Working with American culture* at the Super Bowl (case study # 4)

Remember the Tide ad from the Super Bowl?

It performed a slight of hand.

It opened as a car ad.

Oops. It wasn't a car ad.

Then it looked like a beer ad. Oops again. It wasn't that either.

Diamonds? Insurance? Razors? Soda?

No, no, no and no.

In each case, David Harbour interrupts to tell us, "No, it's a Tide ad."

The ad ends with Harbour saying,

"Does this make every ad a Tide ad? I think it does. Watch and see."

See the full ad on YouTube here.

High mischief. This ad was claiming to own every ad around it. It was claiming to own every ad in an event that is the high point, and the great gladiatorial contest, of professional... advertising. (All your base are belong to us.)

Adweek says it worked. It's a Tide ad proved the most successful ad for Superbowl LII. Adweek says it "hijacked" the event. (And when you think of how much time and money is spend on Superbowl advertising, that's saying something.)

A second measure of success came last week when sales for Tide Ultra Oxi grew by double digits. (Too often ads burnish creative reputations, but do not move the sales needle. Clients are unhappy with augmenting someone's brand...but not their own.) 

A third measure, the social one: "#TideAd was used more than 45,000 times and became the No. 2 trending topic on Twitter (second to the Super Bowl itself)."

It's fashionable to call this sort of advertising self referential. The ad is aware of itself and refers to itself.

But we could also call this ad is culture referential. It makes an ad out of culture. It uses cultural meanings to build a commercial message.

Here's what Saatchi and Saatchi (the triumphant agency in question) knows about American culture. Our culture used to treat genres as delivery vehicles. Once we had detected that we were looking at a buddy picture, a romantic comedy, or an action adventure, we descended into the warm bath of understanding. Genre told the creative what to make. Genre told the viewer what to look for.

For millions of viewers, genre is no longer merely this delivery vehicle. We are not just looking through genre. We're also looking at it. It's a Tide ad understands that we are hip to this joke. It understands that we will take pleasure in this play.

How secure is this knowledge? Well, the ad would not have worked if Saatchi had bet wrong. So we have an empirical test that this is a useful cultural meaning.

When did American culture become this fully "genre aware?" This shift in the culture has been in play for several decades. When did this trend mature fully enough that it could be exploited by Saatchi for Tide? We achieved "high confidence" only in the last 20 years.

But Saatchi and Tide are exploiting something more than the "genre" piece of American culture. There are also exploiting a new opportunity, a new order of playfulness.

"Does this make every ad a Tide ad? I think it does. Watch and see."

That's a stunning act. It demands of that the creative exercise the ability to think out of the silo that is the 30 second ad. And it demands that the viewer follow suit.

Hey presto. It worked.

This leaves us with a second calculation. When did the viewer become this "mobile?" When did he or she find humor in this departure from a culture convention? (And the convention is clear. Each ad is free standing. It refers to itself and nothing else around it. To claim everything around it? Wow.)

I wrote an entire book on this question. Culturematic was designed to look at a new order of cultural creativity. But I can't answer the "how long" question with perfect confidence. The last 10 years, let's say. And just to be clear. We are not trying to detect the moment when any viewer was capable of grasping the mischief of the ad. We are talking about that moment when millions of them can.

American culture is a treasure trove of meanings for the creative and the consumer. It contains vast numbers of meanings. When probably chosen and combined, these meanings are the stuff of great brands and great ads. They are the stuff of triumph at the Super Bowl. And that, I would have thought, should serve as a clear demonstration that culture matters.

? Why do I call it “American culture?”

To distinguish it from “corporate culture.” There are two kinds of culture an organization must understand and a manager must manage.

Culture Inside: this is the culture of an organization, the “corporate culture.” 

Culture Outside: this is American culture.

We sometimes confuse these. But that’s a little like confusing American football and European football. My Culture Camp is dedicated to understanding American culture, the culture outside the organization. This is where we find blue oceans of opportunity. This is where black swans of disruption find us. It's time we made the distinction.