The Most Expensive 30 Seconds in Advertising

29:04So this year we, you know, we did this partnership with Mikey Day and with the Is It Cake franchise. The whole insight within it was that EOS products make you smell like a cupcake. And so we took that a bit further and said, well, what if people couldn't actually tell the difference between you and a cupcake and place that within the context of the Is It Cake franchise? And so even leading up to the Super Bowl, we had the surround sound elements like we had EOS cakes that actually look like products that we were selling through a partnership nationally and created that like buzz and that excitement around EOS.

29:38Like you really can't tell the difference between EOS and cake. So that drove a lot of social engagement. So we saw this lift in social engagement across all of our platforms and gave us the best possible launching pad for entering into the into the big game. I think that the, while the creative may have shifted, I think that insight is something that we're always looking for in any of the work that we do, where we look for something that we learn directly from our fan base, and then we know it's true. If it's not coming from us, if it's something that we're hearing from the outside in, and then we can create a strategy around that and anchor our creative around that, we feel really good that it's anchoring in a human truth.

30:16In this case, that EOS makes you smell like a cake. Gary do you want to smell like a cake I do smell like a cake I smell like a cake 24-7 so I've been on this cake for a while you know I tend to be on trend early so which I smell like different cakes at different times but yes I not only do I want to I've been on this kick for about 7 to 8 years you're a trendsetter Gary thank you so before we leave you Stephen talk about the retail activation and how that works so well for them. And could you talk a bit more, you referenced that, a bit more about how you've activated this outside, you know, the confines of the weekend?

30:58Well, we're a slightly different category because I actually believe, and I agree really strongly, Gary, with you, that sampling and trial is incredibly important. And for us, though, our product actually is, to some extent, samplable in store in a way that, for example, you can't open up a package of Ritz crackers. But we often see that consumer behavior in store for our product is they open up the bottle, they take a sniff, and if they like it, they'll purchase it. And so for us, that drive to store and that stickiness to actually get into stores and try the product is incredibly important. And the one thing that we need to be able to deliver as a marketing team is that confidence among our retail partners so that they know that we are going to have that kind of pull to be able to push consumers to get into the stores to try the product.

31:45So for us, it's really about getting that footfall across into our customers. So Gail, we're going to move up to you. You've been at Novartis four and a half years, a CMO and chief experience officer. Last year, you leaned into breast cancer screening with a spunky, direct, excellent execution. I think you did it again this year on prostate cancer prevention, the blood test, just excellent work. So you thread a tough needle two years in a row with tough topics in the creative showcase of the year, right, the Super Bowl. So could you talk a bit about what kind of culture process you have at Novartis that yields this kind of amazing creative work that I suspect you'll tell us has quite an impact?

32:31It does have an impact, and thanks. And, you know, behavior change at scale, there's nothing harder and particularly with health behaviors, really, really tough. But what we've done is we've built a really strong foundation at Novartis. I had the good fortune to join and was given the remit to build a strong central marketing function. We had been a decentralized marketing function, so strong marketers, but no central core approach. And I don't believe work like this is possible without some of those foundations. So we built our own sort of system. We call it the elements of marketing. We were all trained and we've been really doubling down on creativity.

33:11I myself come from more of the creative side of the business. I started in media and worked at brands like, you know, Martha Stewart and InStyle. So an unlikely road for me to be here at a pharma company, but bringing all that I learned and all the best practices around consumer engagement and really building off an insight. So like the colleagues on this podcast, we really start with the insight? What is it? And then what is the behavioral barrier? What are we trying to change? Last year, you know, the insight was really simple. Breasts are adored, but ignored. So women spend a lot of time, a lot of people spend a lot of time thinking about women's breasts, but not necessarily when it matters most when they need to make a proactive health decision.

33:59You know, one in two women skip their annual mammograms in the US, and that's for a variety of reasons. But in this case, women know they should get, you know, they should get screened, but they get that life gets in the way, access gets in the way and other things. So we put together something that we felt met the moment. You know, you talk about the Super Bowl, 50 % female audience or 47 % female audience, the whole Taylor Swift effect. So we thought it was the right place to have that conversation at a broad scale. But you're right, it's a really fine line and threading a needle in order to be humorous, get into culture, but not, you know, strike, you know, not be too provocative, but really have the focus be on the message.

