Why Advertisers Are Having Difficulty Getting Pandemic Pitches Right
The year health and safety became political.
A global pandemic, racial justice and a volatile presidential election campaign have all made this a difficult year in which to judge consumers' moods. Advertisers have responded cautiously - to the extent they have responded at all.
Suzanne Vranica reports in the Wall Street Journal:
Marketing is about telling consumers a story. For the better part of the
year, companies have struggled to determine what story to tell and tone
to strike—and whether spending on ads now is even a good idea. Marketers treaded lightly in the pandemic’s early stages, wary of
looking as if they were exploiting the crisis. Being in sync with the national psyche has been especially hard this
year, given the unpredictability of the Covid-19 pandemic, anxiety over
the coming presidential election and upheaval over racial justice and
police brutality.
Progressive Corp.’s advertising team met several weeks ago to plan a coming commercial that shows the insurance giant’s pitchwoman, Flo, fleeing a bowling alley to help someone whose car was mangled by a falling basketball hoop.
A debate broke out on the video call over a sensitive issue: Should the characters in the spot be wearing masks?
It is the sort of discussion advertisers are having in 2020. Marketing is about telling consumers a story. For the better part of the year, companies have struggled to determine what story to tell and tone to strike—and whether spending on ads now is even a good idea—amid an unprecedented global health crisis.
Madison Avenue has always been mindful of the nation’s mood, airing patriotic ads during wartime and nostalgic spots with vintage jingles during recessions to remind consumers they have come through bad times before. Being in sync with the national psyche has been especially hard this year, given the unpredictability of the Covid-19 pandemic, anxiety over the coming presidential election and upheaval over racial justice and police brutality.
“It’s a perfect storm of disasters that advertisers have to navigate,” said ad-industry veteran Jeff Goodby, co-founder of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. “It’s different from anything that has ever come before.”
Some viewers expect to see cues about current events on the screen, such as actors practicing social distancing, while others want to escape from reality, Mr. Goodby said. Brands must figure out when it is right to comfort viewers and when to hard-sell them.
Many big advertisers wrestled with whether to redirect or slash their marketing dollars, especially when live sports went dark. Some $30 billion in U.S. ad spending is expected to be cut this year, with firms hit hard by production shutdowns and stay-at-home orders slashing the most.
Anheuser-Busch InBev decreased its ad spending by a double-digit percentage, with TV budgets curtailed and money being steered to digital channels. “We were freaking out about the business, no sports, no bars, no restaurants,” said Marcel Marcondes, U.S. chief marketing officer of Anheuser-Busch. Ad-tracking firm Kantar estimates that Anheuser’s U.S. ad spending, excluding social media ads, declined 38% during the first half of the year.
The brewer leaned on consumer data to help it figure out where to reach consumers. Its online daily poll of some 7,000 consumers showed some people were drinking while playing videogames, so the brewer created a tournament that involved professional athletes playing “Call of Duty” and aired it on Amazon.com’s Twitch. During the event, ads promoted Bud Light Seltzer and informed viewers the products were available to order on Drizly.com, an alcohol delivery company. During the three week period that the tournament was running, sales of the product on Drizly more than quintupled, the company said.
Some companies kept spending but adapted their messages to capitalize on changing consumer habits. Spice maker McCormick & Co., Inc. saw a surge in demand as people cooked and baked more at home. As web searches for phrases like “easy quarantine recipes” spiked, the company cranked out cooking videos and posted them on sites such as Instagram. Sales of vanilla extract soared. “This has been a year of disruption beyond our wildest dreams,” said Jill Pratt, marketing chief at McCormick, which posted a 8% sales increase in the third quarter.
Progressive’s chief marketing officer, Jeff Charney, laid out a road map in April to help guide the company during the pandemic, so that its ads would track Americans’ collective mood as the crisis unfolded and evolved. The road map suggested there would be several stages in the U.S.
“Relief”: When people are looking for comfort and want to hear what companies are doing for their employees, customers and communities.
“Release”: When people are looking for a break from thinking about the pandemic constantly.
“Recovery”: When restrictions are loosening and people want to gradually get back to their lives.
The possibility of a second wave of coronavirus cases led Mr. Charney to add another stage called “Relapse.”
The architect of Progressive’s pandemic advertising strategy was the company’s chief marketing officer, Jeff Charney, pictured here at a New York event in 2011. ‘It’s like you’re changing the engine as you’re riding your race car,” he said. ‘There was no pit stop.’
