If you haven't watched the Proctor and Gamble The Talk ad, watch it now below, to understand how this ad is changing the way marketers will be creating future ads with "Brand Consciousness" and how these ads can drive social conversations to garner mass reach.
Doesn't Matter if Ad Watchers Love or Hate a Brand Ad, Is It Authentic?
Whether you like or dislike Proctor and Gamble's The Talk ad, it's pure social media gold for the company with over 1.9 million YouTube views. Fans and anti-fans of the ad, have created their own social media videos and social conversations, discussing the ad on Facebook, YouTube, SnapChat and Twitter, as well as, much press has been garnered for this evolutionary ad. Yes, I said evolutionary, because this ad does not promote P&G's products or company brand, which has been the primary purpose of a television ad, up until now.
The Proctor and Gamble ad promotes a cultural experience, thus making a statement about who and what the company brand represents, without having to sell a product in the ad to define the company. P&G forego the selling of a product by going directly to creating a message about the people that they want to represent in the ad, thus making a statement about the brand that had never been seen before in television advertising.
P&G is standing behind its ad because they believe in the message, which makes it authentic, and to the people that they are targeting in this ad, they understand it and can empathize with the message.
The mistake that the Pepsi company made with the Kendall Jenner protest advertisement a few months ago, was the authenticity, so the backlash it experienced, couldn't survive, since Pepsi didn't stand behind the message. There was no brand consciousness to the ad and because if it, Pepsi failed, unlike P&G. To create a truly brand consciousness ad, there has to be more than the product, there has to be the authenticity of messaging to have it resonate with a target audience to be successful.