Esurance Social Media Campaign (Post #2)

The modern Super Bowl is not only the most significant and most viewed NFL football game of the year, it is also a 3 hour time slot for prime advertising.  Only so many ads can be played during commercial breaks, however, so the price of airing an ad is astronomically high ($5 million for a 30 second ad in 2016!!).  How, then, was Esurance, the online insurance platform, the most Twitter-mentioned brandname during the 2016 Super Bowl without even running an ad during the game?  The answer is simple: genius marketing.  The company deemed it unnecessary to spend $5 million for 30 seconds worth of air time.  Instead, they aired their ads before and after the game, time slots where many of the in-game viewers have their eyes on pre or postgame shows; time slots that carry a significantly lower cost.  

The goal of these “Super Bowl” ads was to reach as many potential customers as possible through social media.  The premise was extremely simple and intriguing: Esurance ran a contest in which entrants could win cash prizes ranging from $250K to $1 million.  The only way to enter this contest?  Retweet the posts that Esurance ran on Twitter.  This method had an extremely low barrier to entry - anyone with a Twitter account could press a single button and have a chance to win $1 million.  Not only was word of the contest being spread rapidly on Twitter, so was Esurance’s name and brand.  Before you know it, Twitter is filled with several Esurance tweets promising a chance at a lot of money.  All the company had to do was compose the tweet.  Twitter users did the rest. 

This campaign was extremely successful in many ways.  Esurance saw it more efficient to spend $1 million on a prize to a lucky customer than $5 million for an official Super Bowl ad.  Instead of running only during the game, their ad essentially ran throughout the duration of the game and for many days after it, as the contest and tweets were being retweeted until the listed deadline.  I find this method to be particularly effective not only to spread the name of the company but also to encourage a purchase of their services.  For young people in modern times, there is a tendency to want to do everything online.  If a service can be purchased on a phone, tablet, or computer, it will reach more people than a traditional face-to-face service.  So any young person that saw the Esurance retweets would have it stored somewhere in their brain that insurance matters can be taken care of online with Esurance.  When the day comes for that young person to purchase insurance for themselves, Esurance will be one of the first thoughts because of its easily accessible features. So the company spread their name more effectively than a Super Bowl ad would have for one-fifth of the cost.  

To cap off the contest, Esurance would alert the winners of their prizes through FaceTime, the apple product, and record their reactions.  These reactions would then be posted on their social media accounts for all of their followers to see.  This campaign from Esurance was a huge success.  They let their brand do the talking and let the masses do the majority of the work.  Big win for Esurance.