索契冬奧會廣告大戰 說好的嚴肅不搞笑嘛

Perhaps the most "Super Bowly" ad of this year's Super Bowl was a lengthy Bud Light spot that packed in celebrities like Don Cheadle and Arnold Schwarzenegger with the band One Republic, all part of an elaborate surprise night out for a non-celebrity Manhattan bro in his twenties.
That kind of ad, successful though it was, may no longer be the norm for Super Bowls in the future. In a year when the most popular ads were a tearjerker from Budweiser starring its age-old Clydesdale horses and a puppy, along with a Cheerios ad showing a breakfast-table exchange between father and daughter, slapstick ads like those from Doritos felt out of place and dated.
Still, over half of the ads that ran during the Game were in some form humorous. From Stephen Colbert's head inside a pistachio to Tim Tebow rescuing dogs from a burning building, they wanted to make you laugh.
The vibe you'll get from this year's Olympics advertising couldn't be more different. "It has to do with the audience," says Ian Schafer, CEO of the agency Deep Focus. "Super Bowl ads try to appeal to the male id and do things filled with shock value, lots of humor. Olympics ads are pretty traditional. And they're definitively more female-oriented."

今年超級碗大賽的廣告盛宴中，最有“超級碗風味”的或許是一段星光熠熠的百威淡啤(Bud Light)長廣告：唐•錢德爾、阿諾德•施瓦辛格和一個共和國樂隊(One Republic)等名流悉數亮相，目的都是爲了讓一位二十來歲的曼哈頓兄弟度過一個經過精心設計的驚喜之夜。
儘管贏得了滿堂彩，但這種類型或許不再是未來超級碗大賽的廣告標準。過去一年中，最受歡迎的廣告往往帶有催人淚下的橋段，比如一羣古老的克萊茲馬和一隻小狗出演的百威啤酒(Budweiser)廣告，以及一段講述父女兩人交換早餐桌故事的麥片(Cheerios)廣告。在這樣的背景下，以多力多滋(Doritos)爲代表的嬉笑打鬧式廣告顯得格格不入，不合時宜。
不過，超過一半的比賽插播廣告都帶有一定的幽默感。無論是斯蒂芬•科爾伯特的腦袋出現在一枚開心果之中，還是提姆•提博從一棟燃燒的建築物中救出幾隻小狗，它們都是爲了博你一笑。
但大家將從今年的冬季奧運廣告中獲得完全不同的情緒感受。“這主要跟受衆羣體有關，”深度聚焦公司(Deep Focus)CEO伊恩•謝弗說。“超級碗廣告試圖吸引男性的注意，往往極具衝擊力，幽默感十足。奧運廣告則恪守傳統，更多地考慮女性受衆。”
Procter & Gamble (PG) is following that recipe by appealing to mothers. Its "Pick Them Back Up"campaign, according to social video marketing company Unruly, is already the most shared Winter Games campaign of all time. (Of course, that's thanks to the ever-multiplying array of social media platforms and devices on which we watch video.) There's nothing very funny about the emotional ad -- which has had 14 million YouTube views -- in which mothers repeatedly pick up their children when they fall, helping them grow from babies to teens to Olympic athletes. P&G took the same tack two years ago at the London Olympics with "Best Job," a campaign about the hard work mothers do to raise an athlete. It worked then, too.
In fact, of the top 20 most shared Olympics ads so far, released in advance of the Games by brands like P&G, Visa (V), and Molson, not one is funny. Richard Kosinski, president of Unruly, which is tracking the most viral Sochi ads, says the emotion viewers seek during the Olympics is starkly different from the Super Bowl. Unruly examines two qualities that drive someone to share a video ad: The first is psychological response. "Americans love funny," says Kosinski. "If you look at the U.S. norm for the top psychological response, hilarity is one of the things that resonates best. But in Brazil, exhilaration is the top psychological response." Thus the ads, even those that run in the U.S., are responding to global tastes. The Olympics are a worldwide phenomenon treated with somber respect -- perhaps not the place for, say, a Heinz ketchup bottle making a fart noise. The second reason to share an ad is social motivation. Kosinski says the primary motivation these days is shared passion or zeitgeist: "The Olympics are a perfect example of zeitgeist, an event that is of our current time."

