Jimmy Fallon Uses Twitter To Crowdsource Lincoln Super Bowl Commercial
I’m not sure this qualifies as #SocialTV. It certainly isn’t Brandtailing, but it just might be Socialtailing. Maybe it doesn’t need a label. Maybe it’s just cool.
Thanks for the tweets! Now it’s time to write the Lincoln MKZ commercial. Stay tuned, there’s more to come @lincolnmotorco #SteerTheScript
— jimmy fallon (@jimmyfallon) December 8, 2012
Follow the script development in live time by clicking here.
Mashable reports:
Ford has hired Jimmy Fallon to create a 60-second Super Bowl ad for its Lincoln brand based on script suggestions it is soliciting on Twitter.
The attempt to reach out to a younger consumer comes as Lincoln has lost 63% of its sales since its 1990 peak. The effort to re-establish the brand began on Monday with a new ad that shows an actor playing Abraham Lincoln emerging from a fog. The ad then shows vintage Lincoln models along with images of Clark Gable and Dean Martin. The tie-in with the president comes as Stephen Spielberg’s well-received Lincoln is playing in theaters.
For the Super Bowl, the brand has launched the hashtag #SteertheScript, a crowdsourcing effort that lets fans co-author a spot that Fallon will create. Fallon has more than 7 million followers on Twitter vs. a little more than 170,000 for Lincoln.
“We’re going to put a different twist on it and approach it in a very social way and try to do something that hasn’t been done before,” Matt VanDyke, Lincoln’s director of marketing, sales and service, told Bloomberg. Hitching its wagon to a young social media-friendly star might be a good move for Lincoln. Chevrolet, for instance, managed to get one of the 20 most-shared ads of the year by partnering with OK Go for its Super Bowl ad earlier this year.
So how will the first-ever commercial written entirely by social media be received by consumers? Brand ambassador, and three-time Super Bowl winner, Emmitt Smith thinks it will work just fine.
“I think social media is the wave of the future. We are reaching out to a large population of people that are followers of Lincoln, or myself. We’re not forcing anything down anyone’s throat. We’re soliciting the advice of others to make something that is tailored to that consumer.”
What do I think? Well, I commend Ford / Lincoln for recognizing the power of social media and the need to integrate it into their marketing messages. But in the end, isn’t this still a 30 second commercial? I think they are stopping short on this. But I’ll reserve final judgment until it airs.
Fallon is quite creative and he might just turn this into a community building opportunity for Ford / Lincoln. Let’s hope they give him the latitude to leverage social media networks and turn this into a true social tv event.
more:
Ford, Jimmy Fallon Ask Twitter Users to Help Pen Super Bowl Jingle …
