SPI 666: This Super Bowl Ad Got Me Good

SPI 666: This SuperBowl Ad Got Me Good

Announcer: You’re listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network, a show that’s all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, he wishes that every day was 26 hours, so he could have one extra hour to play video games and one extra hour for sleep. Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn:Hey, it’s Pat here. Happy Friday, and we are here at episode 666. Scary, not really. I don’t believe in those kinds of things, although when I do go in the car and the light turns yellow after I’ve entered the intersection, I do hit the dashboard with my hand twice and then hit the ceiling above my head once. I don’t, like, somebody taught me that when I was a kid and it was like superstitious.

You know, I was originally gonna say I’m not superstitious, but then I remembered that I do that thing. Does anybody else do that or is that just me or is that a San Diego thing? I have no idea. Anyway, at the time of this recording, the Super Bowl just happened yesterday. We had the Eagles versus the Kansas City Chiefs and, you know, the results already happened.

So you know, it’s not even about the game. I wanted to talk about a particular commercial. And there was a commercial in the third or fourth quarter that many of you might remember. If you’re overseas or you don’t watch or care for the Super Bowl, don’t worry, I’m gonna explain everything to you so you won’t feel left out.

But of course, during the Super Bowl, it’s known for the commercials and there were some great ones and there were not so great ones. But this one in particular was really interesting because they executed a strategy that I talk about all the time when it comes to content creation. Because much like watching commercials or even just watching a television program or the Super Bowl or some sporting event, you know, as a viewer you tend to tune out sometimes here and there, and a lot of times you’re sort of just in automation mode.

I mean, you might be in a period where you’re just automatically listening to these podcasts right now, and then you’re kind of just in the car or driving around somewhere, maybe on a walk or something, and you’re just kind of like in the automation mode, right? You’re not like consciously thinking about all the things sometimes unless you are in a hyper-focused mode or something had just happened, which is why including a pattern interrupt is often really key in your content because it helps reset the consumer, the listener, the viewer, and even in many cases, the reader to then kind of quote unquote wake up and then pay attention to the thing that’s being shown. Now, this is a superpower that can be used for good or for bad and like, you know, in super or not Superman, Spider-Man with great power comes great responsibility. But of course I know I’m preaching to the choir here.

All of you are using these superpowers for good. And so when we learn these strategies here, you will use them to better serve an audience. And so this idea of a pattern interrupt happened during one of the commercials at the Super Bowl and it, it got me and then I got onto Twitter to see just how people responded to it, which is my favorite thing to do during the Super Bowl.

Almost everybody was quote unquote fooled by this, but it was using a pattern to interrupt. There’s a company that is a streaming service called Tubi, T U B I, and there were several commercials from Tubi during the Super Bowl, many including a rabbit one commercial where they were pulling people almost like in a more scary manner.

And at the end it was like, oh, we’ll help you find rabbit holes that help you find content you didn’t even know you wanted or something like that, which was just a really interesting take cuz it was a little scary. But this commercial, in the middle of some video, again, I was tuned out. I don’t even know what was playing beforehand, but then all of a sudden it looked like on my television that my remote for my streaming service was moving around.

There were like little noises and clicks as if somebody had a remote control and was controlling the programming and obviously programming somebody to not watch the Super Bowl. So it just looked like somebody had control of my remote. And I immediately looked to the dogs that were sitting next to me while we were watching the Super Bowl because the dogs sometimes sit on our remote and change the channel.

And I was like up and about trying to find the remote control as it was happening, and then all of a sudden I found out that it was just Tubi doing a pattern interrupt? A lot of people weren’t happy about this commercial because it, it fooled people. But the idea being, it caught people’s attention. And out of all the commercials that happened during the Super Bowl, this one probably more than any, got people to respond in some way.

Now, I’m not saying you have to fool people and, and I’m, that’s not what I’m recommending at all. But what I’m recommending here is in podcast that is X number of minutes long in your YouTube videos. You can’t just have it be the same visual or the same audio experience the entire time. You have to interrupt the patterns every once in a while.

Am I right? Am I right? That’s what I’m talking about. You hear that? That’s an applause. This is an idea of a pattern interrupt, but let me not interrupt you right now and tell you that you just need to add these all over the place because. doing them too often removes the effect. You wanna save these opportunities.

Now there there are small instances of pattern interrupts that are really good, especially in video text flying on the screen. A, a slow zoom in, or a quick zoom, something flashing on the screen, like B-roll or some other item that you show next to you while you’re talking about it, right? Like an image.

Those are sort of small level pattern interrupts, but a large level pattern interrupt is where perhaps like for example, in a video, you’re talking to the camera and all of a sudden you tell everybody on camera, wait, wait, wait. We need to talk about this really quick. And all of a sudden you are like at a different desk or even outside, right?

