selfie tweets during the show. Yet, Samsung wanted to make sure that the group selfie wasn’t slashed as a staged moment and released a statement saying that they “were delighted to see Ellen organically incorporate the device into the selfie moment.”

As Samsung emphasized, they did not stage the group selfie. However, they did sponsor a bunch of other celebrity tweets from that event, and Twitter even got paid to amplify the reach of those pictures. What Samsung and the producers of the Oscars did here was not merely leveraging a cultural event. What they did was to take this concept a step further: They induced the cultural moment themselves.

Instead of waiting for a special moment to happen to leverage its cultural power, brands can try to create their own moments. However, scripting and staging such moments in detail probably won’t work, because that would be nothing but traditional advertising. What brands can do, is to provide a favorable environment and inspire the players in it to “organically” create the moment, which is what happened at the Oscars. You can assume that the Oscar producers, Samsung and Ellen have talked about a record-breaking selfie. Yet, it can also be assumed that they did not plan for Bradley Cooper, Lupita Nyong’o, Jennifer Lawrence, and everyone else to spontaneously join the picture. 

[comm-with-culture]

Real-time marketing, Newsjacking, or Reactvertising

IP#9 - A very specific form of leveraging culture in brand communications is called “newsjacking” or “reactvertising.” The idea is to identify a breaking news item and spin it in a smart way to relate it to your brand. That way, public excitement about the news item is hijacked and is supposed to revolve less about the original news itself, but more about how it relates to your brand. Through that, the interest and reach potential of the original news is transferred to the brand message.

The concept as such sounds easy, yet only a few newsjacking cases are successful in terms of creating a lot of buzz. Two of those have been discussed in previous posts: The Blackout Oreo and Kit Kat’s reaction to Apple’s “bendgate.” On the other hand, there are numerous cases where newsjacking barely got any attention. Examples would be the following Tweets from Sears and Kenneth Cole:

What makes the Kit Kat tweet so much more successful and popularized than one of these failed attempts to leverage the same concept?

All were Tweets and referred to breaking news. The obvious difference is what kind of news was used. Newsjacking is clearly a marketing effort with the goal to increase brand awareness, gain attention or even to drive sales. Newsjacking a negative event such as the riots in Cairo or Hurricane Sandy with the end goal of making a profit is just wrong. No human being was severely affected by bending iPhones so Kit Kat could easily make fun of it, exploit the “crisis” and win the situation.

So what does this all mean?

First, newsjacking is not as easy as it sounds. Not every breaking news item can be leveraged in that way. In fact, brands have to be very careful in determining which news they want to attach their message to. If chosen poorly, the entire attempt can backfire. This means that every news item has to be evaluated before it is used.

Second: Time plays a big role. Once the news is out there and has been presented from several angles, it quickly becomes old news. This means, that the newsjack has to occur at a very early stage. Marketing Strategist David Meerman Scott has created a timeline to visualize when exactly is the best time to newsjack a story:

  Third: You have to be ready. In order to pull off that thing, both Oreo and Kit Kat had to have teams ready to create the brand message. This includes copywriters and creatives. Depending on the agency-client dynamics of every brand, the client might also have to approve of the message before it can be posted.

However, all of this doesn’t mean that everyone has to be constantly alert and expecting a newsjack. If a brand has decided that its communications plan and style allows for something like newsjacking, then it should have an execution plan ready including steps that are to be taken in case a breaking news item qualifies to be hijacked. 

[comm-with-culture]

Dunk. Score. Win!

IP#8 - One of the most popular examples of culturally relevant ads is probably Oreo’s Dunk in The Dark during the SuperBowl in February 2013. During the 34-minute blackout in the stadium, Orea posted its most successful Tweet, which was named “Best Ad” of the SuperBowl by numerous publications. The simple image of an Oreo cookie with a gradient black background saying ‘You Can Still Dunk In The Dark’ maneuvered all of its competing multi-million dollar TV ads onto the bench, including Oreo’s own SuperBowl ad that year.

The most important factor contributing to the success of the Tweet was its timeliness. Only four minutes after the lights went out, ‘Dunk In The Dark’ went online. That is the time when viewers divert their attention away from the black TV screen to other screens they have, meaning computers, tablets and phones. Twitter, with its power of live conversation and comments on events that are happening in the moment, was the perfect platform for Oreo send out its message. People log into Twitter to find out what is happening, to see what others have to say about it.

