Funny or Die found a new way to boost video views. All it takes is a little Kik—help from the messaging apps' new Promoted Chats product. The digital comedy crew at Funny or Die, co-founded by Will Ferrell, said it is getting a 10 percent click rate on videos it sends through the messaging app to its fan base, grown with the new paid marketing product. 

It is among a handful of brands testing Kik Messenger's ad product, which lets marketers promote their accounts, accumulate contacts and connect with them.

Now, Funny or Die has more than a million Kik followers, about the same as it has on Tumblr. One in 10 are clicking on messages that encourage followers to "check out this video."

"I've been around this space a long time, and I've never seen that kind of number," said Patrick Starzan, vp of marketing and business development at Funny or Die.

When the humor site posts videos to Facebook or Twitter, by comparison, about 0.5 percent of people who see the link actually click, Starzan said.

The Kik ad tests show that messaging can be a powerful marketing medium as users spend more time on these apps, including Snapchat, WhatsApp, Line, WeChat and Tango.

Kik, founded in 2009, is a quiet, high-ranking force in the app charts with more than 150 million registered users. It has some big-name investors, including Union Square Ventures, and it last raised money in April 2013—$20 million. The messaging space has been flush with cash since then, which could mean Kik is in line for more financing.

This year, Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion, and Tango raised $280 million, mostly from China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group.

The messaging rivals are coming up with their own modes of generating revenue to support all this investor confidence—Line sells stickers, WeChat experiments with e-commerce. Many platforms are handling overt advertising with care, however, because brands can be intrusive to users who just want to talk with friends.

The Wall Street Journal said Kik's Promoted Chats represent a new form of bot advertising, letting marketers set automated messages to mass communicate in a way that seems one-on-one. It's been called "chatvertising."

Treading lightly, Funny or Die sends out a message twice a week on Kik, as opposed to six to eights posts a day on Facebook and Twitter, Starzan said.

Once a brand accumulates Kik followers through paid Promoted Chats, it gets to message its fan base eight times a month for free, he said.

"Anything else, you pay for," he said, revealing a model that is similar to Facebook, where marketers buy a following and support community outreach with a paid strategy. A maximum of eight free messages was agreed upon during the testing phase, but the number could change when the ad product ultimately launches.

Heather Galt, a vp at Kik, said six brands have tested Promoted Chats, which launched last month. Nearly 3 million Kik users viewed Promoted Chats and opted to communicate with one of the brands, she said, including the million that tapped Funny or Die.

"In the first week, 18 million messages were sent and received," she said.

The other early Kik marketers include Moviefone, DoSomething.org, Cambio and Wattpad.

Brands also are building mini-websites optimized for running inside Kik. For instance, last year the boy band One Direction launched a Kik-optimized page, and since then more than 500 pages have been created, making Kik a mobile hub.

Galt said the combination of Kik-optimized pages and Promoted Chats are creating new ways for brands to push media and promotions. The app also has a place for sponsored positions in the search bar where users look for Kik pages. And there is a "featured" position within the top sites tab, another potential place for brands to promote their presence.

"We see multiple opportunities on the platform with Kik-optimized Web pages, top sites and limited advertising," Galt said. "And we're building more."

Great Odin's Raven! If you ever wanted to play video games with self-proclaimed video game wiz Will Ferrell, here's your chance to do so—and support a great cause.

The Saturday Night Live alum is asking fans to donate money to help kids who are battling childhood cancers. One lucky donor will get to spend an evening gaming with Ferrell in San Francisco, all of which will be livestreamed on Twitch.

The proceeds from the campaign, being crowdfunded on Indiegogo, will go to Cancer for College and DonateGames.org. The former provides scholarships to cancer survivors; the latter helps children with cancer and their families by using video games and other technology, including selling game bundles to raise money for financial aid or donating video games and equipment to hospitals.

Hear the contest announcement from Will Pharell himself, who allegedly once played Asteroids for 37 hours without taking a bathroom break:



If you don't win Will Ferrell's SuperMegaBlastMax Gamer Challenge, there's still plenty of swag to take home from partners like Amazon, Twitch and Microsoft. There's also awesome limited-edition Ferrell gear including his special gamers' sunscreen, and best of all, signed cowbells. Trust me: We all need a little more cowbell in our life.

