How Do Brands Respond to Periods of Uncertainty? By Going Meta

This time around, meta marketing’s return feels more like a larger wave, beginning with Tide’s 2018 Super Bowl campaign, followed closely by Esurance, Izod and RXBar. Each time the trend returns, experts suggest it’s because brands are hungry to forge bonds of trust with viewers during uncertain times. Now more than ever, experts suggest that’s at play.

“There are just the flat-out, bald-faced lies out there today, that when you see a commercial whose whole premise is we have nothing to hide, we are going to tell you that we are just making a commercial. … I think it’s disarming and refreshing,” said Christopher Lehmann, managing director of consulting firm Landor’s San Francisco operation.

It was a major reason why Izod’s fall marketing campaign stars SNL’s Colin Jost, who is aware he’s in an ad, and Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Mike Kelly, CMO and chief innovation officer of Izod parent company PVH, said the short answer for going meta with its campaign was that trust levels in all areas of life, especially advertising, are continuing to struggle. A 2017 Statista report showed 55 percent of people found pre-roll ads unfavorable (and 18 percent had no opinion), while 72 percent found pop-up ads untrustworthy. Adopting a marketing strategy of complete transparency seemed like the key to encourage people to buy Izod year-round.

“I’ve watched all the decades of creating all these big fantasies, and some brands need to do that and should do that, but I don’t think our customer responds to that. You create this big fantasy that if you buy this shirt you’ll get the blonde, the dog and the chalet in Switzerland. This is not true,” Kelly said.

For some brands, the decision to use a meta strategy has a lot do with their category and consumer perception of that category. Some recent meta campaigns have been for CPG brands, health and energy bars or insurance companies. “With everyone out there claiming to make your clothes as white as they can be or smell as nice as they can be, I think people look at it and say, ‘I don’t know who to believe anymore,'” explained Leo Burnett evp, executive creative director Brian Shembeda (who worked on Esurance’s meta campaign).

Lehmann believes any brand can pull off the meta tactic, if done well. “It just takes brilliant writing,” he explained. “Again you introduce that element of surprise and cleverness, the wink if you will. Esurance gets away with it in particular because it’s in the insurance category, but they’re a new kind of insurance category, a millennial insurance category. I would imagine that audience is a little bit more savvy in social media and marketing.”

For other brands, like Tide, meta marketing is a way to build trust (although the brand says its campaign was not specifically designed to deter people from the raging Tide Pod crisis), connect with people and make them feel like they’re part of the joke.

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