Even though Oreo did not use a #SuperBowl or #blackout hashtag, the Tweet reached a tremendous number of people with almost 15,700 retweets and 525 million impressions. Numerous replies tell Oreo that they are the real winner of the game. The Oreo case summarized by 360i shows the impact of the Tweet.

Did people run to the supermarkets and bought Oreo right after they saw the Tweet? Probably not. Did they go to their shelves to get the Oreo box and dunk some into their milk glasses? Maybe some did. But what can be said for sure is that Oreo received attention—and they got a lot of it. People and media started talking and reporting not only about the SuperBowl blackout, but also about the Oreo Tweet. Oreo’s answer to what happened in culture became a cultural event itself. By leveraging the power of a cultural event, Oreo made itself a part of culture. It might not have translated directly to sales, but it certainly created customer engagement, which has become a currency in the world of advertising.

[comm-with-culture]

Homecoming King

IP#7 - Apart from the San Francisco Giants’ win of the World Series, this week had another major story to offer the world of sports: Basketball start LeBron James returned to his hometown team and played his first game in a Cavalier jersey again on Thursday night. The return of the superstar to Cleveland after four years of playing for Miami was a huge thing for every NBA fan—and brands made sure to have a say in it.

As the ultimate emotional sports advertiser, Nike naturally dedicated a spot to the homecoming king. The spot is called ‘Together’ and shows how all of Cleveland is standing together centered around James to win the next season.

  Ever since the World Cup, Beats by Dre has made a name for itself as a great emotional advertiser. The spot briefly discussed in a previous post was the second most watched ad on YouTube in June. Now, Beats by Dre produced another video (‘Re-Established’) where LeBron James trains with Beats headphones, and they made sure to use hair-raising music that goes under your skin.

  And then there is Sprite. Their LeBron spot tells you to #obeyyourthirst. The ad is somewhat less dramatic than the other two, but has very emotionally powerful content. Fitting to Sprite’s character, the spot is more on the light-hearted side of the spectrum than on the theatrical side.

  All three videos leverage the homecoming of LeBron James, but they do it in very different ways. Even though referencing the same event, the spots are diverse to a level that they fit not only to the different products, but also to the different brand personalities.

Yet, the most interesting thing is that these three brands identified James’ homecoming as valuable and profitable enough to invest into advertising around it. This opportunity isn’t one specific event, nor is it actually affecting anyone besides Cavalier’s (and maybe Miami) fans. The cultural significance, however, was big enough that these three brands decided to leverage it.

[comm-with-culture]

Pumpkin-spiced Everything

IP#6 - It’s that time of the year when all you see wherever you look are pumpkins: Grocery stores put pumpkins in the front shelves, your Facebook feed fills up with pictures of carved pumpkins, and Starbucks is serving its pumpkin-spiced lattes. And then there is Halloween next week—a holiday celebrated by two thirds of the American population, generating US$7 billion in revenues. It’s obvious that companies would want their piece of the (pumpkin) pie.

Food and beverage brands can easily release a “pumpkin version” of whatever their product is: Pumpkin bread, pumpkin beer, or even pumpkin Reese’s. Products that are not meant for consumption have a harder job to do so: How can you connect your brand or product to the seasonal trend to give it more relevance in the moment?

Tide found a way to connect its washing detergent to the scary holiday last year. In a series of Vine loops referring to famous scary movies, Tide ran their “Stains Better Be Scared” Halloween campaign, in which Tide is the “bad guy” and stains are the victims.

These Vines are slightly entertaining, but of a rather low quality. The role-play of Tide as the murderer and stains as the victims is understandable, but the creative execution lacks the wow-effect. Nevertheless, the Halloween Vines were generally still more successful in terms of likes and shares than other Vine loops Tide has posted.

Another example is Crest. Toothpaste and Halloween normally don’t have much in common. Yet, Crest managed to produce a video showing how its product can be the solution to parents’ “Halloween Candy problem”. Candy will always be a part of this holiday, and Crest allows parents’ minds to be at ease about their kids’ teeth. Following last year’s “Healthy Halloween,” Crest just published this year’s Halloween special in which they examine the effect of Halloween candy on children.

Looking at these two cases, you can see a clear difference: Both started with a nice idea. One was Tide as the “Stainkiller,” and the other was Crest as the “Halloween Candy Fighter.”  Crest turned the idea into an entertaining, great-to-watch-and-share video. Tide opted for the short-but-many alternative. Of course you have to consider that the Vine clips probably cost only a small portion of the Crest videos. Yet, the low quality of the clips makes the viewer feel as if all they did was to put a cheap wig onto the Tide bottle (which was literally true for one of the clips). As a result, the relevance the product was supposed to gain from tying it to Halloween is almost neutralized by the poor execution of the idea.