Last night Will Ferrell boasted a new job—Little Debbie's spokesperson—during a weird yet charming segment on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. As it turns out, the brand was just as surprised as anyone else to learn about their supposed new hire. 

"McKee Foods was delightfully surprised by Will Ferrell's appearance," said Mike Gloekler, corporate communications and public relations manager for Little Debbie's parent company. "While this was not a coordinated publicity stunt, nor a paid advertisement, we appreciate both the humor of the segment and the exposure of our Little Debbie brand to Jimmy Fallon's huge national TV audience."

Ferrell went all out for the gag, wearing a Little Debbie costume and addressing the studio audience with the right sort of fake cheer that any brand spokesman should have.

The best part of the stunt was how Ferrell repeatedly used it as a distraction from plugging his new movie with Kevin Hart, Get Hard. Instead, he simply kept shifting the conversation back to Little Debbie, a Tennessee-based snack cake brand known for its Oatmeal Creme Pies, Swiss Rolls, Star Crunches, Nutty Bars and more. 

"In our opinion, Will Ferrell did justice to the cowgirl hat and the blue and white dress that are hallmarks of Little Debbie," Gloekler said. "We appreciate his enthusiasm in playing the part. We also enjoyed seeing the studio audience so eager to get their hands on our delicious snack cakes." 

Will Ferrell last week got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which was nicely timed to promote his hit movie Get Hard, where he co-stars with fellow comic Kevin Hart.

But perhaps Ferrell should also be recognized for his memorable moments with brands—even the occasions when he wasn't getting paid, such as his Little Debbie bit during the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on March 18.

Amobee Brand Intelligence delved into the social media stats and numbers from 600,000 digital publishing sites around Ferrell's impact on Little Debbie. After his Fallon performance, viewer consumption of conversations around the brand quickly spiked 1,727 percent.

The Foster City, Calif.-based data company then created an infographic that does a great job of telling the story around what it calls "Ferrellvertising," historically depicting the actor's work for marketers from Wonder Bread (Talladega Nights) to Milwaukee's Best to Dodge Durango.

Take a look.

When it comes to building awareness, how much is too much? Multi-channel campaigns harnessing the power of digital space, air time and even real time have proven successful. But when does it tip over into overkill?

With the biggest brands double-, triple- and even quadruple-flanking consumers, the trick becomes how to be near the top of mind without going over-the-top.

However, there's a risk that sometimes comes to those who can afford the most expensive marketing efforts (i.e., Hollywood): The marketing becomes the main event.

"If you build up expectations over time with these huge marketing things and then the product you're selling—the final piece in that journey—is bad, then you've lost all of those people. It should be the quality of the final product that's really important," said Jess Greenwood, vp of content and partnerships at digital agency R/GA.

Greenwood said the rise of multi-channel marketing (and its larger evolution, omni-channel marketing) heralds a new phase of advertising, with brands embracing campaign systems that blend creative and data on multiple fronts.

"If they were being smart they would be building out that sort of love over time instead of disappearing for five years and then coming up with a campaign that is overwhelming," she said.

Here are three examples of campaigns that probably went too far:

Minions

The Minions have taken over more than the box office. They've taken over your bananas. Your deliveries. Your burgers. Your very breath.

The Minions have been as mischievous with marketing as they are in the movie. Just this week, one blocked traffic in Dublin (in real life).

At some point, the campaign for Universal Studios' summer blockbuster about yellow jibber-jabbering creatures clearly went too far for many consumers.

I see nothing but minions in every store it's disgusting & I am tired of it

— Selena ❁ (@selenamaaawie) July 29, 2015

Ugggg I'm so sick and tired of hearing about the minions and seeing them in commercials

— Erick (@ErikkuKun) July 28, 2015

I used to think minions were funny and then minion overload happened. Now they're overexposed yellow blobs that aNNOY THE FRICK OUT OF ME.

— Kat⚓️ (@Ahoycapnkat) July 22, 2015

I've suddenly become quite tired of those "Minions".......little bastards are everywhere.....

— Zazzy ^..^ (@pisceschick65) July 25, 2015

Even One Direction fans took issue with a band member for a Minions reference on Instagram, sparking the guy in the video to huff that he'd never bother making another.

