Why brands need to take bigger risks

Strange and dangerous things happen every day, some
representing bold and risky breakthroughs. On October 24, 2014,
Alan Eustace, senior vice president of knowledge at Google, a
respected engineer and leader, made waves by jumping from the
stratosphere, breaking the world record previously set by Felix
Baumgartner in 2012. Wearing a specially designed spacesuit,
Alan ascended in a balloon to a height of more than 25 miles and
then jumped into space, reaching a peak speed of 833 mph
(greater than the speed of sound) as he plummeted toward
Earth. Even more interesting, Eustace planned the jump in total
secrecy — a private initiative with a small, dedicated team of
experts, without the support of one single dollar in sponsorship
money.
Eustace did it because he wanted to do it: One man guided by
passion and compelled by the sheer risk of the jump, resulting in
a new world record and opening up the stratosphere for
research. The fact that the jump was orchestrated by a small
team working without the overhang of a larger organization may
have given Eustace and his team the freedom and speed they
needed to break the record.
For us, the connection between Eustace’s risky jump and a
growing trend in the world of brand advertising is clear: Brands
that take bigger risks are reaping bigger rewards — especially in
the digital space — and positively impacting brand metrics and
sales. Twitter On the heels of Eustace’s news, we wanted to dive
deeper into the phenomenon of risky behavior driving impact as
it relates to brand advertising on digital platforms.
Ambush on the Big Stage
It’s impossible to think about advertising on the big stage in the
U.S. without talking about the Super Bowl. With 111.5 million
viewers, the broadcast of Super Bowl XLVIII last year was the
most watched TV show in U.S. history. Super Bowl XLIX is
expected to break that record. These numbers pale in
comparison to the reach of digital video, with more than one
billion unique monthly users visiting YouTube. In fact, digital is
responsible for people watching Super Bowl ads more than the
game itself — 50% of the Super Bowl audience watches the ads
on YouTube before the game airs, and 62% tunes in to these ads
after the game is over. Big brands always make a splash at tent-
pole events like the Super Bowl, but increasingly, we’re seeing
smaller brands winning even more.
Take Newcastle Brown Ale’s Super Bowl play. Knowing that the
company had neither the permission nor the $4 million plus
budget required for a prime slot during the Super Bowl game,
Newcastle showed the world the ad Newcastle would have made,
if only they could have. Veering off the traditional path,
Newcastle took a risk by creating digital teasers, trailers, fake
focus group footage, and mock “behind-the-scenes” footage
featuring Anna Kendrick and Keyshawn Johnson. Newcastle
created the commercial it might have made if the firm had the
gigantic budget or the rights to advertise during the game. The
campaign received more than 10 million views — prompting the
posts, social shares, and comments Newcastle needed to gauge
viewer response — and was mentioned in 600 news articles.
Newcastle conjured up more than one billion impressions, and in
markets where the campaign also received promotional in-store
support, it resulted in a high triple-digit lift in sales. Newcastle
ambushed the Super Bowl, leaving competitors wondering what
their prime slot spend really got them.
“One man guided by passion and compelled by the sheer risk of
the jump, resulting in a new world record and opening up the
stratosphere for research.”
Of the several lessons brand advertisers can learn from
Newcastle’s effort — Adweek’s pick for the No. 1 ad campaign
for 2014 — is that taking risks sticks with us. Newcastle was
willing to put its budget toward an innovative digital approach
that side-stepped both the safety and the pitfalls of traditional
outlets. Newcastle proved that risks can pay off, and the
company may have inadvertently paved the way for all brands —
big or small — to rethink their approach to costly, tent-pole
advertising events like the Super Bowl. Newcastle is hardly the
only brand out there taking these kinds of risks. They are part of
an even bigger trend we’ve been keeping our eye on.
Smaller Brands, Bigger Wins
There is no denying that big household name brands like Coca-
Cola and Nike fund some truly excellent creative work. In some
cases, as with Oreo (and its parent company, Mondelez
International, formerly known as Kraft Foods), these well-known
brands are noted for taking some calculated risks. However,
we’ve seen that more often it’s smaller or lesser-known brands
that benefit from taking bigger advertising risks.
Turkish Airlines is not a tiny brand in terms of its advertising
spend. Still, up until recently, the airline was dwarfed by some of
its mainstream competitors including United, American or Delta
in terms of brand recognition and awareness. A few years ago,
Turkish Airlines met its global awareness issue head-on with a
popular spot featuring sports greats Kobe Bryant and Lionel
Messi. That initial content began to build awareness for the
brand, but the airline realized the need to sustain momentum to
hit core objectives: To increase Turkish Airlines’ brand
awareness around the world, to reach a new, adventurous target
audience, and to test campaign effectiveness by measuring
brand recall. Turkish Airlines crafted a campaign around the
concept of a “selfie” — one of 2014’s hottest buzzwords. The
“Selfie Shootout” became YouTube’s fastest spreading ad of all
time, reaching 77 million views in one week and nearly 140
million views in all (as of January 12). Searches for the Turkish
Airlines brand tripled on YouTube and saw a 16% increase on
Google. The company also saw a 9% increase in people
remembering the brand.
Turkish Airlines demonstrated an appetite for risk and innovation
by looking to digital video — rather than TV — as the mass
marketing vehicle it is. While we expect this behavior to grow
tremendously in the coming year, Turkish Airlines may be
remembered as the pioneer of this phenomenon.
