On the heels of Oreo’s big Super Bowl win during Sunday’s Super Bowl #blackout, are we ready to say real time marketing is a new trend? It’s a topic NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” picked up and ran with today.
Oreo’s ad team took just five minutes to conceive and produce the ad, according to company spokeswoman Laurie Guzzinati. This was made possible by proximity. Marketing executives from Oreo’s parent company, Mondelez International, were assembled during the game in a “social-media command center” at its digital ad agency in New York, 360i, ready to jump on any development.
Power out? No problem. twitter.com/Oreo/status/29…
— Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013
Real time ad making was not the only interesting thing Oreo did on Sunday. Take a look at the brand’s Instagram page, which was promoted at the end of Oreo’s 30-second Super Bowl spot. Viewers who jumped over to Instagram were encouraged to submit (on Twitter) and “tag a photo #cookiethis or #cremethis and we might just re-create it using your favorite part.” A stroll through the brand’s cookie or creme art gallery now shows before-and-after images of toy dinosaurs, a slice of pizza and a pay phone among many other crowd-generated odds and ends.
Oreo has a clever agency in 360i and a cookie brand is the ideal candidate to bring some lighthearted fun to the party. But let’s keep in mind that driving people to online activities during the big game is an idea that works for a small slice of the viewing population. This does not mean it should not be pursued. It means that digital proponents can rightfully claim a victory here, but perspective has to be brought to bare on the results.
The result we would do well to discuss: GoDaddy had a huge day on Monday. Hosting sales were up 45 percent, new mobile customers increased by 35 percent, and the Dot-com domain sales were up 40 percent. The ads they ran during the game were far from award-winning, but what’s an award from a bunch of hungover ad people you’ve never met next to a big pile of money?
