Sorry brands
Product benefits and USPs alone will no longer be sufficient in making your case for greatness. Repeat them for as long as you will in as many TV and radio commercials as you want.
Brands must now demonstrate whatever it is that make them unique, not only in 30, 45, or 60-second ads but in real life, in real-time. On a scale that cannot be ignored.
To be sure, events leveraging on scale by brands, especially mass market brands, aren’t new as subsequent examples will show. However, what is relatively new and becoming of currency is the significance and relevance of such events to human existence and history beyond the brand.
In 1984, Apple ran the now famous “1984” commercial during Superbowl XVIII to introduce the Macintosh computer. The 60-seconds ad aired only once nationally in the US to an estimated 96 million viewers.
Apple leveraged the Superbowl, a major sporting and commercial event, to effectively position as a revolutionary force in technology. The Apple brand still benefits today from the commercial and historical significance of that single ad spot.
In 2012, Red Bull launched the Bull Stratos, a high-altitude skydiving project involving Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner.
On 14, October, 2012, Baumgartner flew approximately 39 kilometres into the stratosphere over New Mexico, in a helium balloon before free falling in a pressure suit and then parachuting to earth.
Baumgartner broke the sound barrier on his descent, becoming the first human to do so without any form of engine power. Red Bull still benefits from its sponsorship of that significant moment in human history. Red Bull does give you wings, after all.
Remarkable as these two events were, both still needed traditional content (TV commercials) and traditional media (the television) for effective leveraging.
Today, that is no longer the case. Technology has liberalised media and content along with it. Events, big or small can stream live on multiple platforms in real time. While events leveraging have now become part and parcel of brand engagement strategies, the emerging trend is for brands to strive for historical significance while at it. Two recently sponsored brand events serve to illustrate the point.
On the 14th of September, at the Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Canelo Alvarez faced Bud Crawford for the unified middleweight crown of the world. It was billed as the revival of boxing as a popular sport. It was a fight many never believed could happen. Too much was at stake for both fighters.
The words of currency were no longer boxing and competition but legacy and history. It was going to be the biggest fight in boxing at this moment in history. Two all-time greats meeting in a venue befitting such a showdown, the Allegiant stadium. $200 million was the fight purse.
Millions of $ also went into marketing the event. The sponsors were Netflix (naturally, you’d say), Riyadh Season’s Megafight, and the UFC. 41.4 million people all over the world watched as the fight streamed live on Neflix.
In announcing the official viewership figures, Netflix stated that the fight was “The most viewed men’s championship boxing match in history “.
Netflix could have followed the pay-per-view model for this major sporting event, but it didn’t as the existing Netflix subscription guaranteed access on fight night. Netflix proved once again not to be just the king of streaming content but also a veritable curator of history.
On home turf, last week, Nigerian chef Hilda Baci broke the world record for cooking the largest ever pot of jollof rice in Lagos. Putting to rest, at least temporarily, the debate about who owns jollof on the African continent. We now have a receipt in the form of a world record to prove our claim.
Gino range of seasonings was the title sponsor of this significant historic event, and through that sponsorship, it got its name into the Guiness book of world records. How many TV and radio commercials would the Gino brand have had to run to achieve such leverage from a single event?
Not all brand engagements will be as historical as opportunities for such are relatively limited. However, just as brands exist to serve needs, events that deliver on relevance, scale, and history can be curated and leveraged to the benefit of innovative and courageous brands.
It will require skill and hardwork, but when properly done, not just the brands concerned benefit, history and humanity do as well.
Akinyemi Lofindipe
Deputy Managing Director, Brand Believers Ltd.
