索契冬奥会广告大战严肃不搞笑

    今年超级碗大赛的广告盛宴中，最有“超级碗风味”的或许是一段星光熠熠的百威淡啤(Bud Light)长广告：唐•钱德尔、阿诺德•施瓦辛格和一个共和国乐队(One Republic)等名流悉数亮相，目的都是为了让一位二十来岁的曼哈顿兄弟度过一个经过精心设计的惊喜之夜。

    尽管赢得了满堂彩，但这种类型或许不再是未来超级碗大赛的广告标准。过去一年中，最受欢迎的广告往往带有催人泪下的桥段，比如一群古老的克莱兹马和一只小狗出演的百威啤酒(Budweiser)广告，以及一段讲述父女两人交换早餐桌故事的麦片(Cheerios)广告。在这样的背景下，以多力多滋(Doritos)为代表的嬉笑打闹式广告显得格格不入，不合时宜。

    不过，超过一半的比赛插播广告都带有一定的幽默感。无论是斯蒂芬•科尔伯特的脑袋出现在一枚开心果之中，还是提姆•提博从一栋燃烧的建筑物中救出几只小狗，它们都是为了博你一笑。

    但大家将从今年的冬季奥运广告中获得完全不同的情绪感受。“这主要跟受众群体有关，”深度聚焦公司(Deep Focus)CEO伊恩•谢弗说。“超级碗广告试图吸引男性的注意，往往极具冲击力，幽默感十足。奥运广告则恪守传统，更多地考虑女性受众。”

    宝洁公司(Procter & Gamble)正在采用这种广告手法，以期赢得母亲们的注意。据社交视频公司Unruly介绍，宝洁的“把他们扶起来”(Pick Them Back Up)宣传短片已经成为有史以来被分享次数最多的冬奥会广告。（当然，这得益于不断倍增的社交媒体平台和视频观看设备。）这则主打情感牌的广告在YouTube获得了1,400万次的浏览量，它并没有什么令人爆笑不止的地方：一位位母亲不断扶起她们跌倒的孩子，在母亲的一路呵护下，这些孩子从婴儿茁壮成长为青少年，最终成长为奥运健儿。两年前的伦敦夏季奥运会期间，宝洁公司使用了相同的广告策略：这段名为“最佳工作”(Best Job)的广告描述了母亲含辛茹苦抚养运动员的艰辛历程，同样获得很好的反响。

    事实上，在宝洁、维萨信用卡(Visa)和莫尔森(Molson)等品牌在冬奥会前夕发布，到目前为止被分享次数最多的前20则奥运广告中，没有一条走的是滑稽搞笑路线。Unruly公司正在追踪传播速度最快的索契冬奥会广告。这家公司的总裁理查德•科辛斯基认为，观众在奥运会期间寻求的情感与超级碗大赛截然不同。Unruly公司审视了驱动人们分享视频广告的两大因素：首先是心理反应。“美国人喜欢搞笑，”科辛斯基说。“如果你看看美国的顶级心理反应标准，你就会发现，欢闹是最能够引发共鸣的要素之一，但在巴西，振奋是顶级心理反应。”因此，即使那些在美国播出的广告，也开始回应全球口味。奥运会是一个备受敬重的世界性现象——在这种场合，或许不适合播放一则放响屁的亨氏(Heinz)番茄酱瓶广告。分享广告的第二个原因是社交动机。科辛斯基说，目前的主要动机是共享的激情或时代精神。“奥运会是时代精神的绝佳例证，是我们这个时代的大事件。”

    如果一个品牌的广告没有反映时代精神，它就不得不寄望于人们能够出于其他某个原因来分享它——或热闹非凡，或令人震撼，或富有争议。仅仅吸引人们浏览视频是不够的；广告商渴望获得社交媒体的共享热潮。最重要的不是点击，而是参与。本着这种精神，杰西潘尼公司(J.C. Penney)在超级碗期间发布了几条充满拼写错误的微博——“海鹰队触地得分！西雅图是否将获得压倒性胜利？”——试图赢得一些关注。比赛临近结束时，这个Twitter账户透露说，这一切其实全是事先计划的花样，目的是推广该公司出售的美国索契冬奥会代表团手套：“对不起，打错字了。我们#发微博时戴着手套。”在Twitter上，这条留言赢得了很多笑容，但也有不少嘲笑声。

