I get very excited the first time I see one of ‘our’ commercials on TV.
The countless hours that go into creating a new campaign – the market research, competitive analysis, talent selection, soundtracks and supers – all dissolve in those first few seconds of victorious recognition: when finally it appears on my humble home TV. Hooray!
And it’s not unusual for clients, who have been just as much a part of the campaign journey from conception to birth, to be as excited as I am when their ad hits the market for the very first time.
We’d be forgiven for thinking that the rest of the world shares this enthusiasm, and that all that’s needed is to upload our new ads to our company websites to generate a flurry of tweets and posts about our new campaign.
But analytics data tells us that this approach rarely generates any real consumer interest. Why?
Well, as much as we’d like the case to be different, the lives of our consumers don’t actually revolve around our brand, and that they may not be quite as enamored when our new commercial hits the airwaves as we are.
The challenge is nothing new and the rules are still fairly simple: Speak to your audience with a message suitable to the environment you find them in.
For QUT… a university for the real world, it was about delivering a unique brand promise in a way that went beyond simply making their TVCs available online. Let me explain.
Every day hundreds of videos are uploaded to you tube, showing tricks, hoaxes and questions about authenticity.
Enter Real Not Real. An entertaining online challenge that invites you to make a call on the authenticity of a series of (potentially fake) videos.
Your skill at picking a real from a hoax is scored against the scores of others who’ve done the test before you, and your ‘Realness Percentage’ calculated.
Just before you spread the word to your friends and family, you’re challenged once more – to get a real dose of reality: QUT’s three commercials.
A university for the real world has certainly been a powerful differentiation for QUT. And creating a channel to deliver this in a brand new way, taps into a truth about a web-savvy, interactive-literate audience.
Check out Real Not Real and see how you fare. And if you like, pass it on.
Rebecca Tame is an Account Manager at BCM Brisbane