34:43And what I was excited to see and what we were really encouraged by is that through our own tracking and reports from our advocacy partners like Susan G. Komen, for example, women were taking that step. They were expressing intent to be screened. Millions came to the website to get reminders to be screened and to nudge their friends. So we had great confidence that this was a platform that could work. What was interesting is last year we had not announced our NFL partnership. So we were not NFL partners. So we kind of worked with the cheerleading community to bring that message to the Super Bowl.

35:20In the subsequent months, we announced an NFL partnership. And as we thought about leaning into proactive health choices for men this year and prostate cancer screening and really, you know, digging into why men aren't getting screened, we really wanted to lean into our NFL partnership and the football community. So that's sort of the two pieces led to this, you know, we did a lot of behavioral and insights research and got to the insight around men are avoiding the getting screened because of either fear or misunderstanding or lack of knowledge about the DRE, the digital rectal exam. So this idea that you can just start with a blood test, and it is a starting point.

36:03You may need a DRE if something is uncovered, but the point is - Wait a minute. Yeah. I'm kidding. It's an important tool once you get screened, but the point is you can get screened and get peace of mind as an initial first step. So we kept the message really simple. I think the other thing that's important is to have authentic storytellers. So when you talk about celebrity, Gary, and we did use Gronk, it was about that relationship with Coach Arians and that player-coach relationship and the authenticity of that. I'm sorry to interrupt. You just got me so excited. It was such a deep cut, but you also had an audience of 30 million men.

36:45They got way more men, but I'm going to say 30 million, maybe 40 million men that knew that that was his coach, you know, and probably another 25 to 30 million that recognize some of the secondary and tertiary celebrity tight ends. But in a lot of ways, this is real. This was super interesting what went through my mind. I appreciated that you used, and by the way, I'm big on this, lower cost, you know, sometimes it's awareness. You did both things, right, Gail? You guys did full awareness, which is obviously Super Bowl important. But I will say that one of the hardest things in television commercials and why I struggle with them outside of this platform is you tend to go vanilla and you're trying to be everything to everyone and you end up being nothing to no one.

37:35So relevance is incredibly hard in a 30 second video, right? It's just hard. And I thought the way you did it, Gail, and obviously I know you know there's an audience watching, so you go to Gronk where everyone knew and knows here, but like Vernon, like you used very nerdy, and again, that's the right spot. You've got a lot of diehard football fans. And I personally as a human appreciated some of the other characters that were, the other tight ends that were in it. And I think some of those were very good cost ROI if you negotiated well enough that I think you should have based on where their personal brands are right now.

38:12I thought that was really well done. Yeah, thanks. And it was really important to us to have a mix of current players and of legends. And so with Kittle and Colby, we have team deals with the Rams and the 49ers. So there were a lot of layers to this because really what we're trying to do is build awareness to the point, but then activate where people are taking action. So we're doing screening events throughout the year. We've worked, in fact, in connection with the Super Bowl, We did an amazing event with the 49ers where people are actually getting screen or have the opportunity to get screen.

38:47And they are. So it's not just the platform, but it's how are we enabling simplicity so people can take an action. And that the work with the NFL is so important. We share that proactive health, you know, that that same value of getting people to make proactive health decisions and then leveraging the team and the current players as well as the legend. So there were a lot of layers in it, but I go back to we built a marketing philosophy at Novartis and a set of tools that help us get to these deep insights, but then activated scale with creative at the core. I really believe so strongly in real people, real storytelling, real world experiences.

39:29And that's our we have a create platform and it's central to that. It was beautiful storytelling. By the way, Bad Bunny's halftime show was beautiful storytelling. So it was a great night of storytelling on many fronts. And speaking of storytelling, Maddie, we're going to bring you into this. Now, this was a first, right? This first Super Bowl spot for Cadillac's F1 brand. First time, as you said, a Formula One team has advertised in the Super Bowl and revealed a car at the same, a livery at the same time. And I think you were only hired in October. Do I have that right? Yeah, end of October, yeah.