In order to leverage cultural events successfully, you first have to find a good way to connect your product/brand to that event. The next and equally important step is to actually follow through and turn that idea into a nice piece of communication. The association to the cultural event alone does not make up for bad execution, which can even negate the cultural relevance you were supposed to gain.

[comm-with-culture]

All In One Rhythm

IP#5 - The Soccer WorldCup was probably the biggest event with a worldwide audience this year. The four-week tournament was the topic of 3 billion interactions on Facebook and 672 million Tweets. The reach of this event can be seen in the success of Shakira’s music video “La La La,” which was the tournament’s official song. The spot sponsored by Activia surpassed the famous Volkswagen SuperBowl commercial “The Force” as the most shared YouTube video of all times (see last week’s post here). An event with such an impact on people’s lives all around the world is clearly worth being included into a brand’s communications plan.

It’s easy for sports apparel companies such as Nike and adidas to make a video championing both the sports and their brands. It’s a bit harder for brands that are not directly soccer-related. Beats by Dre was one of those brands. Yet, they managed to create an amazing spot called “The Game Before The Game,” in which they successfully connected the tension before a match and the concentration their headphones can provide to the players who need to focus. Yet, music and sports is a connection that is not too far stretched.

But what if your product has absolutely nothing to do with soccer or sports in general? Here are two examples of how brands tried to make that connection.

Castrol staged a contest of football vs. Gymkhana, a motorsports, represented by Brazilian superstar Neymar and Ken Block in his Castrol-powered car. They set the two up against each other to see who can score more goals. It is a draw in the end, but the video is nonetheless highly entertaining and a pleasure to watch. The obvious Castrol branding is not disturbing since it fits well into the context.

Another example is Burger King who also set up a contest between their Whopper and the WorldCup. They challenged soccer fans to come to Burger King wearing their team’s jersey to get a free Whopper—while the game was on. Contrary to Castrol, Burger King does not integrate the brand into the WorldCup craze but actually juxtaposes itself and asks their audience to choose. Since they are targeting WorldCup fans (who else would have a jersey?), it is questionable if a Whopper could ever win that contest. 

Events such as the WorldCup are huge and have a lot of potential to enormously amplify the reach of your message. Yet, it is crucial to find a connection between these two things without making it appear ridiculous. Castrol found a fun way to integrate their brand into the soccer topic without making it all about their brand. Burger King, on the other hand, basically told all the soccer fans they were targeting to choose between a Whopper that is available all year and costs $5, and the excitement of the WorldCup that happens only every four years. In such a case one might wonder if Burger King would have been better off not referencing the WorldCup at all.

[comm-with-culture]

May The Force Be With You.

Idea

IP#4 - The last posts looked at communication referencing local everyday culture and specific cultural events that are happening in the now. Apart from leveraging currentness or habits of culture, brands can also refer to things that are significant to such a high extent that everyone worldwide understands it; no matter which generation you were born in, or which part of the world you live in.

Volkswagen used exactly on of those things in its 2011 SuperBowl commercial "The Force." This spot exploits one of the biggest cults or fandoms in the world, which has been going on for 34 years now and is still continuing.

Insight

The ad references Star Wars, or more specifically the evil character Darth Vader. Not all people in the world have seen the movie, yet almost everyone knows that Darth Vader is the impersonation of  “the bad guy” in movies. Equally famous are his superpowers, also known as "The Force," and even though you might not understand exactly what it is or how it works, you somehow know that it lets him control things and people.

This spot held the number 1 spot for most shared video on YouTube ever with over 5.2 million people spreading it around the world. Only this year, after 41 months on the pole position, was the spot surpassed by Shakira’s “La La La” video for the worldcup in Brazil that also featured a handful of famous soccer stars.

The Volkswagen spot probably wouldn’t have been as popular if it wasn’t for Darth Vader. Imagine the kid trying to be a magician and to miraculously move things around. It would have been a cute spot, but it probably wouldn’t have made as much of an impact as it did with the Vader reference. People know who Darth Vader is, and it doesn’t take a second to understand what the kid is trying to do. A magician would have required some sort of explanation, but with the kid wearing the Vader costume, the entire world knew what he was up to. Plus, the dramatic Star Wars music contrasting the adorable kid has much likely contributed its fair share to the popularity of the video. 

