Hot Potato: How PlutoTV’s Bold Creative Idea Delivered Results
As advertising’s biggest one-night event, the Super Bowl gives brands the chance to get in front of millions of viewers. The night is as much about watching the ads as it is about seeing which team ends up victorious.
Often, we see many Big Game advertisers taking creative risks to stand out and be crowned the consumers’ favorite. Some of these bold ideas pay off – there are still Super Bowl ads we talk about years, even decades later. Others fumble on brand recognition and emotional engagement, failing to make their mark during the commercial break and beyond.
At SXSW recently, I had the opportunity to speak with Terry Minogue, EVP of Creative Marketing, Paramount Global/Pluto TV and Matt Johnson, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at HAYMAKER. PlutoTV’s 2024 Super Bowl spot, its first ever, shows us just how impactful creative risk-taking can be.
Spuds in the Spotlight
We frequently see streaming service advertisements relying heavily on the content that viewers can watch if they subscribe. Marketing leans into the established IP of TV shows and movies to draw in new users, creating a sea of sameness across the category. Great programming is key, of course, but the Super Bowl requires brands to stand out. The bar is set very high that evening and breaking with the standard formula is critical if you want to be remembered.
HAYMAKER and Pluto TV turned the typical approach completely on its head by putting the focus on the viewers and not the content. But it wasn’t just any viewers, it was the hardcore ones who live for long entertainment binges. Rather than setting them in the comfort of their living rooms, they were part of ‘Couch Potato Farm’, a funny, fictional setting that celebrated those who spend a lot of time in front of the TV.
These couch potatoes thrive by watching the many shows and films offered by Pluto TV. We see real people in oversized potato costumes and the farmer also shows TVs being planted into the ground to ‘feed’ the couch potatoes.
Everyone is familiar with the phrase couch potato. Doing nothing and just binge watching your favorite shows for a few hours is a guilty pleasure for many of us. So, did the spuds spark an emotional reaction in audiences? Let’s take a look!
Getting to the Root of the Results
At System1, we put every Super Bowl ad to the test with consumers to see how they feel about the creative. The types of emotions elicited and their intensity predict the short- and long-term commercial impact of creative.
Pluto TV’s spot scored a ‘Strong’ 4.1-Stars for long-term brand-building potential. This is well above the US average of 2.3-Stars and the average for Super Bowl commercials (often sitting in the 2-Star range). The ad also landed in the ‘Exceptional’ range for our Spike rating, predictive of short-term business impact. Finally, 89% of viewers correctly identified the brand (unaided) upon its completion.
Levels of happiness were high and surprise was right in line with the average. These positive emotions from viewers helped reduce negative emotions and one of successful creative’s biggest enemies: neutrality, or the lack of any emotional response.
So, did the positive emotional response from consumers also translate to meaningful business results for Pluto TV?
Terry shared that not only did the campaign achieve 1 billion impressions in total, including 77 million media and OOH impressions over Super Bowl weekend, Pluto TV saw record-breaking search spikes during the game and experienced a measurable increase in daily active users, web users and total viewing hours.
HAYMAKER and Pluto TV have followed up on the Super Bowl spot with another couch potato-themed spot, this one featuring actor Gary Sinise in his very own spud suit. This aligns with System1’s research and guidance that creative consistency leads to compounding brand and business effects.
Learnings from the Couch Potatoes
So, what lessons can advertisers take away from this successful campaign? Consider HAYMAKER and PlutoTV’s key lessons for marketers:
- Predictability only guarantees you’ll be ignored. System1’s research in partnership with Peter Field and Adam Morgan of eatbigfish finds that dull advertising is costing businesses millions. The most common response to advertising is a lack of response. Predictability can result in audiences ignoring your message entirely or feeling nothing as a result of it. But advertising needs to elicit emotions in order to drive results.
- Ideas need to play offense to win. Especially at the Super Bowl, brands must put their biggest creative ideas forward. Engaging stories, filled with characters, humor and other showmanship elements that attract broad-beam attention to drive long-term brand building.
- Consider all that can go right for 24 hours. Marketers often think of the worst-case scenarios to proactively get ahead of what could go wrong. Flipping the mentality momentarily to think of everything that the campaign can help achieve is crucial.
- Scary moments are a good sign. The biggest marketing moments don’t happen without a bit of hesitation. Boring doesn’t deliver long-term brand building. Don’t be afraid to feel a little bit afraid. As Terry mentioned during our SXSW panel, you should always search for “just the right amount of wrong”.
- Truth trumps trends. Campaigns built on consumer insights are more powerful in the long term than those that try to chase trends with a short expiration window. Everyone can relate to being a couch potato, which gives Pluto TV ample room to extend the campaign to additional channels and new spots.
- Commit to the bit. But stay open. The most effective campaigns fully commit to the creative idea. A half-baked idea risks confusing viewers, which greatly impacts emotional engagement and brand recognition. This dullness in turn limits ROMI. Staying open also enables marketers to further evolve great campaigns as they wear in.
- Use data as a confidence booster, not a creativity killer. Brands and creative teams should be trusted to come to the table with bold ideas, and also accept that consumer insights can be instrumental for sense-checking before big moments like the Super Bowl. Data helps drive confidence, not only among the marketing team, but also with the CFO, CEO and other stakeholders who are relying on a Big Game spot to drive results.
Create with Confidence
Creative risk-taking can help brands break through the noise. Thankfully, bold choices don’t have to feel like stepping out on a ledge and hoping for the best. Pre-testing your creative can give you confidence that your idea resonates with consumers, enabling marketers and agencies to secure buy-in from other key decision-makers early in the process. Tools like Test Your Ad can also help unlock insights that can be used to further finetune creative to make it as impactful as possible.