索契冬奥会广告大战严肃不搞笑

    当一个品牌滑入主流语境几个小时，甚至功德圆满，一举成为热门话题的时候，从长远来看，这类冲刺性的活动其实没有多大的价值。“社交媒体的关注总是稍纵即逝，”谢弗说。“如果这种关注度只出现一次，它们不一定是有意义的交流。人们都在谈论你并不意味着他们正在产生购买冲动。”当一个品牌花费一整年时间通过自己的社交媒体账户塑造一种真正的个性化形象时，取得的传播效应要高效得多。在一场万众瞩目的赛事直播期间通过Twitter玩一个可笑的恶作剧不会产生持久性影响。但奥利奥饼干(Oreo)和恰敏卫生纸(Charmin)这样的广告主却因全年都在发布有趣好笑的内容、与消费者持续互动而备受赞誉。

    不过，杰西潘尼公司成功地进入了集体语境之中。Esurance保险公司通过超级碗大赛刚刚结束后播放的广告也做到了这一点。约翰•克拉辛斯基饰演的发言人坐在一个盛满现金的巨型立方体前面，告诉人们使用话题标签 #Esurancesave30在Twitter上发布留言，就有机会赢取150万美元大奖。与杰西潘尼公司不同，他们的花样并没有意想不到的转折或笑话，而是单刀直入，径直呼吁人们发布与它们相关的微博，这招很奏效。

    只有一个问题：当一个话题标签像 #Esurancesave30那样，在Twitter上爆炸性传播时，它必然会吸引滥发垃圾邮件的人、恶意自动程序和爱开玩笑的家伙。点击任何一个超人气话题标签，你将发现它被许多不相干的微博劫持了，一些付费网站和垃圾邮件发送者时常采用这种方式发布一些粗俗下流的信息。就Esurance公司这个例子而言，最有损其品牌的问题是，Twitter上一下子涌现出了大批声称自己是Esurance公司官微的山寨账户。（视觉提示：这些账户没有“认证”标识，而且它们的名称基本上都多了一个字母，或者有其他容易被忽视的特征。）这些与Esurance联系在一起，不可信赖的微博满天飞，当然对这个品牌不利。

    这一切意味着，大家并不一定会在冬奥会期间看到广告商模仿杰西潘尼公司或Esurance保险公司的花招。在冬奥会这样一个备受世界重视的赛事期间，热点话题的保温时间有限，此外还有垃圾邮件的危害，相关品牌这么做可能会面临疏远消费者的风险。奥运会广告大战的赢家很有可能是那些投入大额预算制作官方广告的品牌，这些广告可能非常庄重，充满感情色彩。其他品牌会尝试着进入主流语境之中，但成功的几率不大。“这种时候，花钱打广告就会被看到，”谢弗说。“但如果这种时候只是发一些微博，你很快会被铺天盖地的噪音淹没。”

    如今这个时代，情节剧是奥运广告的主流（现在或许也可以说，在这个情节剧成为超级碗主流广告的新时代），展现幽默，获得自发性传播，需要付出成本。如果一家公司希望省下购买电视广告的开支，尝试着借道社交媒体捷径获得免费的品牌宣传，它就必须极其聪明，风趣，或前卫。吐槽比赛场馆或运动员的低劣笑话可能走不远。（财富中文网）

    译者：叶寒

    Those brief spurts of activity -- when a brand slips into the mainstream conversation for a few hours or even when it achieves the holy grail of becoming a trending topic -- aren't that valuable in the long run anyway. "Social media mentions are fleeting," Schafer says. "These are not necessarily meaningful interactions if they happen just once. Just because people are talking about you doesn't mean they're being pushed to make a purchase." It is far more productive when a brand spends all year cultivating a real personality with its social media account. Pulling one funny prank on Twitter during one popular live event won't move the needle in a lasting way. But advertisers like Oreo and Charmin have earned praise for being interesting or funny enough all year to get continual interactions from consumers.

    Still, J.C. Penney succeeded in entering the collective conversation. Esurance did the same with its ad that aired just after the Super Bowl ended: Actor-spokesman John Krasinski, sitting in front of a giant cube of cash, told people to tweet the hashtag #Esurancesave30 for a shot at winning $1.5 million. Unlike J.C. Penney, their stunt had no twist or joke to it: They cut right to the chase and made a direct ploy to get people tweeting about them, and it worked.

    Just one problem: When a hashtag explodes on Twitter the way #Esurancesave30 did, it attracts spammers, bots, and jokers. Click any super-popular hashtag and you'll find unrelated tweets that have hijacked it, from pay sites to spammers to regular people tweeting lewd, offensive things. In Esurance's case, the issue most detrimental to its brand was that scores of copycat accounts emerged that purported to be Esurance official accounts, but were not. (Visual hints: These do not have the "verified" check mark and in most cases had one extra letter in the handle or some other easy-to-miss indicator.) The unreliable tweets flying around associated with Esurance were not ideal for the brand.

    What all of this means is that you shouldn't necessarily expect to see advertisers aping J.C. Penney's or Esurance's Super Bowl stunts during the Winter Games. In addition to the limited duration of buzz, and the dangers of spam, brands run the risk of alienating consumers during an event that the world takes very seriously. The winning brands at the Olympics will likely be the obvious ones: Those that have devoted big budgets to official ads, ads that look likely to be entirely serious and sentimental. Other brands will try to enter the conversation; few will succeed. "When you pay to get on there, you're going to be seen," says Schafer. "But when you tweet during one of these things, there is a ton of noise."

    In the age of the melodramatic Olympics ad, and now, perhaps, the new age of the melodramatic Super Bowl ad, humor and spontaneity come at a cost. If a company looking to skip the expense of buying a TV ad tries to gain free brand buzz by way of a social media shortcut, it's going to have be extremely clever, funny, or edgy. And mean jokes about the venue or the athletes probably won't fly.