Corporate shift money from Soap Operas to Social Media
With the growing importance of online marketing, corporate has started shifting funds from TV soap operas to social media.
The main sponsor and producer of daytime TV dramas, Procter & Gamble Co., who helped coin the term “soap operas,” has pulled the plug after 7 decades. Instead, focussing on its customers online with a big push on social media channels such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
The last Procter & Gamble soap opera show, “As The World Turns,” was the leading daytime soap for decades, but had lost some two-thirds of its audience at the end.
Over the years, P&G has produced many soap operas for radio and TV, however, ratings for daytime dramas have been sinking, as women, their target audience, moved into the workplace, and spent more time using online media and social networking sites.
P&G, still buys individual commercials on daytime dramas, however, the amount has shrunk and aggressively entering into social media arena. Recently P&G began selling Pampers diapers on Facebook, and used social media to make a highly successful campaign for the Old Spice brand.
The “Smell like a Man, Man” commercials became a YouTube sensation, drawing millions of views and generated attention with Twitter questions.
P&G touts big numbers from Old Spice tracking: around 1.8 billion impressions (people who saw, read, or heard about commercials) and tens of millions of YouTube views and still growing.In addition Twitter followers for Old Spice increased around 2,700 percent. According to P&G Old Spice sales is growing at double digits.