When many Americans simply wanted a break from what has been described as one of America’s dirtiest elections (Barone, 2016), brands Hefty and Excedrin each found unique ways of cutting through the political clutter.
In the weeks leading up to the presidential election, Hefty’s advertising agency, Havas Chicago, decided to purchase ad space on websites that would otherwise be chock-full of political ads, such as CNN, Fox News, AOL and the Huffington Post’s political page (Richards, 2016). Additionally, Hefty replaced the 30-second pre-roll videos, potentially preventing even more political ads, with a 6-second message, “This political ad has been trashed thanks to Hefty” (Richards, 2016, 3rd para.). These ads ran up until election day, primarily in the swing states where the Clinton and Trump campaigns spent the most on advertising (Richards, 2016).
The decision to place these anti-political ads was based on research indicating that 80 percent of people were fed up with the negative ads (Richards, 2016). Jason Peterson, chief creative officer at Havas Chicago, said the goal for the ads was to “build a brand relationship with consumers in a modern way” (Richards, 2016, 5th para.). They wanted consumers to know that Hefty understands their sentiments and empathizes with them (Richards, 2015).
Similarly, Excedrin’s advertising agencies, Weber Shandwick and PHD, found an opportunity to respond to current conversations happening over social media (Bulik, 2016). During the first presidential debate, they observed a surge in mentions of headaches, and even the need for Excedrin as relief, on Twitter (Bulik, 2016). It was then that they decided to build the #DebateHeadache strategy as part of the larger Moments campaign which was already underway (Bulik, 2016).
On October 19, the day of the final presidential debate, Excedrin appeared to be particularly in-tune customers when it sent a tweet with the hashtag, #DebateHeadache (Rousselle, 2016).
It followed up with another tweet later in the day, declaring that debate headaches are almost unavoidable, citing data from a survey that had been conducted that same day (Maheshwari, 2016; Rousselle, 2016)
Excedrin’s relevant humor did not go unnoticed. According to Adweek, during the debate, #debateheadache jumped 602 percent within the hour, and Excedrin saw a 3100 percent increase in mentions by the next day (Bulik, 2016). CNN even called Excedrin the winner of the debate (Bulik, 2016).
“Content is king, but context is God” (Vaynerchuk, 2013, p. 17). Neither Hefty nor Excedrin have anything to do with politics, yet they found a way to become relevant during the presidential election. These two brands each listened to the conversations on social media and applied their research to develop creative and relevant content. They quickly entered the conversation while the topic was hot, and consumers took notice. Who would have thought that anyone would be thinking about trash bags or pain killers during the presidential election? Well, maybe pain killers . . . .
References:
Barone, E. (2016, November 3). This writer ranked American history’s dirtiest elections. Here is what he says about 2016. Time. Retrieved from http://time.com/4554784/dirtiest-elections-american-history-2016/
Bulik, B. S. (2016, October 24). Got a presidential #debateheadache? GSK’s Excedrin remedy tweets explode on Twitter. Fierce Pharma. Retrieved from http://www.fiercepharma.com/marketing/presidential-debate-headache-gsk-s-excedrin-remedy-tweets-explode-twitter
Maheshwari, S. (2016, November 6). Advertisers try to capitalize on campaign fatigue. The Seattle Times. Retrieved from http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/product-ads-pitch-relief-from-presidential-campaign/
Richards, K. (2016, November 3). Hefty is giving you a break from this terrible election by trashing those nasty political ads: A clever stunt from Havas. AdWeek. Retrieved from http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/hefty-trashes-those-terrible-political-ads-free-you-nasty-election-spots-174407
Rousselle, C. (2016, October 19). Excedrin’s “Debate Headache” tweet goes viral. Townhall. Retrieved from http://townhall.com/tipsheet/christinerousselle/2016/10/19/excedrin-gets-it-n2234723
Vaynerchuk, G. (2013). Jab, jab, jab, right hook. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers
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