寶潔公司(Procter & Gamble)正在採用這種廣告手法，以期贏得母親們的注意。據社交視頻公司Unruly介紹，寶潔的“把他們扶起來”(Pick Them Back Up)宣傳短片已經成爲有史以來被分享次數最多的冬奧會廣告。（當然，這得益於不斷倍增的社交媒體平臺和視頻觀看設備。）這則主打情感牌的廣告在YouTube獲得了1,400萬次的瀏覽量，它並沒有什麼令人爆笑不止的地方：一位位母親不斷扶起她們跌倒的孩子，在母親的一路呵護下，這些孩子從嬰兒茁壯成長爲青少年，最終成長爲奧運健兒。兩年前的倫敦夏季奧運會期間，寶潔公司使用了相同的廣告策略：這段名爲“最佳工作”(Best Job)的廣告描述了母親含辛茹苦撫養運動員的艱辛歷程，同樣獲得很好的反響。
事實上，在寶潔、維薩信用卡(Visa)和莫爾森(Molson)等品牌在冬奧會前夕發佈，到目前爲止被分享次數最多的前20則奧運廣告中，沒有一條走的是滑稽搞笑路線。Unruly公司正在追蹤傳播速度最快的索契冬奧會廣告。這家公司的總裁理查德•科辛斯基認爲，觀衆在奧運會期間尋求的情感與超級碗大賽截然不同。Unruly公司審視了驅動人們分享視頻廣告的兩大因素：首先是心理反應。“美國人喜歡搞笑，”科辛斯基說。“如果你看看美國的頂級心理反應標準，你就會發現，歡鬧是最能夠引發共鳴的要素之一，但在巴西，振奮是頂級心理反應。”因此，即使那些在美國播出的廣告，也開始迴應全球口味。奧運會是一個備受敬重的世界性現象——在這種場合，或許不適合播放一則放響屁的亨氏(Heinz)番茄醬瓶廣告。分享廣告的第二個原因是社交動機。科辛斯基說，目前的主要動機是共享的激情或時代精神。“奧運會是時代精神的絕佳例證，是我們這個時代的大事件。”
If a brand's spot doesn't reflect the zeitgeist, it has to hope people will share it for some other reason -- it's hilarious, or shocking, or controversial. It isn't enough anymore for a person to merely view a video; advertisers crave social media shares. Engagement, not clicks, is what counts. In that vein, J.C. Penney (JCP) attempted to get some play during the Super Bowl by sending out tweets laced with typos. ("Toughdown Seadawks! Is sSeattle going toa runaway wit h this???") Later in the game, the account revealed it had all been a planned stunt to promote its own Sochi product, Team USA gloves: "Sorry for the typos. We were #TweetingWithMittens." On Twitter, that met with a lot of laughs, but also a lot of jeers.
You might think having your brand mocked on social media doesn't matter -- that any press is good press -- but that may not always be the case. "Oh, I think it matters," says Schafer. "There are a couple of brands that advertise in the Super Bowl strictly to help their unaided awareness. So, the company that sells weather-liners for trucks [Weathertech]. But if you've already got name awareness, if you're already Chrysler, you're trying to cement yourself within somebody's consideration set. You're not going to get put in someone's consideration set if you're being talked about negatively." Indeed, Chrysler and Maserati, both owned by Fiat, went with serious ads focused on themes of patriotism and drive, and both felt flat. Chrysler's spot with Bob Dylan, in Schafer's analysis, "aimed to do something provocative but it blew up in their faces a little bit because of the melodrama." Maserati utilized 10-year-old actress Quvenzhane Wallis, much to the chagrin of media folks on Twitter: "Dylan selling cars, Prince on a sitcom, and the little girl from 'Beasts of the Southern Wild' in a Maserati ad. So ya, you're depressed," tweeted @davepell.
