Any marketer can tell you success can be attributed to a pound of careful planning and an ounce of sheer luck. It was the latter that won Arby’s Best New Artist among brands that successfully used the Grammy’s to engage social media audiences. They were in the right place (Twitter) at the right time (a TV event with over 28 million viewers). But what about the brands that spent months planning a carefully orchestrated multichannel marketing campaign around last night’s award show? Let’s look at a winner in that category.
Album of the Year
Pepsi used the Grammy’s to get into onscreen and online action with a TV ad poking fun at Super Bowl halftime shows, while simultaneously promoting the halftime show set to air during next weekend’s Super Bowl. The ad also reminded us of the most notorious musical moments from the last year, showing that the nearly 50 year old brand is still paying attention to pop culture. But they didn’t stop there. Pepsi partnered with BuzzFeed to build a web experience that repackaged ad content in a top 10 list and featured a feed of Pepsi’s tweets, driving incremental online engagement. And of course they live tweeted throughout the Grammy’s and highlighted their social content with promoted tweets—mixing paid, owned and earned media to create a multichannel marketing campaign that’s likely to extend through the upcoming big game.
Pepsi is no stranger to big campaigns, so the real challenge is topping last year’s performance. Their recipe for success pairs big budgets and big stars for a big splash on TV. And they put nearly as much emphasis on the small screen, creatively using visual content by seeding Vine video clues to take users to a filming of the Pepsi Halftime Supervine and posting pre-roll videos with Mike Ditka and Deion Sanders to build anticipation for their ad. They maintained momentum throughout the night by tweeting at celebs during the show in attempt to work their way into the conversation and reach celebs’ loyal followers. The brand also responded to Twitter users, likely using a social media management tool to track and assign tweets to various community managers so they could scale this operation.
What can brands learn from Pepsi’s multichannel campaign?
Brands are only beginning to realize the opportunities to combine TV with digital marketing for maximum impact, so there’ almost unlimited upside. According to Nielson, 36 million people tweeted about TV in 2013, up 12.% from 2012. As technology and techniques evolve to enable marketers to leverage and measure the impact of this trend, marketers should break down silos between channels. Invest in creative visual content across channels to get users’ attention. Use media partnership and advertising to expand reach and visibility of that content. And hire teams with analytics skills to plan with precision, optimize in real-time and measure business results. Success in multichannel marketing requires careful planning and investment, not unlike the production of an award-winning album.