I love super Super Bowl ads as much as anyone (though I’ll admit to being completely un-American in my dislike for ads with horses or dogs involved). I love great storytelling brought to life through evocative imagery, carefully crafted story arcs, fresh copy writing, smart humor, irony, or selection of the right musical score. I shared several pre-leaked ads with my colleagues pre-game – the Always return of #likeagirl and Newcastle’s #BandofBrands (especially the multi-week buildup – brilliant!) were on my list of favorites, and I tested my husband’s ability to keep emotions in check by sharing Dove’s #RealStrength ad. I’m an ad man’s ad fan.
Therefore, it would also be easy for me to jump on the bandwagon that was built mid-game Sunday to carry everyone who succumbed to the tearjerkers some brands ran in their expensive ad slots. #RealStrength appeared to get away with a gentle tug at the heartstrings. Nationwide’s #MakeSafeHappen was not so lucky. And it if you were in St. Louis and you saw the 60-second PSA by the Missouri-based National Council on Alcoholism & Drug Abuse featuring a mom discovering her high-school aged son mid-heroin overdose, you probably had to pack it in for the night.
Twitter jumped all over the turn in emotional tide and called a personal foul on brands going negative. But this morning on NPR I heard the CMO of Nationwide defending #MakeSafeHappen. This is a CMO who knows how to craft the kind of Super ads that go well with Velveeta and Hot Wings – after all he brought us #InvisbleMindyKaling and Peyton Manning singing, “Chicken Parm You Taste So Good.” But he also knows about important work his company has done in the area of child safety, and determined that the ROI of saving even one child’s life was worth a little ad spend, and maybe some market blowback.
My kids are about the age of the child featured in the Nationwide ad. I get it – the image of a toppled TV was unnerving– as was the overflowing bath–all of it. We watched the game as a family of four this year – we had just returned to town from a youth hockey tournament – but I wondered what our group of friends would have said about the commercial and its message had we been watching together. Commenting on another parents’ approach to safety and kidproofing is about as big of a no-no as any I’ve experienced in social circles occupied by young families. Were we together, though, I think a conversational door might have opened that we as a group could have walked through.
Life is complicated, and organizations take on problems that are far more complicated or emotionally charged than perhaps marketing can comfortably sell. But there are moments when you’ve got a big enough pulpit that it’s worth trying. Even during the Super Bowl.
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