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Being the first brand to hatch out of the World-Record Instagram Egg could be considered a more expensive ad buy than a 30-second spot in the Super Bowl, according to comments by VaynerMedia’s head of direct-to-consumer Nik Sharma to The Atlantic.
Sharma said ad space on the most popular Instagram post could even be “worth at least $10 million,” versus the record $5.25 million that CBS charged advertisers this year for a half-minute Super Bowl commercial.
As of Friday, the original post by the World Record Egg Instagram account now has 51.9 million likes. Since then, the account has continued to post the egg, but with increasingly large fissures in its shell, suggesting it will soon hatch. Some 9.7 millionfollowers now follow the account.
The Egg's ability to attract aggressive brand interest signals that viral memes could become the premier ad space of the future. Brands may now be vying to be a brand that emerges from the egg, “because in 2019, every viral moment is a branding opportunity.”
It’s unlikely that sponsoring the original egg is a genuine opportunity — the agency that runs the account is more likely to use the egg for an anti-Trump stunt. Still, the Egg inspired a swarm of copycat accounts, including by brands, trying to capitalize on its viral social status, highlighting broader shifts in attention, and how brands might assess opportunities.
The valuation of the Egg — even if it’s outsize — could signal a general departure among brands away from big televised spectacles. Compared with a Super Bowl ad, the Egg buy might not only be more expensive, but also more valuable, point-blank, on a number of important ROI benchmarks like brand awareness, reach, impressions, and conversions. Two main factors could explain that:
- Shifting media habits among young people. While the Super Bowl still attracts a massive amount of eyeballs — Super Bowl LII had 104.11 million viewers, per Nielsen — young people are abandoning television, and NFL viewers skew older and male. Meanwhile, Instagram now attracts some 1 billion users around the world, including virtually every young person in America: 85% of US teens say they use the app at least once a month, per Piper Jaffray. In general, the internet is the new primetime among young people: 71% of US teens say they spend 3+ hours a day watching videos online, and 51% say they spend more than three hours daily social networking, per Google/Ipsos.
- The self-regenerating power of memes. Further, viral memes can have a longer shelf-life than most traditional TV ads, by virtue of how they continuously iterate, reproduce, and evolve over time. The most popular memes can exist virtually in perpetuity as internet users revive and recall them at any future point. The same is not true of a Super Bowl ad, which is typically forgotten not long after the event.
If latching onto viral moments on social media is the future of brand investment, there are some potential risks and repercussions. What goes viral online is often unpredictable, manifesting organically and whimsically, snowballing attention in the form of likes, shares, or views.
Eagerness to capitalize on these random-by-nature phenomena could lead brands to aggressively, blindly, or haphazardly spend. In that case, brands risk overspending, as viral winds can and do change direction quickly.
Further, brands that decide to capitalize on a viral moment need to quickly mobilize teams to turn around effective creative, whereas brands doing a Super Bowl campaign have the relative luxury of months of planning.
Despite the risks, the potential for brands to capitalize on — or even drive — attention and conversation through memes is significant. Brands like Netflix that have benefited from the organic spread of memes are increasingly trying to take more control over what’s been a largely random process.
For example, Netflix is now trying to hire the 19-year-old responsible for generating hundreds of popular BuzzFeed quizzes. Brands should seek out and hire heads who are tapped into how and why things go viral, the various micro-signifiers of memes and internet culture.
Such experts will be able to more reliably detect whether something is a golden opportunity, or a hollow shell of one, and can help guard against ill-advised ad spend.
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