Sugar Bowl Allstate Mayhem Advertising Campaign

Kelli Brignac

During college football season, my husband and I watched the Allstate Sugar Bowl game between Ohio State (excuse me, THE Ohio State) and Alabama. As an LSU fan, you’ll have to forgive me if I really did not care about it. But I digress. The point is, I watched the game because I’m a fan of college football. And as it turned out, the game was absolutely not the best thing happening in that broadcast. The best thing was a commercial featuring “Mayhem” from Allstate.

I’ve been recording live TV for five years, so I don’t watch nearly as many commercials as I used to. But live sports are one of the places where commercials still reach me. I’m familiar with Mayhem, but Allstate took this series of ads just one step further – from familiarity into awesomeness.

The series depicted Mayhem as a burglar who learned via social media that Matt and Shannon (actually a real couple) were going out of town to the Sugar Bowl game. While they were live-tweeting from the Superdome, Mayhem was selling all their stuff online for really cheap prices.

The first couple of times the commercial ran, I thought it was funny. Then, I logged on to the site and realized I could actually buy things. AND I WANTED THEM. I tried to buy a storage bench I needed for my own house, a TV because it was so cheap and, eventually, laundry detergent just so I could say I got SOMETHING from the Mayhem Sale. (I failed.) Even though the game was technically a “good” one, it seemed a lot more people were tweeting about Mayhem than about the score.

So, was the campaign just a lucky success, or is it something we can replicate? You’ll need to think through a few things.

1.    Your brand has to be familiar.

Allstate has put a lot of money into its marketing over the last several years. Allstate sponsors field goal nets at several colleges, is the title sponsor of the Sugar Bowl and has been running Mayhem commercials for the last couple of years. It’s also one of the largest insurers in the country. People know Allstate. If Allstate runs an ad without once saying “insurance,” most of the people who see it would still get it. Bottom line, if you’re brand new, don’t try to pull off something like this right away.

2.    Know your consumer.

This type of engaging campaign is not for every brand. If you have a very small audience, it may not be worth your money. And if your audience is children younger than 7, they probably aren’t going to be able to make the decision to engage at all. You have to meet your audience where they are.

3.    Think it through.

One reason I failed to purchase anything from the Mayhem Sale was because their website could not handle the traffic. By the second quarter of the game, it would barely load. And in the third quarter, when I finally clicked buy on the laundry detergent, it timed out, and I lost my purchase. Allstate played it off about as well as they could by having Mayhem tweet about how it wouldn’t be fun if the website worked, but it was still frustrating for a lot of people. All the pieces have to work together if you want the whole campaign to be a success.

4.    You might have to spend.

Allstate spent a ton of money on this. I don’t know exactly how much, but between the Sugar Bowl sponsorship, untold minutes of airtime, the replica of Matt and Shannon’s house (yes, they did), the replicas of all their stuff and the website, it added up. Does that mean you can’t pull off something excellent without breaking the bank? No. But that just sends us back to No. 3 – think it through.

5.    You can’t force viral.

No matter how awesome something actually is, there are no guarantees. Just because you spent a ton of money does not mean you’ll get a million hits on your website. Just because the idea was good doesn’t mean other people will love it. Still, a well-planned campaign should produce results. It’s important to decide what you want those results to be when you plan your campaign.

Going viral

Kelli Eason Brignac

My sister lives in South Korea. She doesn’t get to come home often, but what she discovered on one of her visits a few months ago baffled her. Gangnam Style was sweeping the United States. At first, she was confused. She said it was a popular dance in South Korean clubs, and she’d certainly heard it on Korean radio.  But that did not explain why I was asking her to teach me the dance during a TV time-out during a football game in LSU’s Death Valley last fall.

To me, the reason was obvious. Gangnam Style had gone viral. Traditionally, South Korean culture doesn’t have a big influence in the United States, which may be why my sister was so confused by 92,000 people singing the only part of the song they actually understood. The video became the first in YouTube history to surpass 1 billion views, crushing the record previously held by Justin Bieber’s “Baby.” (That video came in at a mere 803 million views.)

The Internet and social media mean that just about anyone can become a sensation overnight.  But that doesn’t mean that anyone can set out and guarantee they’ll be a sensation. Some of the best viral videos are a result of total accidents or someone having a camera ready at just the right time. Consider the following YouTube videos:

•    Charlie Bit Me – Five years ago, someone had the camera ready when baby Charlie bit his brother’s finger and “it really hurt, Charlie!” Now, they sell T-shirts and have had follow-up interviews with national media outlets.
•    Rick Roll – If you’re familiar with this one, you know I’m not doing it right. If I really wanted to “Rick Roll” you, I would have labeled this as a funny cat video or something. At some point, this 1980s music video became a joke, and it took off when Fox News “Rick Rolled” one of its anchors. I’ll be honest – I still worry when clicking unknown links from a few friends.
•    Miss Teen South Carolina – Sometimes, videos go viral because enough people saw it happen the first time. After Miss Teen South Carolina shared her knowledge of South Africa and maps while competing for Miss Teen USA, more than 17 million people either heard about it and turned to YouTube or just couldn’t wait to see it again.

So how can you ensure lots of people see, share and enjoy your content on social media? Although you can never force something to go viral – that would negate the point of increasing view counts by popularity alone – there are a few steps you can take to help it along.

1.    Create something viewers can relate to. You may have seen a few videos about things people say. If you live in Memphis, you’ve probably said a lot of the Things Memphians Say. If it’s funny because it’s true or very relatable, odds are people will enjoy it and want to share it.
2.    Put it in the hands of the right people. In early January, One Direction set out to reclaim their record for the most video views within 24 hours. They hoped their new music video "Kiss Me" would break the record taken from them by Justin Bieber. But they’re One Direction. They can do that. They have millions of plugged-in teenybopper fans following them on Facebook, Twitter and various other avenues. Most people don’t have such a loyal following, so getting the right media outlets, video stars and supporters on board is the best way to go.
3.    The snowball effect is not the same on the Internet. Once a video goes down, it’s rare for it to come back up. A video may rack up 2 million views in its first week – and only an additional 500,000 over the course of the next two years. With so much content available to them, viewers have to be pretty interested to keep coming back.
4.    The definition of viral success is relative. Sure, some people aren’t happy until they’re breaking records, but if I post a video of my cat that gets 5,000 views, I’ll be pretty excited. Set realistic goals just like you would with any other campaign or tactic.

Of course, there is no perfect science to viral videos. Sometimes, it just happens when it reaches a tipping point. Got any tips or favorite videos we missed? Leave them in the comments!