Objective

Game Day Commercials was designed by Action for the Climate Emergency to “event jack” the cultural moment of the Super Bowl and its corresponding ad blitz in order to engage and persuade young people and consumers about the electric vehicle (EV) cost-saving incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Our goals were to:

1. Get content creators to produce over-the-top and zany “commercials” to make the complex climate policy within the Inflation Reduction Act more digestible
2. Run the creator content as ads with real-time targeting during the Super Bowl 
3. Reach millions across organic and paid social channels
4. Conduct research among our young target audience to test whether our campaign: 1) increased knowledge of the tax credits available in the Inflation Reduction Act make an EV purchase more affordable; 2) persuaded them that owning an EV would result in more cost savings than gas in the long run; and 3) increased interest in EV purchasing

Strategy

For Game Day Commercials, we deployed a coordinated organic and paid influencer marketing campaign to socialize the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax credits for electric vehicles and persuade viewers to consider taking advantage of them. Following the campaign blitz, we ran a corresponding randomized control trial to test the efficacy of the content we produced.

Step 1: Creator Marketing

• We partnered with content creators to develop unique microvideos that parodied the characteristics of traditional Super Bowl car commercials.
• We created a campaign-specific fake “EV” logo and tagline that creators were required to use at the end of their video to match the format of an actual car commercial.
• Challenge: To avoid needing a license from the NFL to use the phrase “Super Bowl,” we had creators allude to the term instead by using language like the “Big Game” or “biggest football game of the year.” 
• We hired 7 content creators, whose content spanned a wide array of genres, including:
  • Three comedy skits 
  • “Is It Cake”-inspired video using an EV-shaped cake
  • Percussion video using a real EV and its sounds to make a car commercial “jingle”
  • Parody of stereotypical Super Bowl commercial elements using hand crocheted props
  • Flip-book video
• Creators were given instructions to go live right before, during, and after the event in order to maximize reach when Super Bowl hype on social media was highest.

Step 2: Paid Advertising

• We purchased usage rights for all creator content in order to run their videos as ads on Meta, Google, and TikTok.
• We used real-time strategic keyword targeting on YouTube to make sure our content was prioritized when people searched for real 2024 Super Bowl commercials, including the electric vehicle ones that aired from Kia and BMW.
• Challenge: Political content tends to get suppressed on social media, and unfortunately, some social platforms have deemed climate a political issue. In order to counteract those restrictions and maximize our ad reach, we made sure all content was apolitical, allowing us to run ads across more platforms.

Step 3: Randomized Control Trial

• We ran a randomized control trial (RCT) by comparing a sample of creator-produced microvideos from the campaign with an actual electric vehicle (EV) commercial that aired during the 2024 Super Bowl using a sample of 1,015 U.S. adults in March 2024.
• We randomly assigned participants to view one of three creator microvideos, a Kia EV commercial that aired during the 2024 Super Bowl, or an unrelated placebo video. Participants then completed a series of questions related to message effectiveness.

Results

Creator Marketing:

• These 7 creators earned 2.63 million organic views with ACE utilizing a quality-over-quantity hiring strategy. 
• We also negotiated cross-post deals with several of these creators, bringing our total number of posts across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to 15.

Paid Advertising: 

• Through real-time strategic keyword targeting, our campaign garnered another 5.5 million in paid reach across Meta, Google, and TikTok.

Research:

• The creator microvideos produced statistically significant increases in knowledge of the Inflation Reduction Act incentives for EVs (+10-11% increase over placebo) and perceptions that EVs would result in longer-term cost saving compared to traditional vehicles (+10-13% increase over placebo). 

• Additionally, one of the creator videos tested (the percussion creator) also produced greater interest in researching the switch to an EV for audiences that are typically resistant to the energy transition (+13-14% increase over placebo).

Media