如果一個品牌的廣告沒有反映時代精神，它就不得不寄望於人們能夠出於其他某個原因來分享它——或熱鬧非凡，或令人震撼，或富有爭議。僅僅吸引人們瀏覽視頻是不夠的；廣告商渴望獲得社交媒體的共享熱潮。最重要的不是點擊，而是參與。本着這種精神，傑西潘尼公司(J.C. Penney)在超級碗期間發佈了幾條充滿拼寫錯誤的微博——“海鷹隊觸地得分！西雅圖是否將獲得壓倒性勝利？”——試圖贏得一些關注。比賽臨近結束時，這個Twitter賬戶透露說，這一切其實全是事先計劃的花樣，目的是推廣該公司出售的美國索契冬奧會代表團手套：“對不起，打錯字了。我們#發微博時戴着手套。”在Twitter上，這條留言贏得了很多笑容，但也有不少嘲笑聲。
大家可能會認爲，自己的品牌在社交媒體上受到冷嘲熱諷無傷大雅——只要能被人們反覆提及就好——但並非總是如此。“哦，我覺得，這件事很重要，”謝弗說。“超級碗大賽期間，有幾家公司認認真真地做廣告，試圖打響知名度，銷售卡車全天候襯墊的Weathertech公司就是其中一家。但如果你已經家喻戶曉，比如說你是克萊斯勒公司(Chrysler)，正嘗試着進一步鞏固你在人們的考慮集(consideration set)中的地位。在這種情況下，要是你遭遇負面評價，你就不會進入人們的考慮集。”事實上，菲亞特公司(Fiat)旗下品牌克萊斯勒和瑪莎拉蒂(Maserati)都發布了以愛國主義和驅動力爲主題的嚴肅廣告。謝弗分析稱，鮑勃•迪倫出演的克萊斯勒廣告“希望能吊起人們的胃口，但由於採用了情景劇形式，它並沒有產生這種效果。”瑪莎拉蒂則啓用了10歲的女演員奎文贊妮•瓦利斯，讓Twitter上的媒體人非常懊惱。“迪倫在賣車，普林斯出演情景喜劇，來自《南國野獸》(Beasts of the Southern Wild)的小女孩出現在了一段瑪莎拉蒂廣告之中。你們肯定非常鬱悶，”@davepell留言稱。
Those brief spurts of activity -- when a brand slips into the mainstream conversation for a few hours or even when it achieves the holy grail of becoming a trending topic -- aren't that valuable in the long run anyway. "Social media mentions are fleeting," Schafer says. "These are not necessarily meaningful interactions if they happen just once. Just because people are talking about you doesn't mean they're being pushed to make a purchase." It is far more productive when a brand spends all year cultivating a real personality with its social media account. Pulling one funny prank on Twitter during one popular live event won't move the needle in a lasting way. But advertisers like Oreo and Charmin have earned praise for being interesting or funny enough all year to get continual interactions from consumers.
Still, J.C. Penney succeeded in entering the collective conversation. Esurance did the same with its ad that aired just after the Super Bowl ended: Actor-spokesman John Krasinski, sitting in front of a giant cube of cash, told people to tweet the hashtag #Esurancesave30 for a shot at winning $1.5 million. Unlike J.C. Penney, their stunt had no twist or joke to it: They cut right to the chase and made a direct ploy to get people tweeting about them, and it worked.