40:04Okay, right? and I think you did not walk into an idea that was fully baked you walked into hey we're going to be in the Super Bowl get to work yeah absolutely right so you did it congrats to you and your team but let's start out with are you happy with how everything went yeah honestly I've had the good fortune in my past career to sit you know on the side and watch a Super Bowl campaign at Audi that I've talked to Gary about in the past get created so I know the process a little bit, right? But that's a four to five month process if you're lucky and you can plan against it. And you're usually building off of a brand narrative that's already been placed.

40:44So here, yeah, we come in, you have 90 days to figure it out. Don't have a marketing team. Don't have an agency on board. Don't have an idea. Just know that we want to innovate, livery, reveal. So while learning F1 and then getting a team together and getting an agency on board, it was like everything else this amazing team is doing. It's a race against time, right? The same way the car is being built, the same way the team is being built, the Super Bowl campaign is being built. So it was a lot. It was a lot of work. And to your point, I think we're really, really happy with the outcome this far.

41:14We actually have more to come. We're not done yet. We actually, for the next couple of days, you're going to see some more stuff that connects because really by coincidence, we got really lucky. We had the Super Bowl spot and the livery reveal connected. That was very much so planned and aren't in control. But the very first time, the livery will be on track in preseason testing. is actually starting today in Bahrain. And so we were like, we couldn't miss this opportunity to do, let's call it a curtain call and do something interesting to say, hey, as a user, as a consumer or a fan, you see the car, first you see it in a TV spot.

41:49Then if you're in New York and you see it in person, and then you see it in an out-of-home program, now you see it running, doing sprints in Bahrain on the track. And so from a fan perspective, it's like, well, you get all this amazing content in three to four days. And so we wanted to make sure we connected all those dots. So to answer your question, I couldn't even do a one to 10 yet because we I got to get to Wednesday afternoon and I'll be able to give you a proper answer. But there's there's a lot that had to be done in a very short amount of time. But, you know, as I'm learning the world of F1, everything happens under a lot of pressure at the last minute.

42:23So tell us about this idea. How did it happen? I mean, I get it. Yeah, the Super Bowl, like, you know, I get. But then you said, OK, we're going to do a parallel reveal. reveal. So what was the birth of that idea? Tell us about that. Yeah. So, I mean, first, Dan and Cassidy Towers had the idea back in August that they wanted to change the way livery reveals were done. This is the first one of the team. So we needed to make it big. We needed to make it important. So the Super Bowl spot idea was there. Then, you know, moving a little bit down the line, it's like, OK, well, is that enough? Right.

42:53Are people going to get it? Are people going to watch, you know, the 130 million people that watch Super Bowl every year, are they going to see a spot of a Formula One car and understand why they should be paying attention and why they should care? And I think that started the conversation of, okay, well, we should probably invest more from a content perspective. And like Gary said, you know, like Raising Cane's does, they create these environments and where it's really fun to be there in person, but really the goal isn't to make it the most fun in person. The goal is to make it the most fun digitally.

43:20And that's to create a lot of great content to create that moment. So that was a conversation we had internally. Is this too much to do a second event? Do we have the bandwidth or does this feed into the same goal of what we're trying to do? And at the end of the day, it was let's come up with an idea that innovates the way this is done, but also changes the sports accessibility. Right. And F1 is a very luxury sport. It's an elevated sport. It's the pinnacle of racing. There's only 24 races and they're they're in cities all across the globe. But so many of the fans across the world don't get a chance to either go to a race or experience it.

43:52So we wanted to think about accessible ways to, while still remaining elevated, accessible ways for people to experience the team. And to me, that comes through physical experience outside of off the track, but also great digital experience and a level of transparency that we can bring people in. And I think that's what we were endeavoring to achieve with the experience in Times Square. And what you'll see coming, and the cat's kind of out of the bag. We ran the headline that we are partnering with Apple on a shot on iPhone campaign around the Bahrain execution, which will be running. So the goal really is to find all different mediums to bring the sport and the team to new fans while paying homage to the core fandom.

