The Best Super Bowl Ad This Year was a Digital Ad (not a TV Ad) - 5 Things We Can Learn

The best Super Bowl ad this year was a digital ad (not a TV ad), and there's a lot we can learn from that.

Coinbase ran an ad that featured no branding but simply a bouncing QR code, dancing around the screen. (Any fans of The Office? Reminded me of the DVD game they played in the boardroom).

Curiosity is a very powerful emotion. Lots of people scanned the QR code to see what the fuss was about. Enough people that the app crashed, at least temporarily.

So what can we learn?

1. Contextual Content Out-Of-Context

Coinbase effectively hijacked the television medium to present a juxtaposed context that was irresistible to younger demographics. We've always promoted the concept of being willing to sacrifice content for context, and this is a great example.

When advertisers put traditional content on modern channels, as a means of distribution, they prioritized content over context, and the results suffer accordingly.

When advertisers are able to harness the specific context to their advantage, they create content that resonates with the younger demographics and starts to create some emotions.

The former assumes that the consumer behaviour has stayed the same and only the medium has changed, so the communications can remain the same.

The latter understands that the consumer behaviour has changed forever and needs a new approach.

2. Brand vs Performance? I don't think so.

I've never been able to shake the feeling in my bones that you can build brand while driving performance if you understand brand strategy, branding and design. This would mean that you could accrue brand awareness for free if you applied design thinking to your performance content.

Wealthsimple did a good job of this. All their content is governed by an aggressive brand and design strategy that ensures that all their content accrues brand awareness, whether a performance ad or a content article.

Design is the ultimate killer app for creative and marketing. Brands of the future will invest in design the way they invest in technology - as a way to build and drive significant shareholder value.

3. Thinking About 'Brandformance'

Performance marketers definitely swung the pendulum too far over the past decade. The biggest misconception they (we?) have promoted is that your awareness ads drive awareness. In a rapid scroll, never stop digital environment, you're not creating brand awareness by pushing an impression. And even if you do, it's rarely a meaningful, durable connection.

So when creating performance funnels, marketers have been conditioned to assume people are aware at the awareness stage - they assume consumers are ready for features and benefits. They're not.

It made us start thinking about a 'pre-awareness' stage of the performance funnel, who's job would be to create meaningful, emotional 'pre-awareness' connections that prepare the consumers for further messaging that's more transactional or educational.

I hear you saying "yeah moron, that's called brand advertising" and you're right!!!! That's the exact purpose of brand advertising! But now that the world is digital and near-metaversal, we can create a link between our brand message and our performance funnel, and we can see which emotional conversation starters are driving the highest quality, most efficient 'leads' into the funnel!

The takeaway - you can create emotional, branding building content and run it at the very peak of your funnel. It's purpose is not to drive a sale, but to graduate strangers into the funnel. You can follow it up with contextually related content that supports the middle and bottom of funnel. You can solidify the flow with a contextually related content landing page. You can measure its effectiveness without needing to report to the bottom line. Every funnel stage has a different performance metric.

And when they work together it's like a beautiful symphony.

4. Sequential Messaging

I won't spend too much time on this,. but this type of Brandvertising strategy leads itself to sequential messaging, which I believe to be a huge creative trend for the next 5 years.

At Abacus we ask brands what they want their audience to know about them and in what order? This lead us to think about a cocktail party environment, if someone was to ask you about your brand? What would you want them to know first to set the context? How would you follow up? What would you say to close?

Once you can map out a natural, human-based messaging hierarchy, you can sequence your digital messages accordingly and you can treat digital customers the same way you'd treat a dinner party guest.

5. Measurement and Attribution

I saved the best for last and don't you dare skip it.

TV ads suck because you can't measure their results, no matter what anyone tells you.

Digital ads rock because you can watch users go through the process of buying your product or service. You can measure the results of your actions and you can figure out which actions drove which behaviours. Only by understanding the relationships of your inputs to your outputs can you market on a high level and scale accordingly.

This Coinbase ad rocks because they could measure the result of every QR click that came from the ad and determine that users value to the rest of their performance funnel. They could also attribute 100% of the clicks to the TV ad, because measurement and attribution were built into the strategy.

The results were insane - while ad agencies across the world scratch their heads trying to figure out how to show their client the impact of their television ad, Coinbase strutted around the office Monday morning with this flex:

• 20M visits in 1 minute - based on 120M viewership, did 20% of the viewers scan the code?!
• 10% signup - 2 million new accounts
• 20% linked their bank account - 500k new customers!
• $7.5M commercial cost = $15 Cost Per Acquisition?

Incredible. Breathtaking. Bravo.

Not all the commercials were good. Some were awful, and shame on agencies still peddling that archaic storytelling arc.

But this was good. Very good. There's a lot we can learn from this.

I hope you're paying attention.