Trivia That Night Goes Wrong: How SmartNews Fights Misinformation with Humor
By Andrew Kim, SmartNews Marketing
In the SmartNews Marketing Department, we’re always testing new creative messaging to address potential readers’ needs and encourage them to download our app. In today’s media climate, users have more options than ever to engage with news content, whether it’s watching the local news or listening to their favorite social media influencers. People already feel spoiled for choice and don’t have time to try out every new app that comes along. So how do we convince people that they should get their news from SmartNews?
Recognizing the increasing public dissatisfaction with misinformation in media and understanding that online video is becoming the dominant medium for content consumption, SmartNews created a video ad that uses humor to reinforce the value of high-quality news.
Why Make a Commercial?
Over this past year, we’ve seen significant growth in the digital media video advertising vertical. Social video and connected TV (CTV) are on track for double-digit year-over-year growth. With the rise in demand for video content, we decided to commit more resources to producing quality video content across these popular formats to engage with prospective readers.
Users get a better understanding of the benefits of quality news aggregation from a 30-60 second video than from a static banner, leading to higher conversion rates to download. Previous testing we’ve done uncovered that users respond positively to testimonials and seeing real-life applications of the benefits, which is much more effective to convey in the video format compared to static image banners. We see 10-20% better click-through rates, conversion rates, and user retention coming from campaigns running video ads compared to other interstitial and in-feed banner campaigns.
Misinformation is a Problem and Funny Social Experiments Grab Attention
Once we decided that producing a quality video creative was the right format, the next question was how do we produce engaging content that can boost organic views and grow our brand? From user research, we noticed a common theme across demographics: people felt overwhelmed by all of the misinformation and clickbait headlines masquerading as news on social media. We took this user pain point as the core issue to address in the video, as its messaging would feel relatable to our targets.
We’ve seen other brands successfully leverage the viral nature of real events / social experiments to drive conversations around their brand values (e.g., Dove: Real Beauty Sketches or Heineken: World’s Apart). With that in mind, we reached out to dozens of video production agencies and reviewed pitches on different real-life scenarios that can relate to the frustration people feel when dealing with misinformation in their daily lives.
Out of all the ideas received, Lumenati Productions pitched a concept that not only informs our viewers, but also drives curiosity to learn more. What happens if you attend a trivia night where all the answers are wrong and come from bad sources?
Trivia Night Goes Wrong
No matter how accurate we are in identifying the problem that is misinformation, it doesn’t matter if the video itself isn’t enticing. The majority of people skip YouTube ads and we’ve seen historically that viewers on social don’t complete videos that can be instantly recognized as brand promotion, instead of native content.
With that in mind, the “misinformed” trivia night concept checked all the boxes. Everyone has had the experience of coming across a questionable Facebook post from your old highschool classmate or that family friend who frequently reshares every money making scheme they see on social media. We conveyed this everyday frustration into the trivia night experiment.
In the vein of reality TV, the audience watches how the unaware players react to a trivia contest where the answers gradually change to reflect the misinformed takes seen on social media: “The Arctic Ocean is the largest ocean in the world because of all the un-melted ice. 5G technology can cause cancer.” The frustration the players show as they gradually lose their trust in the trivia host reflects the frustration people have when they’re constantly bombarded with low-quality news in their lives.
Viewers are in on the joke from the start, so the ever more absurd answers, coupled with outraged reactions from the unwitting contestants, make the spot funny and relatable. Ultimately, viewers are steered to the conclusion that just as nobody wants to waste their time playing trivia if they can’t trust the answers, they also shouldn’t waste their time vetting poor-quality news sources.
The spot reinforces SmartNews’s core value of providing high-quality news from a wide variety of publishers, positioning the brand as relatable, clever and trusted.