44:33I would hope the core F1 fans see this and they're like, that's cool. They're changing the way liveries are done. While at the same time, new fans that may have just seen the F1 movie, maybe watch Drive to Survive, maybe are just getting into it because they have a favorite driver, are like, oh, that's really cool. They're bringing it to me in a platform I like. They're bringing it to me in a place I'm comfortable, and they're starting to pull me into their world. And that's really the thought behind it. Cool. Gary, you must love it. Yeah. Yeah, and I think the thing that I would say is the thing that most caught my attention in that beautiful rant was I hope brands are starting to realize everything's a production day.

45:14and I think once we understand that like I just it wouldn't be a a session with me if I didn't rail on the old way of doing things I mean this idea of paying companies to come up with ideas on retainer just feels very antiquated and then to pay and then the second part that's antiquated is we spend an enormous amount of money to do a production in a fake environment it just feels like there's a better way. And I think we're starting to get there. And it doesn't, and it doesn't even require the Superbowl. It just becomes a day-to-day way of life. And I think whether it's sampling, whether it's experiential, whether it's business meetings internally, I know weird stuff that I would, you know, that as you know, Jim, people made jokes of me about, or even when I, you know, called you out of the blue and said, you should do a CMO podcast.

46:02To me, it's the podcast is a production day for the social media clips. Yeah. Right. So, yeah, I hope I hope brands start getting more bang for their buck. Well, Luis, let's turn to you. I think you know how to get bang for your buck, right? Yes. So this is the this is your first year. Let's start with that. What compelled you to make that decision? we looked at tree hut right and we clearly realized that the brand is behaving like a big brand i mean we're we're we're a challenger brand right we're smaller social first brand but culturally which is very very important we're behaving sometimes even better than some of these bigger brands right and that's the moment that we realize okay we don't have a big mass media moment but we need to amplify what we currently have.

46:55We have this momentum with our community, with our creators, building that product love, right? At some point, it was really more than the belief that we had internally and said, like, we need to share this with the masses and scaling the belief is what we aim to do. So I have a question from one of our community, Melanie Seaboard, actually at the research company, Humanology. She asked, what gave you the confidence that the uncontained yourself creative idea and the integration of your creators was strong enough would work be compelling in that environment of the super bowl so talk a bit about that when did you get and how did you get the confidence to do it i think the confidence came from knowing that we were not going to change the brand right we're going to continue to remain authentic to who we are remain through the really knowledge of our creators our ogs as we call it right we started in social media so we we need just to amplify that platform, right?

47:55Knowing that we will continue to do what we do best, but now we're going to add it to the biggest stage in the world. That's what gives us the confidence that there's nothing that could be, could we go wrong, right? Some people actually didn't understand the ad. Not very few. There's an article out there. It's like they didn't get it. And that's exactly what we wanted to. It's like, I want you to not understand what's happening because you don't know this brand. And the people that know these brands love the brand so much that it amplifies and grows and they take to social to speak for us. So it's a whole momentum.

48:29So knowing that really drove the confidence for us. Was there fear in that? You know, meaning in that you're confusing the audience. It might just be confusing and it's expensive to do Super Bowl. Like I give you a lot of credit to take that risk. Yeah, it was a risky move. so if i mean to add to answer james question this was an 11 for us which if everything we wanted to do right uh from a social perspective again because we we looked at the super bowl as a tactic on a full campaign rebrand which is not many people look at that people prepare everything to culminate at the super bowl moment we basically started on christmas day and super bowl although a very expensive tactic we were timing it just to have to it's part of that amplification that was it but our game wasn't social uh the content creation has been grown substantially and getting then our content creators on the big screen that's where the magic started to happen so we just remained really confident of what we wanted to do all right now i want to open it up to this beautiful panel.

49:41You all have great stories. You all feel very confident and happy about your effort, proud of your team, celebrating it internally. So did anything happen in this conversation that compels one of you to ask one of you a burning question? I have a question, if you don't mind, for you, Maddy. So I think it's very cool what you did. And the car does look amazing. So clearly, you wanted to disrupt the way the car is revealed. Is that going to be your identity going forward in F1? Like, are you going to continue to disrupt this world? Yeah, I mean, it's funny. The first thing I wanted to do coming in, because I don't have a full F1 background, is let me bring in all the experience I have and innovate at every nook and cranny that I can.

