How Reddit put together that five-second Super Bowl commercial in less than a week

While watching the Super Bowl Sunday night time, viewers in sure markets noticed an attention-grabbing five-second advert from Reddit. “Wow, this actually worked,” textual content on the advert learn. “If you’re reading this, our bet paid off.”

The advert, which ran in solely sure markets, initially brought on a little bit of confusion. Many paused their broadcasts to learn it extra intently. Some apparently thought aliens have been taking up their TV. 

“Big game spots are expensive, so we couldn’t buy a full one,” the corporate said in the ad. “But we were inspired and decided to spend our entire marketing budget on 5 seconds of airtime. One thing we learned from our communities last week is that underdogs can accomplish just about anything when they come together around a common idea.”

Reddit really hadn’t determined to do a Super Bowl spot till a week in the past, in accordance with the corporate’s Chief Marketing Officer Roxy Young. But dialog concerning the web site was hitting a fever pitch in latest weeks as Reddit was central to the recent market craze round Gamestop. 

“We started to see the velocity of conversation around Reddit, around our communities. And it was increasing significantly over the last few weeks…” Young instructed CNBC in an interview Monday. “It’s my responsibility as a marketer to think about these opportunities, and how we can use them as a springboard to extend our message and to share more about what we believe in as a platform.” 

But she wasn’t positive if the corporate would be capable of do pull it off. 

“I think any marketer would ask themselves, is there an opportunity for us to be in this conversation when millions of people are tuning into a singular event?” she mentioned. “And, to be honest, I thought about it, and I thought about it again, and I just didn’t think that we would be able to pull it off.” 

Young mentioned the value tag for the everyday Super Bowl spot, roughly $5.5 million for 30 seconds of airtime, was out of attain for the corporate. So Reddit labored with its company, Interpublic Group‘s R/GA, to determine whether or not it ought to do a shorter spot, or focus its efforts regionally as a substitute of nationally. 

“Our creative partners at RGA had a fantastic idea to start inquiring about whether five seconds was possible,” Young mentioned. “And luckily, we use RGA for both creative and media, so we have the whole in-house team working…  to find a solution and an opportunity. And where we landed was five seconds in nine of the top 10 regional markets.” 

Short adverts can nonetheless pull a punch. Tide’s “It’s a Tide Ad” campaign in 2018 included a string of shorter-format adverts all through the sport and landed the model as a slot in one of many most-loved campaigns in latest historical past.

Young mentioned the corporate hoped to get in all 10 high regional markets, however that time in Houston had already offered out. The firm ended up working the spot as a regional purchase in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Boston and Washington, D.C.

After making the decision to do the advert final Monday, Young mentioned the corporate and inventive companions labored Tuesday and Wednesday to drag together the spot for the reason that artistic was due Thursday morning. 

“We were able to see something around people being really passionate about stocks and personal finance, and we knew what we wanted to say,” she mentioned. “Once we once we nailed that, then the execution, the creative execution, was actually pretty straightforward: Those words on one single screen.”

Then, she mentioned they spent Friday enthusiastic about how they might deliver the marketing campaign to life on Reddit’s web site. And although the advert received loads of play internally on Reddit, the main target was additionally on chatting with non-Reddit customers.

“Given that there was this increased velocity of people seeing and hearing about our brand, my first responsibility was to figure out how we can extend this out into a broader audience,” Young mentioned. “And if people were hearing about Reddit, how can we connect some of those those dots? And I think in doing that, we had to be true to ourselves and who we are with our candid and brilliantly absurd tone… I think that by doing that, the creative style and tone, it also spoke to our existing communities. So hopefully it achieved both.” 

Reddit is a 15-year-old firm however remains to be reasonably new to model advertising. Young mentioned the corporate has comparatively small take a look at budgets to check out a few totally different techniques, or it supmakes one large guess. She mentioned the corporate shall be how a lot earned media protection it will get, how individuals reply and the way favorable it was perceived in figuring out whether or not it is going to make future performs like this. 

Though the staff put together the advert in a brief span of time, Young mentioned the staff wasn’t shedding a lot sleep over it.

“We actually slept, and the reason why is we had such clarity about our message, and the power of our communities,” she mentioned. “And, you know, we were seeing it in real life.”

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