Implication

Some things are so prevalent in the entire world, they have achieved a level of global recognition. These things don’t have to be current or present in people’s everyday life, but they still embody enough power for your brand to exploit in order to amplify your message. No explanation is necessary, as can be seen in the Volkswagen spot. Not one single word was spoken, which also eliminated the language barrier. The trick is to identify such a global cult that fits your brand, and then seamlessly integrate it into your communications as Volkswagen did.

[comm-with-culture]

I know what you mean.

Idea

IP#3 - Seamless, the self-proclaimed “fastest, easiest, and smartest way to order food online and on the go,” has made life for lazy people a lot easier. You can order food wherever and whenever you want simply by clicking a few buttons in the app on your phone.

To promote their incredibly popular service, Seamless has placed numerous ads in New York subway stations and trains. People might read those ads as a method to avoid eye contacts with strangers on the train, but chances are that they will remember them.

How so? The Seamless ads leverage the local New York culture and create an “I know what you mean” effect. The copy of the ads makes use of everyday life situations that New Yorkers can directly relate to.

Insight

The Seamless ads describe situations that people know and understand. Yet, they not only reference these situations. Seamless frames them in a way to position their service as either the solution to the problem encountered in that situation, or the cause of a (rather funny) “problem.”

Seamless is the solution for bad weather and stilettos

or your 7th floor walk-up

or your aversion against talking to people on the phone:

  But Seamless also showcases your weird relationships 

or the odd levels of importance given to what is happening in your life

or caused you to lose your Foursquare mayor status (big problem!)

These examples show that Seamless is deeply immersed into the local culture and knows what it is like to live in New York. But what makes these ads relatable and engaging is actually the fact that they make fun of the app and its purpose. What they are basically saying is: “I understand your ‘first-world-problems’ because I am one of those problems.” And since people love having these kinds of problems, they would want to add Seamless to it.

Implication

Different from the last post about Depaul UK’s strategy, this example does not leverage a certain event that is happening only on one specific day at one specific time. Even though the iPhone 6 launch was a huge event to leverage, the cultural pool Seamless is tapping into is bigger. Seamless uses people’s everyday life and all the little problems that everyone knows.

This shows that it is not necessary to stake out one big event to refer to in your communications. You can equally leverage the everyday culture and can create the same or an even bigger effect. While people might miss one event, they will for sure understand and relate to daily life references, which also allows you to use the reference for an extended period of time.

Yet, a superficial reference might not be enough. You have to go deep to create the “I know what you mean” effect.

[comm-with-culture]

Relating to the last post about the iPhone's popularity, here are two examples of companies that wanted to leverage Apple's 'Bendgate' problem. Some iPhone 6 Plus models were reported to bend when carried in pants pockets for too long. After initial individual complaints, the website Unbox Therapy ran a test and tried to bend the iPhone 6 Plus with bare hands--and it worked! The video released last Tuesday (see above) has been viewed more than 45 million times now.

Two companies decided to leverage this opportunity and 'bend' the critique into a marketing message for themselves.

Zin Pilates, a Turkish studio, cleverly noticed that bending for them is not a fault but actually a skill:

KitKat also recognized that this is chance to promote a very important trait of their product: They don't care about bending, because they break. KitKat's Twitter account now has this tweet pinned on top of their page and over 28,000 users have retweeted KitKat's break, which makes it more successful than Oreo's 'Dunk in the Dark' Superbowl tweet.

[comm-with-culture]

That's My Spot!

Idea

IP#2 - Last Friday, Apple released its latest iPhones. Over the past few years it has become tradition for people to camp outside of the Apple stores to be among the first to get their hands on the new iPhone. Moon Ray from Missouri, for example, waited for 19 days in front of New York’s Fifth Avenue store to secure her pole position.

This is an unproportionally long waiting time considering that people who pre-order it online get their new iPhone just a few hours later. Yet, if you want to be among the very first, you apparently have to invest the time to camp outside—or not.

The organization Depaul U.K. saw this as an opportunity and offered a solution to people’s dilemma of wanting to be the first, and not wanting to wait in line. The London charity used volunteers to secure a spot in the very front of the line at the Apple Store in Oxford Circus. They then created an ebay auction for people to bid on it.

