Billie Eilish, social marketing genius, and Hyundai’s ‘Question Everything’ ad

Welcome to Ad Age Datacenter Weekly, our data-obsessed newsletter for marketing and media professionals. Reading this online? Sign up to get it delivered to your inbox here. Billie Eilish, social media marketing genius Pop star Billie Eilish has been gearing up to release her new album, “Happier Than Ever,” in July. In the process, she’s essentially been giving a master class on social media marketing, dominating Instagram in particular as she chronicles the transformation of her image from green-haired fashion disruptor to Marilyn Monroe-style blonde bombshell. As NME’s Rhian Daly noted earlier this month in the wake of the release of images from her June British Vogue cover shoot, Eilish’s Instagram post of the cover has broken the record for being the photo on the platform to reach 1 million likes the fastest. She achieved the milestone in under six minutes. ... It’s not the first time the teen superstar has broken the record. She previously toppled Selena Gomez’s claim to the title in March, when she shared a photo of her newly blonde hair. That picture reached 1 million likes by the six-minute mark. On Wednesday of this week, the publication of “The 20 Most Liked Pictures on Instagram” on the Brandwatch blog called attention to the fact that Eilish has 8 out of the 20 across Instagram’s entire 10-year history. Meanwhile, over on TikTok, Eilish (@billieeilish) has racked up more than 110 million likes across just seven posts (she only joined TikTok last November), including, mostly recently, a so-called “stitch” post (one that excerpts from another user’s post while crediting them) in which Eilish reacts with a tearful howl to a brief post from TikToker Gabriela (@gabrieeelala), who keeps a stick mounted on a wall of her home in remembrance of her beloved dog Waylon, who died in December (“I’m saving it for when I meet you again,” she writes in a caption to the video). Eilish’s stitch/reaction TikTok post has been viewed more than 70 million times since she published it on Monday. See also: “Billie Eilish admits to ordering ‘Billie Eilish Halloween costume wig’ from Amazon to hide blonde hair,” per Yardbarker. ICYMI: Ad Age Agency Report 2021 is out now U.S. agency revenue tumbled 6.8% in 2020 as fallout from the pandemic pushed the economy and agencies into a deep downturn, according to Ad Age’s annual Agency Report. That was the second-sharpest drop since we began producing Agency Report in 1945. But the agency business is coming back amid a resurgent economy. Read Bradley Johnson’s executive summary: “For agencies, it’s morning again in America ... maybe: Ad Age Agency Report 2021.” Also new in Datacenter Ad Age Datacenter queried 12 leaders from across agency disciplines to see what’s changed and where the business is headed following a cataclysmic year. Here is what they had to say. Question this commercial In late April, Ad Age’s E.J. Schultz reported on a new celebrity-stocked automotive ad: “Hyundai taps Jason Bateman, Mindy Kaling to push Tucson SUV in largest-ever campaign.” Since then, Hyundai has aired the 60-second “Question Everything” TV commercial at the center of that campaign more than 1,009 times, according to iSpot.tv, racking up more than 368 million national TV ad impressions (broadcast and cable), as of this writing. Now we’ve got some intel on what consumers think of the spot. According to data shared exclusively with Datacenter Weekly by iSpot’s Ace Metrix—which conducts in-depth consumer opinion surveys surrounding most major ad campaigns that get national TV exposure—the 60-second “Question Everything” spot rates 5% above the 90-day norm for “attention” among comparable automotive TV commercials, and 7% above the “likeability” 90-day norm. (“Comparable automotive TV commercials” in this case are ads in Ace’s non-luxury auto ad bucket.) That performance has earned “Question Everything” an Ace “Breakthrough” ad designation, meaning it broke through the clutter for survey respondents. Among the verbatim responses submitted by those surveyed: • “I love this commercial. As soon as I saw Jason Bateman I was hooked. Then the other actors were ones I really like too, which made it even better. I wouldn’t normally be interested in a specific car after watching its commercial, but this one made me want to check it out.” —a female in the 36-49 age group • “I like the ad. Familiar faces in the commercial helps. The questions were interesting and slightly amusing. Hidden headlights ... nice.” —a male 21-35 • “This ad is funny and I love all the questions. They are ones I ask myself. I do not see how it really fits with selling cars, but I like it.” —a female 36-49 • “I love the whole cast of this commercial, especially Jason Bateman. It really made me happy.” —a female 21-35 • “Great visual scenes and moderate humor. Ad was able to keep my interest throughout as I was curious to see what was being offered.” —a male 50+ • “My kind of humor and questions, and I do like the new headlights. Liked the diverse participants.” —a female 50+ What’s next for TV As the TV industry cautiously looks to a post-COVID world, how will the 2021 ad haggle reflect the calls for change that have been building for the past year? Join ad sales leaders, marketers and media buyers to discuss the state of the upfront marketplace at Ad Age In-Depth: TV Pivot on May 24 and 25. RSVP at adage.com/tvpivot. Just briefly • Lip service: “How AI could steal your data by ‘lip-reading’ your keystrokes,” from The Next Web. • Face-off: “Facebook Loses Bid to Block Ruling on EU-U.S. Data Flows,” per The Wall Street Journal. • Fast facts: “McDonald’s Raises (Some) Wages,” a post from Chartr with a data visualization that plots average revenue-per-restaurant against the number of restaurant units for major fast food chains including McDonald’s, Burger King, Chick-fil-A and Taco Bell. • Shop talk: “New Data Reveals Website Visits Slow For Walmart And Remain Steady For Amazon,” Forbes reports. • Malwary: “Microsoft warns: Watch out for this new malware that steals passwords, webcam and browser data,” per ZDNet. • And finally ... “A Data-Driven Approach to Identifying—and Retaining—Top Employees,” from the Harvard Business Review. The newsletter is brought to you by Ad Age Datacenter, the industry’s most authoritative source of competitive intel and home to the Ad Age Leading National Advertisers, the Ad Age Agency Report: World’s Biggest Agency Companies and other exclusive data-driven reports. Access or subscribe to Ad Age Datacenter at AdAge.com/Datacenter. Ad Age Datacenter is Kevin Brown, Bradley Johnson and Catherine Wolf. This week’s newsletter was compiled and written by Simon Dumenco.

Billie Eilish, social marketing genius, plus what consumers think of Hyundai’s ‘Question Everything’ commercial: Datacenter Weekly

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