PHOTO: RICK MAIMAN/AP IMAGES FOR ALLISON & PARTNERS
To come up with the road map, Mr. Charney looked back on how consumers and businesses weathered past crises such as the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks and studied data such as consumer sentiment, economic activity and consumer purchasing behavior. Arnold, Progressive’s ad agency, conducted a weekly poll of 1,000 consumers that asked a range of questions. Mr. Charney also sought advice from Progressive’s chief medical officer and chief economist.
What Progressive discovered is that it isn’t always obvious which stage the country is in, and it varies by geography. “It’s like you’re changing the engine as you’re riding your race car. There was no pit stop,” Mr. Charney said.
Uncertainty about the pandemic colored most advertising decisions. Progressive sketched out over a half dozen ideas for its National Football League campaigns, for example, before settling on one involving Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield, as the company sought to account for whether the 2020-2021 season might be suspended or canceled.
There was a debate within Progressive over how much to spend on marketing. Some executives said advertising was an unwise investment at a time when people weren’t driving as much, much less shopping for car insurance.
Mr. Charney resisted the push to cut spending. “You want to stay top of mind—you don’t want people to see an ad from your rival and decide to give them a shot,” Mr. Charney said.
The insurance industry’s marketing wars are brutal, with some $8.2 billion spent on U.S. ads in 2019, according to ad-tracker Kantar. Flo, the wacky character who wanders into homes and yards in an all-white get-up to pitch Progressive’s plans, goes up against the likes of Geico’s smart-alecky Gecko and Liberty Mutual’s Emu, a tall and unusual bird named LiMu. Progressive is among the top property-casualty insurers.
Progressive, based in Mayfield Village, Ohio, spent $1.8 billion last year on advertising expenditures and is among the top 10 ad spenders in the country. It is expected to spend close to $2 billion on ad efforts this year, despite the crisis, according to an executive familiar with the company’s marketing plans.
Progressive bet that the declines in shopping for car insurance were temporary. It also benefited from fewer drivers on the road because it had to pay out fewer claims. “They were largely successful” in increasing market share, Piper Sandler analyst Paul Newsome said of Progressive.
Many marketers treaded lightly in the pandemic’s early stages, wary of looking as if they were exploiting the crisis. Moreover, research showed that consumers wanted brands to do more to help people and employees affected by the pandemic. Anheuser-Busch included a charity component in most of its ad campaigns. The professional athletes who participated in the videogame tournament on Twitch won a donation to a charity of their choice. An online workout video series, which it created and aired on sites such as YouTube, promoted its Michelob Ultra beer and raised money for trainers and gym owners who were hurt by the pandemic.
As part of its “Relief” stage, Progressive aired an ad called “Apron” that featured a montage of people putting on aprons. “What does an apron have to do with insurance? An apron is protection, an apron is not quitting until you’ve helped make something better,” the voice over intoned. The spot announced a program that provided credits on car insurance premiums, since people were driving less. Progressive CEO Tricia Griffith narrated it.
By mid-April, Mr. Charney felt the nation was ready to move beyond the “Relief” phase. A self-described news junkie, he has studied patterns in how people respond to traumatic historical events. He recalled the first sporting event to take place in New York after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. On Sept. 21, 2001, the New York Mets defeated the Atlanta Braves with a game-winning home run by Mike Piazza. “People were ready for sports, they needed a release,” said Mr. Charney.
Similarly, as the pandemic stretched on, Mr. Charney noticed the heavy media buzz around “Tiger King,” a documentary series on Netflix about the life of zookeeper Joe Exotic. He took it as a sign that people were ready to escape pandemic life. Polling data, gathered by Progressive’s ad agency Arnold, revealed that 63% of U.S. consumers believed brands could bring some much-needed humor to people during a tough time.
“Not only was the science telling us it was time for a change, but our gut was telling us too,” Mr. Charney said. Progressive shifted to its “Release” stage, bringing back funnier ads, including TV spots featuring Flo and her co-workers working from home and struggling to partake in company Zoom video calls. In one of the ads Flo struggles to connect to Wi-Fi and can’t find where the camera is located on her computer. Chaos ensues. One team member is using a vacuum during the call and a co-worker complains: “Whoever is doing that, can you go on mute.”
Mr. Charney worried about news reports that there could be a resurgence of coronavirus cases as U.S. cities and states reopened following lockdowns. In late May, he added the “Relapse” stage to the road map after he visited a local Mexican restaurant in Cleveland and saw about 100 people on the restaurant’s patio who weren’t wearing masks. “Everybody was trying to look in the rearview mirror” and act as though the pandemic was over, he said.
