Jack Daniel’s knows everyday dads are the real influencers
The idea seems almost too simple in hindsight. Gather a bunch of actual Jack-drinking dads, and get them on camera enjoying the product. Get the dads to share that content online and — with a little assist from a paid social media campaign — watch the sales roll in.
In the lead-up to Father’s Day this year, Jack Daniel’s decided to handball its social advertising to everyday dads, with a series of user-generated ‘Dad Ads’ designed to promote the Gentleman Jack Tennessee Whiskey range.
Stuart Terry is the founder and director of We Are Different, the creative agency tasked with executing what he refers to numerous times as “an experiment” during an interview with Mumbrella.
“It represents the shift in terms of how social and ‘influencers’ is changing,” Terry says of the campaign’s reliance on unvarnished talent.
He explains there was a sweet period five years ago where an influencer could simply spruik a product on their over-populated feed, which led to user-engagement and uplift for brands.
Then the audience wised up. Maybe these people aren’t actually into the products they want us to buy …
“There’s so much content, and the algorithms have changed, and it’s so much harder to capture attention online and via social,” Terry says. “Strategically, the way [agencies] approach social and influencers is changing. It’s more around that ‘deep community engagement’ and activating that to drive the buzz online. And, so that’s where Dad Ads came from.”
Just three of the new breed of influencer hitting social media.
Terry has watched the rise of user-generated content collide with influencer marketing.
“Jack has this amazing, loyal fan base online. So, instead of getting influencers who don’t even know the brand, we’re harnessing this really loyal community and activating them to drive that engagement. And it’s just been gangbusters.
“The engagement versus [Jack Daniel’s’] traditional ads has just skyrocketed.”
The Dad Army was assembled from the 80,000-strong Jack Daniel’s subscriber list, who got the call out to take part in the experiment. Of the interested parties, 196 dads were shortlisted, of whom 12 were used in the lead-up to Father’s Day.
Gentleman Jack is the premium drop in the range — and this is still an advertising campaign for a publicly-traded American corporation — so there was still quite a bit of curation to be done. All the user-generated content was video, uses tasteful black-and-white colour grading, the men are styled (there are no visible sauce stains), and brand-relevant templates are added in post production to give it the semblance of a more traditional campaign.
The experiment has worked, Terry says.
Within the first month, he says organic and paid reach was 9.1 million, video view rates increased 16 times over, and engagement increased 14 times over. The amount of scrollers watching these user-generated videos all the way through increased eightfold.
Sales data won’t be available for some time, and determining a campaign’s incrementality — the actual dollar value of the marketing beyond organic and existing sales — is a subject of great debate at industry conferences. Still, people watched the videos and Terry says he will be making more.
Additional ‘Dad Ads’ will be launched in the lead-up to Christmas, meaning those 184 shortlisted dads that didn’t make the initial 12 won’t be left on the bench for long. In essence, Jack Daniel’s is building its own stable of brand-loyal dad-influencers.
The client is certainly happy, too, with Richard Dredge, senior brand manager at Jack Daniel’s parent company Brown-Forman, saying in a written statement to Mumbrella that “preliminary results have smashed both reach and engagement benchmarks, a clear sign that a different strategic and creative approach to influencer is working for our brand.”
Stuart Terry
Terry credits the power of genuine online communities for the strong results.
“Jack has always had this incredible community behind them, but this is the first time we’ve activated that community via social and used them as our influencers.
“It was a bit of an experiment in the context of this changing social landscape. We have to do something differently because there is so much content online. There’s so much influencer content.”
He notes how often younger audiences simply skip through advertising content.
“We just can’t keep doing the same things that we were doing. [Dad Ads] is harnessing the power of community, transforming them into influencers as a way to drive that engagement online. I think, everything is an experiment with what you do in agency. But, we had this hunch that this approach to social — and doing it differently — would work.”
In a medium rife with disinformation, deep mistrust, and brand deception, who better than to trust than Dad?
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