This year, marketers were focused on promoting their owned corporate website. Of the few that promoted engagement with social ads, even fewer integrated paid, owned, and earned.
With 39m American Oscar viewers in 2012, a majority of them are viewing them with a second screen (mobile/laptop/tablet) in hand, disappointingly, most TV ads failed to use paid media to trigger these discussions, indicating that Converged Media of paid owned earned is not consistent in today’s marketing quiver. A few weeks ago, we conducted similar analysis of SuperBowl ads, and found a greater degree of integration, including cross-channel integration with Hashtags (31% incidence) from TV ads to trigger online discussions.
Last night, at the Oscar’s, integration from the 58 TV spots to the second screen was paltry at best, with a high reliance on advertising corporate URLs, an odd play given that most know how to use Google search to find websites. While many a brand was active in emulating Oreos “Real Time Marketing” by using pre-created photoshop templates, it felt contrived and forced. There’s a thriving discussion, from Jay Baer on the contrived impact of Real Time Ad Failures, and David Armano gives pause to share his perspective as an agency working with Kellogg who were deploying real time ads –despite no TV spot.
Data highlights
- We analyzed 58 TV spots, from award kickoff to end (not red carpet).
- About 75% of all ads integrated cross-channel integration, with a majority promoting URLs
- While 17% of ads integrated Facebook, and 14% Twitter, they didn’t promote a specific URL, most focusing on the social network icons.
- Hashtag integration was a mere 13%, (Superbowl ads were over double that at 31%) a missed opportunity, given the amount of second screen activity in this media heavy space
- Samsung pushed the hashtag #galaxyatwork four times across their many ads, and purchased promoted trends on Twitter.
Marketing Efforts of Note
This year’s Oscar ads were contrived, forced efforts of brands and agencies running after the Oreo’s halo from Superbowl. Of note, JCP connected both there emotional TV spot, and tied it with Twitter engagement and even sent gift cards to Twitter followers that gave a positive reaction to the ads. Kellogg’s Special K deployed real time images in salute to award winners (Life of Pi), even without a TV spot, which limited their overall reach and opportunity to trigger engagement. Stella Artois had several photoshop templates that created Gifs that recognized winners, but didn’t push the content to the next level. AdWeek highlights how Oreos extended engagement from Superbowl to Oscars.
Above Diagram: Here’s one way brands should be integrated paid, owned, and earned, in a Converged Media manner. While most Oscar ads failed to complete this, JCP earned high marks, Read the full report.
Concluding Remarks:
Real time marketing was experimental at best, with many brands still trying to develop their playbooks for the second screen. Brands failed to integrate their paid media with social media, missing out on opportunities for the content to engage and resonate. Next year, expect greater integration between all the elements of paid, owned and earned, which we call Converged Media.
Update: There’s a discussion on my Facebook page, critiquing the ads.
Some additional data, here are the URLs promoted from the TV spots
galaxyatwork.com
hyundai.com
sprint.com/unlimited
tonkin.com
onpointcu.com
jcp.com/yourstruly
ameriprise.com
hyundai.com
hyundai.com
sprint.com/unlimited
jcp.com/yourstruly
chevydealer.com
americanexpress.com
royalcaribbean.com
Hyundai.com
coke.com/140
shophonda.com
comcast.com/xfinity
cleanhydro.com
jcp.com/yourstruly
neutrogena.com
galaxyatwork.com
sprint.com/unlimited
hotmessburger.com
willamettecountrymusicfestival.com
galaxyatwork.com
royalcaribbean.com
hyundai.com
galaxyatwork.com
hyundai.com
toyota.com
portlandgeneralelectric.com
Galaxyatwork.com
greypoupon.com
americanexpress.com
hyundai.com
jcp.com/yourstruly
mcdonalds.com/fishmcbites
Thanks for the good work last night, Jeremiah. The biggest issue I had with last night is that “real time marketing” is not “real time” if you’ve created canned images based on known information or likely outcomes. The more you plan for spontaneity, the less spontaneous you really are.
Interesting Tumblr “real time marketing sucks”, hat tip from Adam Kmiec
http://rtmsucks.tumblr.com
That’s a great point Jay. Many were pre-planned.
The JCP YouTube ad has 18k views, the following morning http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-RTOYH7eXGA
Just a thought: perhaps brands didn’t try quite as hard as they did with the Super Bowl because the Oscars broadcast doesn’t receive the same kind of hype around ads that the Super Bowl does. Yes, the viewership globally is huge, but the entertainment value is largely expected and delivered within the program itself.
Ian has a post on why “Five Fast Truths About Real-Time Marketing”
http://adage.com/article/guest-columnists/fast-truths-real-time-marketing/239959/
I agree. Being able to take advantage of things that happen in real time are great for that attention grab. That’s the reason Oreo got so much attention at the Super Bowl. However, it’s not always easy to do if you don’t have that “lightning strikes” moment.
I try to do some of this “real-time marketing” for my company, but since we deal with social media statistics it’s an easy fit to live tweet some stats and numbers as large events are happening.
Cheers,
Sheldon, community manager for Sysomos & Marketwire
People are more concerned about the dresses and hair than the commercials during an event like this.
That’s true, but what I find funny is that with the exception of JCP (unless I’m missing something) not a single brand was clothing/fashion focused. Seems to me the with the right converging strategy in place, one of the brands that didn’t have top-dollar marketing in place for Super Bowl (wasn’t Target a major advertiser during that? I could be wrong), could’ve capitalized on last night’s Oscar telecast. Think – Kay’s Jewelers, Chicos, Vera Wang (or Lauren Conrad) for Kohl’s, Godiva Chocolatier even – again, with the right strategy, I could see some really dynamite engagement/branding opportunities that were missed.
I totally agree with you Jeremiah I added your data to my Forbes story
http://www.forbes.com/sites/siliconangle/2013/02/25/innovative-advertising-is-about-integrating-tv-with-social-kia-motors-uses-social-media-to-reach-the-new-audience-of-couch-commerce-consumers-and-creates-a-brand-machine/
Jay – I know we have talked about this a little bit on other blogs, but there is a difference between “planned” and “unplanned” or serendipitous real-time. The fact that everyone one anticipated RTM during the Oscars was planned, because the Oscars happen every year. So there are unplanned opps within the planned event, but all occur and propagate “as-it-happens” in various streams. Of course, other examples of real time content marketing were exhibited simply by bloggers who were covering the event live. Others planned bigger content pieces to be launched during the Oscars, but it was still “real -time,” becuase the content was “of the moment.”.
More examples of Real time marketing
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/34214/10-Oscar-Worthy-Examples-of-Brands-Newsjacking-the-Academy-Awards.aspx
More here. http://keithrbyrne.tumblr.com/post/43990135068/the-oreo-moment-social-media-command-centers-and-the
Nice analysis of the OscarRTM hashtag
http://www.slideshare.net/JoakimNilsson/social-media-monitoring-report-oscarsrtm
I’m surprised that more brands didn’t integrate hashtags into their commercials. I see so many hashtags being used even on TV shows to grab extra engagement from viewers. I agree that we’ll see a lot more of that during next year’s Oscar’s. Thanks for all this awesome info!
The graph is titled ‘Tech integration with 2013 TV ads’ but the graph’s caption says ‘Data from February 24, 2012’ is this a typo or am I missing something?