Friday Thing/k: This Can’t Be a Super Bowl Post

Hi, all.

Hope you had a good week.

Welcome to Friday Thing/k — a brand storytelling canvas where I’d like to share with you smart, creative, inspiring, engaging, cool, and innovative content marketing ideas that take my digital marketing breath away once a week.

This can’t be a Super Bowl post.

Why?

Because (a) I know nothing about American Football, (b) So many great, smart articles were written pre and post game, including this one on The New York Times, which was my favorite and (c) The Super Bowl is almost a synonym for TV advertising — it’s the Mecca of good old commercial TV.

And this week’s think/g is a branded video that wasn’t created for TV. In fact, it was probably meant to be viewed anywhere but TV.

The following 5-minute film was created for a one-on-one moment. You and the story, just you and your screen. Whatever screen it is, whatever the size. Engaging stories are ‘responsive’ by nature — that’s why they are so powerful. Because it is about the story, not the format.

The Mad Women and Men that create such films don’t care about the screen size or length, they only care about the size of the attention they can earn from you. How deep they can get into your mind and heart.

They know that for such one-on-one moments, you need a different prime-time. Not a Super Bowl or even American Idol type of prime-time, but a private, intimate prime-time that has nothing to do with a certain time of day.

It’s all about the moment of interest. Your interest.

“Rubber Boy” is an emotional tale by Leo Burnett Kuala Lumpur for Malaysian oil and gas company Petronas.

Created for the Year of the Monkey, the message told encourages viewers to count their everyday blessings to achieve happiness in life. It tells the story of a young boy, Ah Hock, and his single mother, who toils on a rubber plantation to support the family in the 1980s.

Ah Hock is stricken with envy as his classmates showcase their new clothes and toys for Chinese New Year. He blames his mother for their poverty, believing that they would be happier if she just worked harder and they had more money.

By the end…well, I leave it for you to watch. Find your private prime-time moment and grab some tissues:

Finished watching?

Can you see why this can’t be a super-bowl post?

With the Super Bowl, brands pay for the attention. With storytelling, the audience pays with attention.

Now, both can obviously work together — the ads in the Super Bowl this year (and every year) are amazing and set new benchmarks for creativity. But, where is the most cost-effective touchdown (did I use the term right?) in terms of audience engagement and ROI, and is TV still the main screen for Super Bowl? Sorry had to tackle it (good term usage?).

Before you click away, while on the subject of the Super Bowl, I’d like to finish with a ‘Writer’s Envy’ thing/k

WIX.com, the cloud-based web development platform that allows users to create stunning sites, created a great ad for the Super Bowl this year (envy#1). The #StartStunning campaign won the Super Bowl advertisers’ battle for online views (envy#2):

But as a marketer, what I envied the most was their game day operation seen in this video taken by Eran Gefen from the GefenTeam.

Social media war room and a party.

Respect.

Happy Chinese New Year.

See you next Friday.

As always, feedback is more than welcome, and needed so please leave comments below. Additionally, if you have anything/k in mind, I would love to discover it.

Just call me Joe.