Our IPG family sister agency, Mullen, did a bang-up job in partnership with Radian6 (one of our favorite social media listening tools) to bring real-time buzz measurement and sentiment analysis of last night’s Super Bowl TV spots. Mullen’s detailed recap of the event is on their blog.
We all know by now that Pepsi chose not to advertise during this year’s Super Bowl in favor of their Pepsi Refresh Project. And while, from a Tweet volume perspective, Doritos had a big spike, take a look at their before and after “buzz” as compared to Pepsi:
Not only did Pepsi manage to get almost as much Twitter buzz as Snickers during the Super Bowl but the brand has created a sustained conversation around its current campaign (and the news of it not advertising during last night’s game).
Which strategy do you think gives greater results in the long run?
Mike leads Hill Holliday’s Digital Strategy team with a passionate eye towards cross-channel integration, strong online anchors, and brand democratization through social media. Mike is fascinated by the impact of media convergence and believes that 1+1 can equal 3 when marketers are determined to break down the artificial boundaries of media channels and approach marketing as a harmonic experience. 
Mike – to be fair, I think we have to compare media spend to buzz volume. E.g. within this time period, media dollars spent in all channels / buzz = an effectiveness ratio. Does Pepsi still win?
Moreover, given that Pepsi owns Doritos, doesn’t this strike you as a Unilever Dove vs. Axe situation?
Mike – Thanks for the shoutout. I think Peter has a point, and to build on that I guess, the most important part is what that buzz did for either of the brands overall. Can they tie the Doritos buzz to increased sales? Can they do the same for Pepsi?
It’ll be interesting to me to see the sustained impact the different types of buzz might have on their brand and sales overall. Wonder if they’ll talk about that at some point.
Best,
Amber Naslund
Director of Community, Radian6
@ambercadabra
[...] with us. We both shared the experience with everyone and anyone; it was open to peers, colleagues, even rivals. (Note in the ad business we’re friends with our rivals and compete with our sister [...]
Good perspective, Peter. I think we also need to factor in what the conversation is about (i.e. if the conversation is not related to the messages within each brand’s paid media, should they count if we’re using media spend as a measure?). And if we want something that’s more “apples to apples” then let’s just look at the day of the Super Bowl itself and the fact that Pepsi (proper) had as many if not more mentions than most other brands that advertised that day (Doritos aside). One thing for certain is that social media monitoring is more of an art than it is a science given the subjective nature of interpretations.
-Mike
[...] with us. We both shared the experience with everyone and anyone; it was open to peers, colleagues, even rivals. (Note in the ad business we’re friends with our rivals and compete with our sister companies.) [...]
I think following up a social media campaign by seeing how (and how many) final sells happen is very important since there is big money spent on it.
Taking an offline analogy : these campaigns, in most cases, can only get people out of their houses with money in their pockets and a certain purchase in their mind. We still need to make sure they are finding & coming to our shop to buy what we sell.
I think we’ll know about how successful Pepsi was at doing that, soon enough.
PS: We need a better name for “Social Media”. It sounds very… long!