An I-already-know-this message in a mass media buy = recipe for obscurity. We were desperate to find an unexpected, relevant angle that would appeal to a targeted audience who’d pay attention - and maybe even generate some buzz for us.

Enter conspiracy theorists. For some reason, Internet Truthers adore Flo. For years they’ve dissected our spots online, and uncovered hidden messages even we never knew existed. So we wondered… how much extra online buzz would one of our spots generate if we played specifically to this audience?

So we created “Theory” - a spot that winks at conspiracy theorists and their interest in our commercials, filled with plenty of curious details that would uniquely appeal to their sensibilities.

“Theory” went into our general rotation at a percentage that would allow our clients to get a read on performance. That rotation was a National buy across all day parts from Q3 2016 – Q1 2017. The ad pokes fun at how we are always on TV and “Theory” is no exception. YouTube is a repository for all ads and provided easy access for “fans” to analyze the details of the execution for years to come.

Due to confidentiality we can’t talk about direct quotes attributed to the ad. We can tell you it performed on par with other top-performing ads within our campaign. But unlike any other top-performing ad, “Theory” drove engagement and response we’d never seen before - in the form of video responses.

Viewers created over 90 minutes of original content featuring our commercial, adding over 63,000 unique views and inspiring well over 800 unique comments and discussions online.