The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2018
Tide made every fake ad a Tide ad to own the whole Super Bowl break
Saatchi & Saatchi's Super Bowl spots look like car, insurance, coffee and beer ads, then reveal 'It's a Tide ad', so Tide owns the entire night.
Procter & Gamble (Tide)
the move
Tide had only a small Super Bowl buy among giants, and one 30-second spot risked being a single face in an hour-long wall of commercials.
Saatchi & Saatchi New York instead built a device: four spots that imitate car, insurance, coffee and beer ads, with actor David Harbour in each, and a reveal that re-frames the whole piece as a Tide ad.
Because the joke is the reveal and the line keeps appearing, Tide becomes the thing you expect no matter what you are watching, so a modest media spend behaves like a category takeover.
Jurors rewarded the craft and the meta-gambit: it shared the Film Grand Prix and won a Titanium Lion at Cannes 2018, an award for work that advances the medium.
why it works
- A repeatable line creates a brand gag you can run across many cheap media slots.
- Mimicking each category's format makes the reveal land as clever in every context.
- Owning the ad break itself turns the biggest ad hour of the year into Tide's own stage.
- The Titanium Lion recognized an idea that pushed the medium rather than just performed in it.
what transfers
If you cannot out-spend the moment, become the frame around it. Repeating one line across every slot makes a cheap idea the most noticed thing in the ad break and turns rivals into set-up.
what came after
The campaign became one of the most awarded of 2018, and 'It's a Tide ad' entered the culture as a running joke that viewers applied to other brands. It set the template for meta-advertising that comments on advertising itself.
references
- P&G Dominates at Cannes Lions, Winning 2 Grand Prix in Film
- BREAKING NEWS: Film Lions Grand Prix given to 'It's a Tide ad' and 'The Talk' at Cannes Lions 2018
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