Hello Marketers,
Welcome back and Happy New Year! Digging out of the email glut of 2018 and getting back on track is a true nightmare but we did it and that’s worth celebrating.
Before I get into the business of the week, I want to highlight my favorite bit of recent meta-marketing. No, I’m not talking about Netflix’s Bird Box memes—though that is something we need to explore (email me if you know what Netflix did to disseminate those memes: [email protected]). Instead, I’m highlighting Warner Brothers’ decision to erect the same Ally Maine billboard featured in A Star is Born right outside the Chateau Marmont just days before the Golden Globes. (See here and here.)
Much of movie marketing is asking people to go to the theaters and spend time with characters. That’s all fine and good. Going to the movies is an experience and marketing it as such makes sense. But when marketers do something more, when they elevate the marketing to give people something outside of the movie theater that’s a nod to the world of the film—even if it’s just a billboard—it’s exciting and makes you want to revisit the film. Simple yet effective.
Speaking of experiences, Mastercard added a new member to its C-suite this week: The company hired its first chief experience officer. While agencies like Giant Spoon have excelled with the experiential boom, we haven’t seen much in the way of in-house experiential hires. Could this be the beginning of a trend? Let us know! For what it’s worth, we’re planning to dig into experiential marketing efforts in the coming months since we’re hosting the inaugural Adweek Experiential Awards in March. Got something cool? Get at us.
Though, since it is Super Bowl season, we’re prioritizing that work. Ahh, the Super Bowl. This week may have been short but we did get a few Big Game announcements: TurboTax is back in; Bumble might be in and CBS revealed that spots are going for north of $5 million per 30-second spot. Another interesting tidbit? CBS hasn’t sold any 6-second spots this year. At least, not yet. Lucky for you our news editor Jameson Fleming will be running a new Super Bowl newsletter (sign up here) to keep you in the know. (Side note: If you’re launching a campaign during the Super Bowl please just tell us whether you’re actually in the game. We love a good effort to do a Super Bowl ad that’s not actually a Super Bowl ad, but please, for our sanity, be straight with us about it.)
Quote of the Week: “Some marketers think they have way more data than they actually have, and others think they don’t have a lot of data but actually do,” said Chris O’Hara, global product marketing lead for Salesforce Marketing Cloud, when speaking to reporter Kelsey Sutton, ahead of the release of his new book Data Driven. Read more here.
Say What? This is an old figure, but a notable one given we're in Super Bowl season: Last year was the lowest rated Super Bowl since 2009, with a linear audience of just 103.4 million for Super Bowl LII on NBC.
