CTV and the Social Media Mindset: Maximum Effort’s Approach to Bringing Creativity Back to Advertising

4 Min Read

Advertisers have tricky times ahead. Not only do they have to be creative masterminds to capture the viewer’s waning attention spans, which decreased to less than eight seconds – they also have to do a lot more with a lot less. Gartner’s annual CMO spend survey revealed that marketing budgets have fallen from 11% of company revenue in 2020 to almost half (6.4%) this year. This ongoing dilemma sparked our next topic of discussion on Wednesday September 22nd at 1 PM ET / 10 AM PT, hosted by Adweek and presented by our two panelists, George Dewey, Chief Brand Officer at MNTN & President of Maximum Effort, and Ali Haeri, Vice President of Marketing at MNTN. Click here to register or the thumbnail below to save your (virtual) seat.

Creativity > Elaborate Sets and a Limitless Budget

What do Aviation Gin and Mint Mobile ads have in common (okay, besides the fact that Ryan Reynolds stars in both of them). Firstly, both ads hopped on relevant cultural moments to create a stir. For example, Aviation Gin’s ‘Homeschool Edition’ commercial played on the challenges of homeschooling during the pandemic, while Mint Mobile’s ‘Epic Offer’ ad featured Jon Bailey, the voice behind Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters set on a simple green screen. And let’s not underestimate the clever scripting, which was all that was needed to make these ads stand out and engage viewers, instead of solely relying on fancy sets and a million-dollar budget to get there. One other handy hint – always look for opportunities for your production to do double duty, such as creating a  simple set up to create multiple ads in one go. 

Stealing Secrets to Success From Social Media Advertising

Not to spill all the secrets just yet (you’ll need to tune into the live conversation for all of the industry know-how), but it wasn’t just the ads themselves that were eye-catching and attention-grabbing, it was also the approach that mattered. Applying a social media mindset also contributed to its creative success. What do we mean by that? Well, think about the premise behind social media advertising, which is founded on keeping things nimble and efficient – for example, ads posted at speed, elements that can be repurposed and being able to A/B test between different types of creative and captions. These principles and then some can be taken to television advertising, too.

Ryan Reynolds, the creative mastermind and co-founder of creative agency Maximum Effort, explains that the new era of television advertising is now “as easy as posting on social media,” There’s no better personification of bringing a social media mindset to television than with Connected TV. Historically, getting a commercial up on television was only reserved for brands with big budgets, or reserved only for a ‘once a year’ kind of splash for brands without limitless resources – with no guarantee that your audience would actually see the ad and take action on it. 

Fast forward to today, CTV marketing platforms like MNTN Performance TV equip brands with the technology and tools to take action quickly, and prove that advertisers can get a television ad up on air, target, track, test and evaluate its performance as easily as any other digital advertising channel. Brands can BYOC (Bring Your Own Commercial) and upload it to the platform, and then access tens of thousands of audience targeting segments all within a single solution. Our automated media buying technology ensures that your ad is served to the right audience no matter what network they’re watching. Brands can even conduct A/B testing through the platform to experiment across different creative elements, and finally – those same stats that you would see on Facebook Ads manager, can also be reported on in addition to digital marketing metrics that matter to the bottom line, like ROAS, revenue, conversions and more.

Ready to apply that same mindset to your TV campaigns? Don’t forget to register your place, mark your calendars and get prepared for your perspective on television advertising to be turned topsy-turvy (in a good way). See you then!