You kind of stop people where they were at, or in most cases, wake people up where they’re at to have them be sure to listen to this next part or this, this next point. So obviously you wanted to lead into something really important because now you’ve recaptured people’s attention. And again, this is for especially long-term content creators, or if you’re creating any form of long content to consume. So big shout out to Tubi. I am not a subscriber to Tubi, but it definitely made me want to check ’em out because I really liked how they got the entire nation to freak out and think like I tweeted also that, you know, did anybody else get fooled by this commercial?

I thought it was pretty cool. And everybody who replied was like, yep, I thought, you know, my daughter had changed the station, or I thought that my dogs were on it like mine. Or you know, one person like ended up yelling at their kids on the other side of the house like, Hey, are you messing with the remote?

Or something like that. So again, pattern interrupts really, really key. Now, how might you do this on, let’s say, a podcast, for example? Well, I added some audio because you don’t normally hear it, like you just heard the applause. And I’m doing that through my Roader Pro, which allows me to just push a button , right.

And sometimes it works and sometimes it’s just crickets, I guess. But other than that, other than sound effects, you can I think Michael Stelzner does a really good job of this on the Social Media marketing podcast, where literally in the middle he has like a resource of the day that he has. So it, it feels like a different segment, right?

It’s like a news station. When a news channel has a like a breaking news update, right? Song comes in, we interrupt this program to give, to bring you a special bulletin. The you know, whatever news is inserted here, right? It’s the same thing. It’s a pattern interrupt, but we can use it in content on a more normal basis like Michael Stelzner does, where there is a literal segment that has a separate voiceover in the middle of the audio that takes you to the next place.

And I think that’s just the genius strategy that we need to do more of. And yes, it does take a little bit more time and a little bit more thought. But the other thing I wanna talk about that has come to my realization today, and it’s this idea of the fact that we can’t be lazy content creators anymore. We used to be able to be lazy content creators where we could just get on this schedule of creation and, and, and just kind of do our thing like we normally do, and, and pump out that content, right?

Like it’s a water faucet and, and we’re good to go. We’re gonna grow. But today, especially, How prevalent content is and how much of it there is out there. You can’t be a lazy content creator anymore. Many people are looking for the shortcut and there are shortcuts that exist. I think that, you know, I’m not saying don’t be smart, but what I’m saying is there needs to be some additional thought put into the content that you’re creating, which involves pattern interrupts, sometimes perhaps, or just better storytelling.

Had been a conversation that I had with somebody in the Pokemon YouTube space about other Pokemon YouTubers who were kind of in this pattern of still doing the same kinds of content that they did back in 2016 in 2020. Stuff that worked back then, but just isn’t working now. And we’re finding that those videos that are very similar to the ones that were popular back then just are not taking off anymore because A, people are used to seeing them.

And B, that’s not the kind of consumption behavior people have nowaday. And so I think this is why a lot of channels have come to me because a lot of channels, see that my content on the YouTube space is doing really well and it somehow is quote unquote breaking through the algorithm. But I, I want to quote Mr. Beast here, and I might have said this before, but it’s, you know, just replace the word algorithm with audience and you’ll be fine. What does the audience want? And the audience wants something different than what they wanted before. The audience wants a creator who is thinking differently and who is providing something that required maybe a little bit of work now, in some cases, Audiences just want the information and that’s it.

And in that case, great, but in many cases people do want more flavor. They, they’ve heard the thing before, but when you present it to them inside of a story or with emotion or something like that, then it might hit home a little different. It might actually break through the noisy space that you’re in.

So just, you know, I’m not saying you need to spend 10 hours writing an email, but let’s purposefully create, let’s consciously create and put some effort behind the work that we’re doing. Because the truth is, the audience will notice when you go a little bit above and beyond and do something a little bit different.

And to quote my good friend Sally Hogshead, she says, different is better than better. Right? You don’t not, you don’t just need to create a better version of the thing sometimes going different, which is hard to do, but it could be well received because there is some thought behind that choice. So anyway, a few more lessons to finish off today, but I wanted to start off with that Tubi commercial, which definitely grabbed my attention for sure, and was a really, really great pattern to interrupt for the medium of Super Bowl commercials.

So I want you to think about the medium that you normally publish in and what would be, what would be a pattern interrupt that perhaps you can, you can include to sort of perhaps awaken your audience at a certain moment that might make sense. Good luck to you. Thanks so much. I appreciate you. See you in the next one. Cheers.

Thank you so much for listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I’m your host, Pat Flynn. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. Our senior producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media, and a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network. Catch you next week!