“Newcastle ambushed the Super Bowl, leaving competitors
wondering what their prime slot spend really got them.”
Another example of bold and risky digital marketing is from
Honey Maid, the graham cracker brand. Although Honey Maid is
part of the Mondelez house, both the brand and the product are
overshadowed by giants like Oreo. The graham cracker itself is
said to have been invented by the Presbyterian minister
Sylvester Graham in 1829 as a health food — a wholesome,
conventional beginning that makes Honey Maid’s campaign even
more impressive. Although other brands like Cheerios had
touched on using non-traditional advertising families in their
creative efforts, Honey Maid took the issue head on with a
national campaign showing a two-dad family, a punk-rock
family, an interracial family, a military family and a single dad,
all in one piece of creative. The tagline: “No matter how things
change, what makes us wholesome never will. Honey Maid.
Everyday wholesome snacks for every wholesome family. This
is wholesome.”
Others have rightly pointed out that associating the word
“wholesome” with politically and religiously polarizing images is
risky in and of itself. Honey Maid took that risk, and then
trumped it. The ad spurred the very controversy one might
expect: Many people chimed in on social media about how the
spot was not wholesome and, as some wrote, “downright
disgusting.” Honey Maid responded with a digital follow-up spot
that features an artist duo printing out each email, tweet, or post
about “hate” and turning those messages into a very real,
physical representation of “love.” The video showed that there
were ten times more supporters for the ad than haters. In its first
day online, more than 1.5 million people tuned in. Ultimately, the
online content drove more than 12 million total views, while
Google searches for the name “Honey Maid” shot up 400%.
Within two months of the initial spot airing, sales of Honey Maid
jumped 7%.
It’s unfortunate that taking a stand on a divisive social issue by a
brand is considered risky, and that very few brands are willing to
reflect the changing nature of America’s demographics in their
advertising. Honey Maid not only reflected the changing nature
of demographics, but went a step further by labeling emerging
family structures as “wholesome,” and then nimbly responding
to negative comments in a creative, forward-thinking way.
According to Mondelez senior marketing director Gary Osifchin,
Honey Maid acted on instinct rather than data: “We didn’t even
test this idea … we are very much showing Americans who they
are … it’s reality. Who thought a graham cracker could be talking
at this level as a brand?”
Risky Business
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen smaller entities leading the
way in terms of risk-taking. Some prominent brands like Warby
Parker or Dollar Shave Club were built on rethinking long-
standing business models. In the technology space in particular,
some of the biggest payoffs have resulted from placing several
small bets rather than one big one — famously, Twitter was
conceived as an incubation project within a podcast start-up.
Such risks, whether driven by necessity or out of passion, are
what drive human innovation and forward thinking.
“Turkish Airlines demonstrated an appetite for risk and
innovation by looking to digital video — rather than TV — as the
mass marketing vehicle it is.”
A similar phenomenon is having an impact on digital advertising.
Smaller brands are able to demonstrate greater tolerance toward
being nimble and fast, what we call “Nimbleocity,” which leads
to faster decision making. The digital space lends itself to
experimentation, because users are more forgiving of mistakes
or unpolished content, which means that brands have an
opportunity to place several smaller bets with digital content to
drive impact, rather than focusing on just one or two big
splashes. The risk involved in experimenting in the digital space
may be intimidating to larger brands that are less nimble and feel
they have less freedom to fail. Nimbleocity is a major factor in
why we’re seeing smaller brands win in the digital space.
Lessons Learned
Brands and agencies often ask us for advice about how to think
differently about digital advertising.
Our advice:
Know your brand. In particular, know what your brand stands for
and think about how to best express that meaning through the
digital medium. Honey Maid was dead-set on expressing its
modern definition of “wholesome,” and the company’s marketers
were nimble enough to respond quickly when viewers challenged
that definition.
Add value for your user. We used to talk about consumers in
terms of audience, but “audience” is too passive a term for
digital users. Customers are looking to marketing content as a
tool to entertain, inform or provide a utility. More than ever, it’s
critical for brands to know who they want to reach and to think
about how to have a conversation with them, rather than talk at
them. Our guiding principle is to always add value for your
customer in exchange for their attention. Newcastle wanted to
talk with beer-drinking millennials. What better way to reach
them than to entertain them using their language on their
preferred screens?
Embrace risk. This is a scary proposition in a world where every
move needs to be justified with tangible results and a sign-off
from the legal team. But in the digital space, great creative
increasingly requires bigger risks. Creative agencies need to be
empowered to experiment by placing many smaller bets and then
nimbly iterating on them once they are launched. The digital
space is the best place to experiment, because users expect a
wider variety of content and quality than in more “traditional”
mediums. Like Turkish Airlines, brands are increasingly shifting
marketing budgets to digital. Setting aside at least a small
portion of that budget to put toward digital experimentation can
be beneficial, because sometimes these smaller bets lead to the
biggest wins.
No matter what the task, taking risks is always scary. However,
with increasing clutter in the digital landfill, these risks may soon
represent the only real opportunity for brand advertising to stand
out. For big and small brands alike, even small risks can lead to
big rewards. It’s time to make that risky move on digital. And
demonstrate mighty impact.