The real advertising lesson from the Oscars? Don't be afraid to make awesome content
Well, the Oscars are over and the good news is that no advertiser killed a kid. This is progress.
Lego's Everything is Awesome performance
In previous years, I watched the Oscars just like most people – to be entertained. But this time, our client PetSmart relaunched its brand with two spots and some online films, so my night was surrounded by a host of Apple products – spouting industry buzzwords like 'war room', 'real-time response strategy', and 'are we already out of wine?'
So looking at the show and the advertising through that lens, here are a few things I observed.
First, while there were some good commercials Sunday, there was one brand that blew everyone else out of the water – Lego. I can’t think of a brand that has deviated from the advertising playbook as masterfully as Lego these past few years.
I sat there on my couch last night singing every word to 'Everything is Awesome' (caveat, I have a five-year-old and two-year-old so the Lego Movie is an integral part of our household. Also, I’m sadly a huge nerd.) and I realized that, while the rest of us spent months carefully calculating our Oscars strategy, Lego just had a five-minute commercial in the middle of the show. And it killed.
We tell our clients content is king. Make things that your audience will like, not things that you like. I know we can’t all make feature films for our brands (ok, none of us will) but we can take a lesson from the Lego playbook. Advertising is respecting your audience enough to create things that will entertain them.
Next, I’m fearful that social media has made it nearly impossible for brands to take big risks anymore. Having tools that allow you to interact with an audience and see their reaction to your work in real-time is valuable. But after watching a lot of the commercials last night, I got the sense that Twitter trumped TV. The fear of a vocal minority filling your stream with negative tweets resulted in a lot of brands tempering their creative.
And I get it. It’s a huge gamble to pay $2m for the media plus more to produce the spot and then all the other money that goes into playing on a big stage like the Oscars. The last thing you want is to create something that some people will really like and others really won’t. Because we all know the ones who don’t like it have nothing better to do than let you know you are a failure on Twitter.
But it takes a brave client to know that and not care. To realize that a tweet is just that, a tweet. That guy’s next tweet is likely a picture of his half-eaten sandwich. Let’s not put all our brand’s hopes and dreams in that guy’s hands.
Finally, I have mad respect for all the brands, clients and agencies that played Sunday. It’s easy to be the cynical creative and use this platform to critique all the spots and name the winners and losers as if I’m some kind of Advertising Jesus. There have been no shortage of articles about that. But having been there with PetSmart, I know the anxiety and excitement that comes with putting it all out there and asking your client to take that jump with you.
So, well done everyone. We were by far the most entertaining part of the 12-hour marathon known as the Oscars.
Ryan Carroll is group creative director at GSD&M in Austin, Texas