    大家可能会认为，自己的品牌在社交媒体上受到冷嘲热讽无伤大雅——只要能被人们反复提及就好——但并非总是如此。“哦，我觉得，这件事很重要，”谢弗说。“超级碗大赛期间，有几家公司认认真真地做广告，试图打响知名度，销售卡车全天候衬垫的Weathertech公司就是其中一家。但如果你已经家喻户晓，比如说你是克莱斯勒公司(Chrysler)，正尝试着进一步巩固你在人们的考虑集(consideration set)中的地位。在这种情况下，要是你遭遇负面评价，你就不会进入人们的考虑集。”事实上，菲亚特公司(Fiat)旗下品牌克莱斯勒和玛莎拉蒂(Maserati)都发布了以爱国主义和驱动力为主题的严肃广告。谢弗分析称，鲍勃•迪伦出演的克莱斯勒广告“希望能吊起人们的胃口，但由于采用了情景剧形式，它并没有产生这种效果。”玛莎拉蒂则启用了10岁的女演员奎文赞妮•瓦利斯，让Twitter上的媒体人非常懊恼。“迪伦在卖车，普林斯出演情景喜剧，来自《南国野兽》(Beasts of the Southern Wild)的小女孩出现在了一段玛莎拉蒂广告之中。你们肯定非常郁闷，”@davepell留言称。

    Perhaps the most "Super Bowly" ad of this year's Super Bowl was a lengthy Bud Light spot that packed in celebrities like Don Cheadle and Arnold Schwarzenegger with the band One Republic, all part of an elaborate surprise night out for a non-celebrity Manhattan bro in his twenties.

    That kind of ad, successful though it was, may no longer be the norm for Super Bowls in the future. In a year when the most popular ads were a tearjerker from Budweiser starring its age-old Clydesdale horses and a puppy, along with a Cheerios ad showing a breakfast-table exchange between father and daughter, slapstick ads like those from Doritos felt out of place and dated.

    Still, over half of the ads that ran during the game were in some form humorous. From Stephen Colbert's head inside a pistachio to Tim Tebow rescuing dogs from a burning building, they wanted to make you laugh.

    The vibe you'll get from this year's Olympics advertising couldn't be more different. "It has to do with the audience," says Ian Schafer, CEO of the agency Deep Focus. "Super Bowl ads try to appeal to the male id and do things filled with shock value, lots of humor. Olympics ads are pretty traditional. And they're definitively more female-oriented."

    Procter & Gamble (PG) is following that recipe by appealing to mothers. Its "Pick Them Back Up"campaign, according to social video marketing company Unruly, is already the most shared Winter Games campaign of all time. (Of course, that's thanks to the ever-multiplying array of social media platforms and devices on which we watch video.) There's nothing very funny about the emotional ad -- which has had 14 million YouTube views -- in which mothers repeatedly pick up their children when they fall, helping them grow from babies to teens to Olympic athletes. P&G took the same tack two years ago at the London Olympics with "Best Job," a campaign about the hard work mothers do to raise an athlete. It worked then, too.

    In fact, of the top 20 most shared Olympics ads so far, released in advance of the Games by brands like P&G, Visa (V), and Molson, not one is funny. Richard Kosinski, president of Unruly, which is tracking the most viral Sochi ads, says the emotion viewers seek during the Olympics is starkly different from the Super Bowl. Unruly examines two qualities that drive someone to share a video ad: The first is psychological response. "Americans love funny," says Kosinski. "If you look at the U.S. norm for the top psychological response, hilarity is one of the things that resonates best. But in Brazil, exhilaration is the top psychological response." Thus the ads, even those that run in the U.S., are responding to global tastes. The Olympics are a worldwide phenomenon treated with somber respect -- perhaps not the place for, say, a Heinz ketchup bottle making a fart noise. The second reason to share an ad is social motivation. Kosinski says the primary motivation these days is shared passion or zeitgeist: "The Olympics are a perfect example of zeitgeist, an event that is of our current time."

    If a brand's spot doesn't reflect the zeitgeist, it has to hope people will share it for some other reason -- it's hilarious, or shocking, or controversial. It isn't enough anymore for a person to merely view a video; advertisers crave social media shares. Engagement, not clicks, is what counts. In that vein, J.C. Penney (JCP) attempted to get some play during the Super Bowl by sending out tweets laced with typos. ("Toughdown Seadawks! Is sSeattle going toa runaway wit h this???") Later in the game, the account revealed it had all been a planned stunt to promote its own Sochi product, Team USA gloves: "Sorry for the typos. We were #TweetingWithMittens." On Twitter, that met with a lot of laughs, but also a lot of jeers.

    You might think having your brand mocked on social media doesn't matter -- that any press is good press -- but that may not always be the case. "Oh, I think it matters," says Schafer. "There are a couple of brands that advertise in the Super Bowl strictly to help their unaided awareness. So, the company that sells weather-liners for trucks [Weathertech]. But if you've already got name awareness, if you're already Chrysler, you're trying to cement yourself within somebody's consideration set. You're not going to get put in someone's consideration set if you're being talked about negatively." Indeed, Chrysler and Maserati, both owned by Fiat, went with serious ads focused on themes of patriotism and drive, and both felt flat. Chrysler's spot with Bob Dylan, in Schafer's analysis, "aimed to do something provocative but it blew up in their faces a little bit because of the melodrama." Maserati utilized 10-year-old actress Quvenzhane Wallis, much to the chagrin of media folks on Twitter: "Dylan selling cars, Prince on a sitcom, and the little girl from 'Beasts of the Southern Wild' in a Maserati ad. So ya, you're depressed," tweeted @davepell.