Anheuser-Busch in late June began airing “Reuniting with Buds,” a feel-good digital ad intended to celebrate friends reuniting as stay-at-home restrictions were being lifted. The Clydesdales and a cute puppy race across their towns to reunite. Shots of bars preparing to open are seen throughout the ad. “We can’t wait to see our buds,” the screen reads, as the Queen song “Don’t Stop Me Now” plays in the background. “But when we do, let’s do it safely.” The ad concludes: “Buds are back.” However, just a few days after launching the spot, the company stopped paying to air it in states that saw rises in new Covid-19 cases and new business closures. “Sometimes it’s one step forward and two steps back,” said Mr. Marcondes, the U.S. chief marketing officer of Anheuser-Busch.
Progressive has tried not to be too optimistic in its ads, avoiding uplifting music that might convey the end of the crisis is in sight. The company is even creating an ad campaign that could air if a full-on second wave of the pandemic comes to fruition later this year. The company declined to share what the “Relapse” ads will look like but said the phase will focus on the psychological aspects of stopping, starting and then stopping all over again.
Mr. Charney has resisted putting masks on his characters in ads, saying that would remind people too much of the crisis at hand. Progressive hasn’t received any formal complaints, though some social media users have questioned the company’s approach.
Brands were forced to navigate yet another new crisis in June. The upheaval over racial injustice that was sweeping the country following the killing of George Floyd caused marketers to scramble once again to make sure their ads didn’t strike the wrong tone. Many paused ad spending for a brief time.
On a video call, Progressive’s marketing executives reviewed ads the company had in its pipeline, including a radio spot featuring two men talking about switching to Progressive. The narrator says: “These days, nothing is normal and everything is weird. But you could still save big when you switch to Progressive.” One executive said the word “weird” could be interpreted as a critique of the racial justice movement.
“I don’t want to characterize what is happening with racial injustice with being weird,” one of the Progressive executives said. Other executives said the word was intended to describe the climate during the pandemic.
The ad aired after the initial wave of protests died down.
Progressive is a major advertiser of the NFL. Mr. Charney and his team strategized for months on how to approach the 2020-2021 season: Was there even going to be a season? When? Could ratings take a hit? What marketing message would make sense, given all the uncertainty?
Progressive has committed to spend more than $100 million on TV time in NFL telecasts—its largest ad push of the year, according to a person familiar with the company’s media buying.
“Quite a lot of people were nervous about even going and taking a bet,” said Mr. Charney. The company does have wiggle room under its NFL ad deals in case the season is disrupted, including the ability to shift ads to other programming or take back money and use it on other types of ads, he said.
“Anybody in the world today with this kind of uncertainty has options, especially when you’re buying at the velocity that we do,” said Mr. Charney.
The company settled on bringing back its “At Home with Baker Mayfield” campaign, which shows the Cleveland Browns quarterback and his wife living in an empty football stadium while partaking in household chores and activities such as bringing in the groceries, protecting his home from rain, and hosting a book club.
The hope was that it would be a relatable story line for viewers stuck at home while also plugging Progressive’s homeowner insurance. A suggestion by some ad executives that the two characters wear masks was nixed since married couples don’t usually wear masks at home.
Mr. Charney said he avoided showing Mr. Mayfield in uniform, in the locker room or even tossing a football, as protection in case the season is suspended. Progressive also filmed a few spots that will air if the season is canceled, including one in which Mr. Baker plays videogames on the stadium’s big screen in the middle of the night.
The company filmed an additional campaign partly because it wanted something it could air if Mr. Mayfield got hurt or sick with the virus. Called “Sticking Together with Mark & Marcus,” it shows two fictitious members of an NFL chain crew, the people who keep track of where first-down markers should be placed. The ads, which are currently airing along with the “At Home” campaign, focus on the duo at home—doing ordinary things like showering or parallel parking the car, while being connected by a chain.
Mr. Charney and his team ultimately decided not to have his ad characters use masks in its upcoming ad that features a Flo helping the car owner whose vehicle was crushed by a basketball hoop. Still, the company shot the ads with the characters practicing social distancing.
“If you miscalculate the moment,” Mr. Charney said, “it really undermines everything you’re trying to do.”
As a Partner and Co-Founder of Predictiv and PredictivAsia, Jon specializes in management performance and organizational effectiveness for both domestic and international clients. He is an editor and author whose works include Invisible Advantage: How Intangilbles are Driving Business Performance. Learn more...
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