
Why Our Super Bowl Ad Failed - CaliforniaKarl
https://medium.com/@CardsAgainstHumanity/why-our-super-bowl-ad-failed-2af66e6a976c
======
qobnek
This is the funniest thing I have seen in a while. Loving the dig at
postmortems. Working at this company must be wild.

~~~
mr_luc
Agreed. I make software for or with advertising companies from time to time,
and I love this to death.

I see a surprising number of comments on HN taking this seriously, too. This
might be one of those rare situations where HN plays the straight man ...

~~~
WorldMaker
CAH is based in Chicago and my impression is that a lot of the CAH staff has
spent at least some time in one or another of the big Chicago-based
advertising firms.

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flukus
Non-American here, I read the whole article and I still can't tell if it's
satire or not?

~~~
atsjie
Had the same doubts... although the ad obviously makes no sense with no
company/product name being shown.

Pretty sure it's satire, but as a non-american I don't understand it either.

~~~
rralian
I don't think it's American-ness that dictates whether or not you get it, but
rather your familiarity with cards against humanity, their product, and their
marketing style.

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dvt
> And constant failure, plus unlimited capital, is what led us to greatness.

That's the dream right there, boys.

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thinkloop
So how is the superbowl ad supposed to work?

1\. See potato with no logo

2\. Ask nearest techno-millennial what's up

3\. Millennial checks Twitter and reddit

4\. Reports back with brand name and story

?

~~~
thinkloop
Reading more comments, now thinking:

1\. Air ad on cheapest superbowl small market slot to get bare minimum
definition of "super bowl ad"

2\. Publications and blogs write about weird superbowl ad which brings in the
brand name

3\. The story about the ad is shared on Facebook and news feeds, making the ad
the articles and not the ad

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crisp
I'm surprised people fail to see that this ad might have actually worked.
Referring to @thinkloop's comment, this is the very aftertalk the ad was
supposed to create. Okay granted, it might not go to the extent Cards Against
Humanity was initially looking for but still... The article mentions that the
ad was low on ROI but given that the event was held just last night, it might
need a couple of days to take off, right?

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planetjones
I am finding it difficult to find collaborating sources. Does anyone have a
link to the commercial. Did it actually air ?

~~~
chambo622
The tweets mentioning the commercial could be real - apparently it doesn't
cost much to run a super bowl ad in a very small area.

[http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/2/7965777/the-verge-super-
bow...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/2/7965777/the-verge-super-bowl-ad-
helena-montana)

~~~
psutor
I verified that the tweets are real. I checked out the usernames and all of
those with locations easily findable (half of them) were in Chicago (where CAH
is based) - so it is certainly plausible they only aired in Chicago.

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mikek
Here is the ad:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gcWW-
pN_niE](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gcWW-pN_niE)

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TYPE_FASTER
This is Cards Against Humanity we're talking about here.

1\. They planned from Day 1 to film a potato for 30s. Or, had a bunch of "what
is the worst possible Superbowl ad you could think of" ideas, and picked this
one.

2\. I would be surprised if they really hired an ad agency.

3\. CAH has realized that if they do wacky stuff, like dig a giant hole, they
will get a ton of publicity. This is no exception.

4\. #winning, by spending less on a 30s spot in a single market and getting
nationwide coverage via social media.

Edit: if it's not clear, I think it is smart. And their card game is fun.

------
5706906c06c
Yeah. SREs that often fail to patch systems because they're in GoLang building
their pipe dream ignoring the basics of good hygiene. Or the App Dev that
write enough Ruby blocks to create 10yrs worth of technical debt that they
can't pay off if their lives depended on it. Meanwhile, their laptop remains
unsecured and unencrypted while their I.P. is up for grabs.

Don't hire a CSO.

------
jnardiello
WHAT IF they did it on purpose? Knowing they were running out of time and
didn't have a convincing ad they went for airing a completely meaningless one
so that later one they could write this post-mortem gaining traction on
communities that are far more relevant for their audience such as HN?

I know it sounds a bit pretentious but that would be a pretty smart move to
reduce the damage while preserving the brand overall identity.

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landmark3
"...fans ultimately had trouble making the leap from “Super Bowl” to “potato”
to “Cards Against Humanity.” " you're right!!! I can't seem to be able to make
the leap, not even after reading the article and all comments on HN

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niftich
To build on my previous comment [1], and those by thinkloop, it's plausible to
me that one of the layers of social commentary they targeted was about
clickbait and 'fake news'.

This story itself is purpose-made for viral speculation, which these days also
implies clickbait fodder; I can already see the articles in the template of
"The True Story Behind the Super Bowl Potato Ad" and "You Won't Believe What
This Game Company Spent $xx Million On"; all the while as planetjones pointed
out the reporting on the event has not yet been corroborated by multiple
independent sources, where those sources themselves are known to have existed
ahead of time and are reporting truthful information.

Perhaps this will change as the day passes, given how the announcement was
made in the middle of the night, but so far all the evidence of this ever
having occurred derives from either the Medium announcement from an account
that only contains this one post [2] while their known-good official website
[3] (and other known-good official channels, like their Tumblr) are devoid of
any such announcement, and the evidence presented in the Medium post itself is
a screenshot of some Tweets and a link to a Youtube video [4] (which in all
fairness was uploaded by Cards Against Humanity (co-?)creator Max Temkin [5],
but not posted on the official CAH channel [6].

While it's possible that the accounts making the Tweets are real and the
content of the Tweets is truthfully based on an actual event they witnessed,
we've yet to see evidence provided by sources _known to not be affiliated
with_ CAH -- which is a different threshold than ' _not_ known to be
affiliated with' \-- that the ad indeed aired in one or more markets -- one
this evidence arrives we will have completed rudimentary fact-checking good
enough to report on the matter. Until then, any attempt to 'report' on this
situation fails to meet the basic criteria for 'news', but is instead
repeating a viral rumour that appears to have been started by either the
first-party or an as-yet unverified third party.

I surmise that at least one low-quality report will be made about the story
while still unverified -- let alone all the social media buzz that the story
will generate in either case; thereby demonstrating how easy it is to
manufacture a story; for speculation's sake, the same could have been
accomplished by creating a plausibly-named brand-new Medium account, uploading
a Youtube video, creating a few Twitter accounts or paying actual people to
Tweet some choice lines.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13577181](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13577181)
[2]
[https://medium.com/@CardsAgainstHumanity](https://medium.com/@CardsAgainstHumanity)
[3]
[https://www.cardsagainsthumanity.com/](https://www.cardsagainsthumanity.com/)
[4] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcWW-
pN_niE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcWW-pN_niE) [5]
[https://www.youtube.com/user/MaxTemkin/about](https://www.youtube.com/user/MaxTemkin/about)
[6]
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIntWOSU38r6V0YaPLNjRg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIntWOSU38r6V0YaPLNjRg)

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kapauldo
American here, no idea what this is about. Moving on.

