Applause: Sonic Stops Trying
July 26, 2007
We’re all over AdAge today. On July 16th, they wrote a piece about the fast food chain Sonic’s YouTube ads, which as they astutely point out, are great. The ads feature two different pairings: two guys or a husband and wife team as they sit in the Sonic drive through lane. The spots are short, clever, highly entertaining and created by the agency Barkely out of Kansas City, MO. See them all here.
What AdAge fails to mention is that while the first two videos were huge hits on YouTube, the latter spots failed to make a real impact. And this – is the problem with YouTube campaigns and the attention span of the past two generations, which have been on Ritalin since they were five. A perfect example of the issues that can take place with “follow-up” viral videos can be seen in the recent Ray Ban spots. So what did Barkely decide to do?
Noticing that the numbers were lower for subsequent commercials and that users of YouTube had begun to post a massive amount of parodies, the shop decided to have their stars award prizes to the best take-off videos. Fricking genius. With this tactic, they’ve managed to achieve a few things: 1) keep the promotion alive; 2) draw the consumers into the campaign and most importantly, 3) bring the negative spoofs into the fold, which shows that Sonic has a sense of humor. McDonald’s they ain’t.
Embedding was disabled upon request, so go view the awards video here.
We would love to hear from anyone who works at Barkely about this. Email us at agencyspy at mediabistro dot com
July 27, 2007 at 3:14 pm
Interesting that one of the spoof Sonic ads has more views than the original. Probably because it was called “Sonic Commercial”. Heh.
July 27, 2007 at 3:49 pm
I have seen TJ Jagodowski perform at iO Theater in Chicago in his show with Dave Pasquesi (The TJ & Dave Show) and he’s fantastic. I would guess all of those commericals are improvised and they just pick the funniest to run.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.J._Jagodowski
July 31, 2007 at 2:20 am
Hey everybody,
I’m the Creative Director of the Sonic work at Barkley and one of the creators of the campaign.
We try to create as much of a presence on youtube as we can. The thing that’s nice about the parodies is that people started creating them before we ever asked, so they are genuine. Not part of an assignment or a contest. We just try to encourage where we can.
Glad you like the stuff and thanks for the write-up.
Piper
February 27, 2008 at 10:33 pm
Eeeeekkkk sheeekkkkkk eeeekkk…That Brian Brooker!
February 29, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Hey everybody,
I’m the Chief Creative Office of Barkley and Piper’s boss. I think he’s doing a swell job and want all of your readers to know.
Brian
March 10, 2008 at 9:42 pm
[...] University. Barkely’s own interactive division will continue to handle their current accounts like the creative for Sonic Drive-In, which we loved. Posted by superspy Filed in [...]