50:25And I think what I've quickly realized is, while that would be fun and exciting, there is a high level of importance to keeping some foundational excellence and give the discipline of Formula One the respect that there's some things that need to stay just foundationally excellent and you do the foundations correctly, but innovating with intention. So where are the moments that we can change things? Livery reveal, is that something we can change? When it comes to off-track entertainment and hosting, is that something we can change? Collaborations and the way that happens, right? So absolutely. And the purpose in the North Star will always be there.

50:58So it's not innovation for the sake of change itself, but how can we make something more modern? How can we make something better as a consumer experience and a fan experience and how can we make things more accessible, right, for more fans? Because the bigger the fandom grows for the sport, better for every team. And I think that's really going to be something for me personally focused with our team. Nice. Anyone else have a burning question? Yeah, Manny, go ahead. Yeah, I have a question for the group, especially in the world of social. You know, one of the things we talk about is building fandom at the team, right?

51:29That's our North Star is how do we build more fans? And in a world where in social we've moved away from the social graph into a content graph world and people are less likely to follow brands but more likely to stay tuned into their algorithm and views are now elevating in importance and engagements elevating importance. How are you guys talking about that shift internally, right? Are you guys still thinking about – That's better. Like somebody following you or signing up for your newsletter doesn't mean they're an actual fan. Right. Right. By the way, I don't literally sign up for the Jets newsletter, nor do I actually think I follow the Jets on every social platform.

52:10I will kill people for the Jets. So, Gary, question for you then, right? It's like, how should a sports team be looking at calculating fandom? How should brands be looking at calculating fandom? Ticket selling stuff, you know, showing up for impact, right? I don't know why this industry is addicted to proxies to the punchline. Let's measure the punchline, to your point. And what's really interesting, brother, is now that we're in an interest graph, not a social graph framework, it allows all of us to finally double down on what we've all been missing, which is more relevance with more different consumer segmentations to drive our actual businesses.

52:54Gail wants every type of guy, you know, at a certain age group, you can imagine that if you're, you know, my father is a Russian immigrant that spent his first 25 years in the Soviet Union, grew up in the liquor business, grew up in Jersey, that piece of creative to compel him to be aware, you know, is going to be very different than a Cuban 50 year old who was born third generation Miami family versus, you know, a guy in Iowa, who's, you know, and I think I'm so excited for all of you that we're in this era because I think we have overvalued proxies. And I think weirdly, the social media algorithms are forcing us to a very fundamental place in marketing.

53:37It's crazy that the new things are reinforcing the most important thing, which is relevance leads to consideration, which leads to purchase. We're just not accustomed on this call. We grew up in an era where we were vanilla top down matching luggage let's roll the dice because we were forced to like it was a tv-centric world there was no technology to really measure creative irrelevance these algorithms happen to just align with us as marketers they want to keep all of us on the platform for as long as possible thus they play only on relevance if we now play on that same game, we win, right? So, you know, I think fandom is only executed in the end.

54:20What the hell am I doing with this? Right? This is measurable for them. Your Jets t-shirt. But it's not going to be based on, do I follow them on Snapchat? Like I know for a fact actually that I'm not subscribed to the Jets on YouTube, right? So I think we're heading in a really fun direction that I think is going to help. and I think Super Bowl is the awareness supernova. But I think for all of you, how you post game from now to win on relevance to different demos, ages, gender, races, income levels, and interest graph. It's almost like we're going to go into this world where the big boulder comes, but it's going to be all those pebbles that you do across the earth.

55:04And I would argue done best and not always the way we do it at Vayner, but done best, it's pebbles that scale all year and the golden pebble becomes the brief and becomes the framework of the Super Bowl at the end, not the reverse. We continue to do our best in here with all our talents to guess it based on insights and things of that nature, but guess it on the creative. I think we're all gonna wake up within the next half decade and do it the reverse. It's gonna be the pebbles at scale of relevance all year that come September, October, November, December, if you're late, will become the brief.

