In a world of noise--from the moment we wake up to the moment we lay down, everyone's screaming into the void "buy this, you need this to be cool, HEY LOOK my product is better than everyone else's', want to join my pyramid scheme marketing thing selling weight loss juice on social media?"
Ok, the last one was a personal rant. Be on the lookout for my next blog "'Friends' stop soliciting to me: a solicitation."
All joking aside, brands are aware that they need to break through the noise. They tried disruptive media years ago, but everyone hated it because, hello, it's disruptive and frankly just rude. Consumers have a voice now and they don't want content shoved down their throats 24/7.
So what's the loophole?
Create content that makes the audience laugh, that's unexpected, or below their conscious threshold!
Oh, but still do it 24/7.
Sneaky? Perhaps. Mutually beneficial? You bet. And a big step up from disruptive media, and spam emails.
I love funny, clever ads. My perception of the brand becomes way more personable and relatable. As a consumer, I can tell that advertisers know we're all sick and tired of watching infomercial-esque ads. Brand stories, pop culture references, tongue in cheek humor, etc, are all excellent ways to engage and start a conversation online.
More and more companies are jumping on board with this.
Watch this 30-second ad and you'll know what I mean:
This ad got my attention during Sunday Night Football. It also made me hungry so I continued watching. To my delight, it was a tire commercial.
Eye-catching, clear message and that cheese spray really made me realize the importance of my tires.
...Did I really just say that? I never thought something so ridiculous would come out of my mouth but that's what good marketing is about.
Enjoy another one by Toyo:
I've never heard of Toyo before, but I'll remember them now.
A quick Facebook and Instagram search revealed that they're a high-quality tire company for car fanatics. Their Facebook bio says they have a tire for any level of drivers and terrains. I'm sadly not in the market to buy tires but these ads definitely put Toyo on my radar.
Their social media was sadly devoid of funny videos like this... Mostly pretty pictures of cars but I can get on board with that. It's a good brand representative image to have online and they're being strategic about catering content to each platform depending on their audience and marketing goals. Judging from their social media, their target market seems to be 18-35-year-old men who want to pimp their ride or something like that.
They have a great Instagram following for a tire company. 358,000 Insta followers compared to Michelin's 68,200. I couldn't even find an Instagram for Goodyear which may be attributed to the target audience and brand awareness. In which case, I get it, Goodyear's a big name and maybe they don't need to post pictures to get their name out there. But this is 2017, and even toilet paper brands need social media, so get on board, Goodyear. Right? It is the way of the future. I understand their hesitancy as I would imagine it's hard to differentiate yourself in the car industry while still keeping their brand image streamlined. I'm excited to see if/how Goodyear, and other less glamorous brands increase their reach through social media.
On Facebook, Toyo has over a million followers, with congruent content to Instagram but with more videos and shareable content. I noticed that 5 of my facebook friends follow Toyo. Those are my car-head friends who share racing, car pictures, and drag racing content etc. They are also the ones who've lowered their tires and tinted their windows.
Michelin has a whopping 4.7+ million Facebook followers, which I personally was surprised by as I'm not into tires enough to follow them on Facebook. Also, none of my friends follow Michelin. But as a big-time national brand. Their content is comparable to Toyo's, they just have more brand recognition, and perhaps older clientele who are more likely to follow brands like this on Facebook.
Goodyear only has 470,000 Facebook followers so I won't even include a screenshot. That's about what I expected from a Tire company before I did my research, but now Michelin has raised my expectations, and I'm disappointed in Goodyear. Go figure. Especially since Goodyear was the largest tire manufacturer in USA in 2016 (see graph below). This is very interesting to this millennial. Like, brands can be #1 in the country without having amazing social media content? What??? But there's always room to improve in my opinion.
Also, notice that Toyo was the #4 tire manufacturer in Japan. You go Toyo.
Toyo's ad was great for TV for the purpose of brand awareness. Because of that, it's not very translatable to social media with an audience of followers who are aware of Toyo and their offerings. Campaigns over multiple platforms can't always be congruent, but I'd love to see ads like this in general on social media---in Instagram stories, Snapchat ads, etc. I think it would work really well on the younger generations, and I believe many brands have started doing this. These ads in particular just caught my eye.
I'm excited to see the increase in ads that are on this level of engagement/irony/humor/(however you'd describe it) that ALSO makes a clear qualitative statement about the brand. I'm open to that noise.
What are some other brands that do this well? Let me know in the comments.
See ya Tuesday!
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