People Like Ads That Like Them Back

Michael Hedges September 19, 2013 Follow on Twitter

Advertising at its best reflects the mood and spirit of the times. Sometimes this is warm, fuzzy and friendly. Sometimes it’s dark. The promise of digital sharing through social media is irrepressible.

An ad campaign created for soft drinks maker Coca Cola in Romania brought together sales pitch with a real-time call to action through social media presented on television. The ads asked viewers to invite people to share a meal through a Twitter hashtag (#haisamanacamimpreuna – LetsEatTogether), ultimately displayed on a crawl at the bottom of the ad, more or less in real-time.

The campaign was created by MRM Romania, part of McCann Worldwide, and ran on Pro TV and Acasa TV for six weeks this past spring. The agency took aim at the large market segment eating at home, alone, watching TV. Facebook has about 6.5 million regular users in Romania, considerably more than Twitter, Tumblr or Instagram.

Coca Cola’s Twitter followers in Romania increased 15%, attributed to the campaign by MRM Romania general manager Nir Refuah, quoted by Mashable (September 9). “It made people actually wait for the ad,” he said. “How often does that happen?” It’s a creative director’s dream. Mr. Refuah joined MRM Romania in May from McCann Digital Tel Aviv.

The soft drink giant rolled out a vaguely similar campaign in Malaysia calling social media fans to send photos of themselves with a specially branded drink can, the results displayed in real-time on digital billboards.

Twitter launched new advertising interface application tools created by Adobe, Hootsuite and Salesforce in February about the time it bought social media measurement service e Blue Fin. The social media icon, readying its IPO, acquired start-up MoPub, a mobile advertising exchange, in an all-stock deal last week.

Digital advertising in Romania is small but growing. Television advertising is huge and slipping. All online advertising – from search engine display to social media – contributed 4.4% of total ad spending in 2012, according to data from Initiative CEE, quoted by capital.ro (August 25). Television advertising, by contrast, was 59% of all ad spending in 2012.

“We expect TV advertising to fall this year,” said Initiative Romania managing director Alexandra Olteanu. “Print and radio will continue to develop integrated projects with a strong component of digital, social and mobile, seeking to exploit new ways to secure income and retain customers.” Ad spending in Romania was estimated at €303 million for 2012, considerably below eastern European leaders Poland (€1,730 million) and the Czech Republic (€1,307 million), slightly less than Hungary (€444 million) but ahead of Croatia (€195 million), Serbia (€172 million) and Bulgaria (€169). InterBrand and PwC forecast growth rates for digital ad spending ten times higher than non-digital media in the next five years.

McCann Melbourne took this year’s Cannes Lions Integrated Grand Prix for the Dumb Ways To Die safety campaign for Metro Trains. Originally placed on TV, radio and billboards, it became a social media hit and has now migrated to a mobile game app. The Russian government agency monitoring the internet banned the ad from YouTube and Livejournal in Russia as “incitement” to commit suicide.

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