當一個品牌滑入主流語境幾個小時，甚至功德圓滿，一舉成爲熱門話題的時候，從長遠來看，這類衝刺性的活動其實沒有多大的價值。“社交媒體的關注總是稍縱即逝，”謝弗說。“如果這種關注度只出現一次，它們不一定是有意義的交流。人們都在談論你並不意味着他們正在產生購買衝動。”當一個品牌花費一整年時間通過自己的社交媒體賬戶塑造一種真正的個性化形象時，取得的傳播效應要高效得多。在一場萬衆矚目的賽事直播期間通過Twitter玩一個可笑的惡作劇不會產生持久性影響。但奧利奧餅乾(Oreo)和恰敏衛生紙(Charmin)這樣的廣告主卻因全年都在發佈有趣好笑的內容、與消費者持續互動而備受讚譽。
不過，傑西潘尼公司成功地進入了集體語境之中。Esurance保險公司通過超級碗大賽剛剛結束後播放的廣告也做到了這一點。約翰•克拉辛斯基飾演的發言人坐在一個盛滿現金的巨型立方體前面，告訴人們使用話題標籤 #Esurancesave30在Twitter上發佈留言，就有機會贏取150萬美元大獎。與傑西潘尼公司不同，他們的花樣並沒有意想不到的轉折或笑話，而是單刀直入，徑直呼籲人們發佈與它們相關的微博，這招很奏效。
Just one problem: When a hashtag explodes on Twitter the way #Esurancesave30 did, it attracts spammers, bots, and jokers. Click any super-popular hashtag and you'll find unrelated tweets that have hijacked it, from pay sites to spammers to regular people tweeting lewd, offensive things. In Esurance's case, the issue most detrimental to its brand was that scores of copycat accounts emerged that purported to be Esurance official accounts, but were not. (Visual hints: These do not have the "verified" check mark and in most cases had one extra letter in the handle or some other easy-to-miss indicator.) The unreliable tweets flying around associated with Esurance were not ideal for the brand.
What all of this means is that you shouldn't necessarily expect to see advertisers aping J.C. Penney's or Esurance's Super Bowl stunts during the Winter Games. In addition to the limited duration of buzz, and the dangers of spam, brands run the risk of alienating consumers during an event that the world takes very seriously. The winning brands at the Olympics will likely be the obvious ones: Those that have devoted big budgets to official ads, ads that look likely to be entirely serious and sentimental. Other brands will try to enter the conversation; few will succeed. "When you pay to get on there, you're going to be seen," says Schafer. "But when you tweet during one of these things, there is a ton of noise."
In the age of the melodramatic Olympics ad, and now, perhaps, the new age of the melodramatic Super Bowl ad, humor and spontaneity come at a cost. If a company looking to skip the expense of buying a TV ad tries to gain free brand buzz by way of a social media shortcut, it's going to have be extremely clever, funny, or edgy. And mean jokes about the venue or the athletes probably won't fly.
只有一個問題：當一個話題標籤像 30那樣，在Twitter上爆炸性傳播時，它必然會吸引濫發垃圾郵件的人、惡意自動程序和愛開玩笑的傢伙。點擊任何一個超人氣話題標籤，你將發現它被許多不相干的微博劫持了，一些付費網站和垃圾郵件發送者時常採用這種方式發佈一些粗俗下流的信息。就Esurance公司這個例子而言，最有損其品牌的問題是，Twitter上一下子涌現出了大批聲稱自己是Esurance公司官微的山寨賬戶。（視覺提示：這些賬戶沒有“認證”標識，而且它們的名稱基本上都多了一個字母，或者有其他容易被忽視的特徵。）這些與Esurance聯繫在一起，不可信賴的微博滿天飛，當然對這個品牌不利。
這一切意味着，大家並不一定會在冬奧會期間看到廣告商模仿傑西潘尼公司或Esurance保險公司的花招。在冬奧會這樣一個備受世界重視的賽事期間，熱點話題的保溫時間有限，此外還有垃圾郵件的危害，相關品牌這麼做可能會面臨疏遠消費者的風險。奧運會廣告大戰的贏家很有可能是那些投入大額預算製作官方廣告的品牌，這些廣告可能非常莊重，充滿感情色彩。其他品牌會嘗試着進入主流語境之中，但成功的機率不大。“這種時候，花錢打廣告就會被看到，”謝弗說。“但如果這種時候只是發一些微博，你很快會被鋪天蓋地的噪音淹沒。”
如今這個時代，情節劇是奧運廣告的主流（現在或許也可以說，在這個情節劇成爲超級碗主流廣告的新時代），展現幽默，獲得自發性傳播，需要付出成本。如果一家公司希望省下購買電視廣告的開支，嘗試着借道社交媒體捷徑獲得免費的品牌宣傳，它就必須極其聰明，風趣，或前衛。吐槽比賽場館或運動員的低劣笑話可能走不遠。