55:46And I will actually predict here now because you guys know me well enough to know I'm gonna wanna clip this in six years and be like, told you. I'm gonna predict that within the next five years, there will be a Super Bowl spot that is the exact replica of the social media post that got 100 million organic views by a brand. literally black bars and all aired in its full natural sense. I think between now and then, there's an opportunity for a lot of the brands here to use the insights of their winning social media organic, like organic. Cause when you start using paid to cover it up, you're back in television land on social, which is double bad.

56:24So that's where I think things are going. So young comment on that. You've built a beautiful business on those principles. Yeah. I mean, we also, So our category has the luxury of having pretty immediate data availability from a consumption perspective. And so we see very, very highly correlated when we see social organic social engagement with organic search volume, with actual consumption and pull through on demand. It all tracks one to one. It's like really an incredible thing to see. And I guess to just build on what Gary just said, for us, what that means in terms of how we build relevance is to build a highly attuned, always on reactive content creation engine within the team that has its ears to the ground all the time and is constantly churning things out all the time.

57:11Because the more at-bats we have, the more shots we have at getting the algorithm to do the work for us and deliver our content to as many people as possible. And for us, that means things that are like tiny in scale that you never would have placed your bets on sometimes deliver outsized results. It's really an incredible thing to see. It's called advertising. You know, when everybody hears shots on goal, right? And the algorithm is just people's interest. It's just relevance. But this whole shots on goal that is demonized by our industry, we've done print ads and direct mail and billboards and radio for 100 years.

57:47We do day-to-day marketing for a hundred years. This concept that has been completely grounded in companies that can't deliver on creative day-to-day, demonizing it and wanting to talk about fidelity and all this stuff that is not tangible. We must stop demonizing volume in our industry. We've been doing volume. When I met Gail, she had unlimited FSIs and couponing every week and the business was in. That wasn't bad, that was good. and you know this concept of 30 40 70 150 social media ads a week it's called advertising it's 2026 this is not bad i promise you that she and her team and i can speak for our company and we're at scale now none of it is spray and pray none of it is throw against the wall and see what sticks none of it's even test and learn it's we have consumers we're trying to reach this is our best belief that this will work luckily we're spending so little on the production of that creative that we can make a lot of it.

58:46And when the quant and qual is clear data, then we can start the process of what we want to do next, whether for some brands, send it to the lower funnel and do performance, or if some brands send it all the way up to the Super Bowl. All right, we're running into time. Last word you were against. One piece of advice, very short piece of advice for someone considering doing a Super Bowl experience next year. You've all done it. Some of you have done it more than once. What's your one or two sentence of advice to someone considering for next year? Yeah, I mean, Jim, I'll just say build an experience.

59:22I mean, we all sort of said it in different ways, but the Super Bowl activation or the tactic is just part of the experience. And you really need to think about that long and hard and support it throughout a year. It's not a one moment. It's a debut or a moment to get attention, but then it's what you do with it afterwards. I would say in two words, be bold. Fortune favors the bold. Beautiful. I'd say be remembered. Make sure it's your brand that's remembered after. I would say radical clarity internally. Make sure before you go into war on this thing, you have radical clarity of what you want to get out of it.

1:00:04And use that as your true North Star throughout the pressures of building this campaign.

1:00:12remain true to your brand right like don't try to change it just because it's a super bowl don't get out of there just do what you do best and you'll be successful these are all great pieces of advice i didn't know what we get there but it was beautiful gary last word last word on the advice for marketers that are watching is what you said please connect with all of these incredible marketers on LinkedIn and message them and extract the secrets. Love it. Love it. Hey, gang. It was so good to see all the smiling faces. Congratulations to everyone for the great work. It's very inspiring. Thanks for joining us.

1:00:46Very helpful for our community. Gary, thanks again. Eight years in a row. Maybe we'll do nine. We'll see. We will. Nine's a good number. Take care, everyone. All right. Bye now. Everybody, if you enjoyed this podcast, please go back and look at the prior episodes. They're loaded. I appreciate your attention. and thanks for being part of this journey. See you later.