4 Lessons Learned from this Year’s Super Bowl Ads
Love ‘em or hate ‘em (much like your favorite football team or the rival team you despise) Super Bowl Ads are a perennial barometer of our nation’s collective zeitgeist. Since a single 30-second ad placement can cost five million dollars, you can bet there’s a lot of valuable marketing brainpower behind each one. Sure, there are always a couple epic fails (looking at you, car commercial that was actually about a man choking on a cashew), but for the most part, these ads are a pretty decent reflection of what America’s thinking, watching, and of course, buying.
So what takeaways from this year’s battle of the brands can you use in your own TruScribe videos?
1. Nostalgia is always relevant.
We saw the Backstreet Boys crooning “I want it that way” about Flamin’ Hot Nacho Doritos. The Dude from Big Lebowski casually switched up his legendary drink order in favor of Stella Artois (alongside a Carrie Bradshaw cameo). Campy horror film “I Know What You Did Last Summer” somehow factored into a sales pitch for Olay. The message was pretty clear: if you were hip to pop culture in the 90s, you’re probably sitting on your couch watching the Super Bowl and thinking about what to eat, drink, or put on your face today.
Whiteboard video lesson? Don’t be afraid to stick with what’s iconic. The stop sign. The dollar sign. The play button. Icons are icons because they are simple, memorable, and impactful. (Much like The Dude, they abide).
2. Molds were made to be broken.
Zoe Kravitz whispered her way through the world’s first ASMR commercial; dreamed up by Michelob Ultra to target a super-specific audience, it also got plenty of people talking (and Googling Auto Sensory Meridian Response). T-Mobile steered away from traditional video by showing us a string of texts instead. Burger King rolled vintage footage of Andy Warhol eating a Whopper with a simple hashtag that was as wacky as it was intriguing.
What can you apply to your whiteboard video? You can always go beyond the whiteboard with TruScribe. We can draw over a live action video. We can annotate your actual website with meaningful drawings. We can turn your whiteboard video into a multimedia presentation. (Also, if you liked that T-Mobile ad, you should know we’ve created some pretty cool text videos. They’re actually aligned with our Scribology principles. Element of surprise, and all that.) If you love working with us but you just want your video to look different from time to time, all you need to do is ask! Also, hashtags. People love those.
3. People are compelled by imaginative stories.
It was universally acknowledged that Amazon had the most successful Super Bowl commercial. Not only did that ad take a basic yet thought-provoking premise (ideas for Alexa that didn’t make the cut) and put some serious star power behind it (Harrison Ford, Forest Whitaker, and the ladies from Broad City), it had all of us wondering what a dog would order from Amazon, should it have the power.
How to work this into your next whiteboard animation video? You already know that telling your story gets results. But put some imagination into it. What if your HR department could be illustrated as a flock of birds? Could you stretch a Star Wars metaphor across a video about investment plans? Trust us, you can. (Well, we can. We’ll help you.)
4. When in doubt, cross over.
Taco Bell and T-Mobile. Stella Artois and Dos Equis. Amazon Echo and Pringles. And of course, the surprisingly effective collab between Bud Light and Game of Thrones. There were a lot of co-promotions in this year’s Super Bowl Ads, especially for those of us watching closely.
When can you use this idea with a whiteboard video? Don’t just post a video on a website and tell people to watch it. Tie it into something people are already experiencing, like a company meeting, a PowerPoint presentation, or even an email. Or talk to us about creating other assets from your video. A poster for your breakroom- an infographic- a helpful handout. There’s a stuffed squirrel named Zippy that exists as a TruScribe video artifact. You have options!
Whether your team won or lost Super Bowl LII, if you’re thinking about ways to win at video, let’s huddle up!
- Published in Creativity, Whiteboard Animation Video
Top 5 Ways You Can Benefit from Whiteboard Animation
When it comes to getting your message across to a target group of consumers, you’ve got tons of different options. You can publish press releases, deploy blog posts, create infographics and even post video content to YouTube.
But chances are one technique you haven’t yet considered is the use of whiteboard animation. These videos – in which a spoken script is paired with simplified graphics that illustrate and enhance the video’s audio content – can be extremely effective marketing tools, whether you’re trying to attract more buyers, inform viewers on a chosen topic or simply increase your company’s brand recognition. Here are just a few of the different ways you can benefit from the use of whiteboard scribing videos:
Benefit #1 – Better brand recognition
Whiteboard animation isn’t just an effective means of pushing your message out to an audience – it’s also a memorable way to improve your overall brand recognition! Because whiteboard scribing videos are still a relatively unknown marketing tool, the companies that do use them automatically gain awareness within their markets over competitors using traditional video production techniques.
Benefit #2 – Improved understanding of complex ideas
Whiteboard scribing videos don’t need to be promotional in nature. If, for example, you need to convey a complex set of ideas to a group of employees or students, whiteboard animations can help you to improve both learning and message retention.
To see these principles in action, take a look at the “UX Enterprise: The Future of UX Work” video in the Truscribe Video Scribing Gallery. Though the principles described in this clip are complex in nature, symbolically illustrating different points of discussion makes these ideas much easier to digest.
Benefit #3 – Increased potential for viral website traffic
These days, “viral traffic” is all the rage in digital marketing circles – and with good reason! Viral traffic (which occurs when website readers forward your content on to others without your direct involvement) is essentially free traffic, which has the potential to free up more of your marketing budget to focus on other critical areas of business operation.
However, the key to producing effective inbound marketing materials that drive these visitors to your site is to deliver something that’s cool enough to warrant sharing. Whiteboard scribing videos meet this criterion because they’re so new and different, which results in more natural sharing between readers and more traffic to your website.
Benefit #4 – Bypass message filters in the brain
Given the number of media inputs we’re subjected to on a daily basis, we’ve developed a thick skin and an inherent skepticism towards those who try to reach us – whether they’re trying to sell us something or not.
So when it comes to getting your message across, be aware that relying on traditional educational or marketing techniques may leave your viewers resistant to what you have to say. Instead, the visual storytelling method used in whiteboard scribing videos is a much more effective way to penetrate these barriers and ensure that your message reaches your intended prospects.
Benefit #5 – More sales
Finally, if you’re trying to use whiteboard animation videos to convert viewers into buyers, be aware that this new medium can be extremely effective for your bottom line.
One of the most important parts of the sales process is making the benefits of your products or services obvious to prospective customers. And while this can be difficult to accomplish using text alone, it’s an easy task for whiteboard animation. Pulling your viewers into the “story” surrounding your brand is a great way to get them to understand and identify with the benefits you offer, making it much easier to close the sale – and improve your company’s profits – than through the use of text or audio alone.
Contact us to learn more about how we can help you set your message free.
- Published in Behavioral Psychology, Scribology, Video Marketing, Whiteboard Animation Video