Insight

The launch of a new iPhone has become a worldwide phenomenon. Depaul UK, which focuses on fighting youth homelessness, can only dream of such a vast outreach, and more importantly, such a level of popularity especially among younger people.

Depaul has identified an increasing desensitization of millenials against homelessness. The organization realized that this problematic audience happened to be the same as the primary group of purchasers for Apple products. This connection allowed Depaul to leverage the iPhone’s popularity to get on the millenials’ radars. The important part here is, in fact, how they made use of it. Depaul did not simply set up an information booth next to the Apple store. They exploited the relevancy and currentness of the start of the iPhone 6 sale by making themselves part of it.

A total of 70 people bid on the auction, and the spot ultimately sold for $734. This is not a high amount in terms of money value. Yet, Depaul did succeed in terms of creating buzz and consequently, increasing awareness about their organization and cause. On top of the number of tweets and Facebook posts, major online media with global reach, such as the Huffington Post, Gizmodo, and the Wall Street Journal, also picked up the story.

Implication

As mentioned, what made Depaul’s PR stunt successful was not the fact that they simply associated their brand with Apple hoping to pick up some of its popularity. The crucial part was to exploit the global event of the iPhone 6 sale while it was happening.

What does this mean? It means that merely following cultural trends is not the best way to leverage culture in communications. Key is to identify relevant happenings and integrate the brand into those. In the case of Depaul UK, irony helped to make the stunt come full circle: In order to raise money for homeless people, the volunteers had to sleep on the street to secure the spot in the line.

[comm-with-culture]

How NOT to do it: Examples from 9/11

IP#1 - Last Thursday was the thirteenth anniversary of 9/11. Many brands felt the need to pay tribute to what happened, and did so by tweeting or posting a status update with a picture related to 9/11. While leveraging cultural happenings in brand communications can help the reach and impact a brand makes, this case shows that the amplifying effect can also be a negative one when it is done wrong.

Naturally, it is a matter of the underlying intention of the brand when they tweet and post about the 9/11 anniversary. Many brands do it in a respectful way to show that they care. Yet, there are others that approach this issue in a purely logical way:  They see a huge opportunity to let their brand take part in the conversation about a current and relevant topic. Morally speaking, this is clearly wrong.

Numerous examples show that some brands failed to see how inappropriate or just unbelievably tactless and morally wrong their opportunistic communications approach was.

This year, Fleshlight, the producer of sex toys for men, wanted to honor the victims and posted a picture of the flags that were set up to commemorate them. Unfortunately, the tribute was displayed right next to their profile background that featured Jenna Haze, a sex toy that allows men to “slip inside two new textures.”  

In 2013, AT&T posted a picture of the tribute lights with the words “Never Forget.” The problem was, however, that the brand couldn’t resist including its own product in the picture, which made the entire post feel completely insincere.

While Fleshlight made a placement mistake, and AT&T somehow couldn’t fight the urge to remind their audience of the importance of cellphones with regards to 9/11, the yoga brand Bikram Arlington did not even bother to pay tribute, but merely used the numbers to promote their latest sales.

Unsurprisingly with a sensitive topic like this, the backlash came fast. Fleshlight deleted its tweet after social media reactions pointed out the inappropriateness of the memorial flags next to Jenna Haze. AT&T tweeted an apology saying, “the image was solely meant to pay respect,” but still had to deal with the twitterverse heavily attacking the brand’s morals.

Bikram Arlington, however, not only faced massive complaints about their initial 9/11 sales promotion. The brand’s reaction to those complaints was a complete failure in terms of crisis communications:

Bikram Arlington’s Twitter profile was shut down, or is at least no longer accessible. All Facebook posts from September 11 were deleted.

These are extreme cases of course. Yet, they show that choosing to talk about an issue without carefully considering whether it is appropriate and suitable for the brand can quickly turn the amplifying effect against your favor.

[comm-with-culture]

What this blog is about

In a world of ubiquitous information and ads targeting us from all sides, brands have to find a way to make their message matter and speak to their audience in a way that is relevant for them.

One way to do so is to leverage cultural trends and happenings. By incorporating these things into a brand message, the audience is more inclined to pay attention to it, merely because they care about what is going in in their lives, in their culture, and are hooked by the association. Be it popular TV characters, sports events, or current food trends--if brands can identify suitable cultural matches for their messages, they have the chance to amplify the reach and impact of their communications.

This blog will explore examples of how brands have used cultural trends and happenings in their communications, and what kind of results they have achieved with it.