Officially, the estimated $593 million publicity spree has been effective. Its 32 million Facebook fan base is just one example of the digital success the campaign has garnered long before debuting last month, when it nearly set an opening-weekend box office record.

According to Katie Notopoulos, a Buzzfeed senior editor and Minion expert, the movie's popularity peaked long before its release. The real trouble began, she said, when the campaign won over the moms of America via memes and stickers, making it hard for young people to see the movie as cool.

"I think that's how the backlash happened," she said. "It started with young people who were savvy on the Internet, who already figured out that Minion memes were synonymous with being an uncool mom, so when the products started it became this joke that they were everywhere."

However, Notopoulos said fan fatigue doesn't necessarily translate into a lack of interest.

"At the end of the day, I don't think that the people who make fun of Minion memes, and the people who talk about how they hate them being everywhere in the grocery store, I don't think they dislike the minions movie any more than they would have," she said.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

In the lead-up to his 2013 return for Anchorman 2, fictional news anchor Ron Burgundy seemed to be almost literally everywhere.

In addition to all those Dodge Durango commercials, there was the Scotchy Scotch Toss mobile game and Scotchy Scotch Scotch ice cream from Ben & Jerry's, along with Burgundy's very own brand of Scotch.

Burgundy, played by Will Ferrell, made cameos that fit better with a slightly older demographic, and even appeared overseas in Ireland congratulating actor Jamie Dornan on winning a lead role in Fifty Shades of Grey. Some say the social media push—complete with videos, Twitter, Facebook, and everything else—was unprecedented and effective.

"I don't think anyone had seen just such a blitzkrieg of content," said Jonny Rose, head of content for London-based content strategy agency Idio. "It was impressive, but it was also oppressive towards the end."

Rose said the majority of the plan was effective. However, the tail end veered toward being too saturated, leading a number of people in the U.K. and U.S. to complain.

R/GA's Greenwood said the campaign seemed to overcompensate for the actual film, which didn't win over as many fans as the first.

Despite (or because of) its inescapable marketing, Anchorman 2 opened to disappointing box office results. While it eventually tallied about $173 million globally, the movie seemed to be hobbled out of the gate by an overabundance of visibility.

Here's how the Los Angeles Times described the backlash:

"That heaping plate of Ron Burgundy over the past few months (there was also that anchoring of news in North Dakota, the relentless Dodge Durango commercials, the Newseum exhibition, the underwear cross-promotion) made people feel like they had gotten their fill of the character. Film fans really wanted to see a few more hours of Ferrell and friends getting into mischief," Times writer Steven Zeitchik wrote. "And thanks to all these appearances, they did so weeks ago."

Game of War

If there's anywhere that supermodel Kate Upton seems unwanted, it's Twitter—at least among users who are tired of seeing her in endless ads for Game of War. 

After appearing in a Super Bowl ad, Upton became the ubiquitous face of the mobile game, now one of the top-grossing in the world thanks largely to its $40 million ad push across digital and offline media alike. 

But that success has come at the cost of widespread backlash, nowhere more visible than on Twitter:

the Game of War ad is everywhere and it's making me want to rip my hair out

— Kayla (@kaylaschmidxo) July 31, 2015

one day ill be able to watch a YouTube video without a Game of War ad that day apparently isn't today

— graeme (@Graeme_Todd) July 30, 2015

Kate Upton gets a little less appealing every time I see her in a Game of War ad. Give it a rest Game of War, we get it.

— nichølas_df (@NickDv_) July 29, 2015

I'm about to throw my phone at a wall if one more "game of war" ad pops up again

— Kiera Rowe (@kiera_rowe1) July 27, 2015

It doesn't matter how many Game of War ads I block, more pop up. Is that actually the game?

— Juressic Whirled (@Jess_Ra) August 4, 2015

The game's financial success continues to fuel the ad campaign driving the customer growth, but some marketing experts say that ignoring audience frustration can be a short-sighted move.

"What happens when you look at the numbers first and consumers second is you never, ever make the connection that it might be annoying," Greenwood said.

Idio's Rose said the problem with the Upton campaign isn't the content, but the form. The campaign, he said, is a classic example of interruptive advertising, forcing a product onto consumers when they're simply not interested.

Rose said campaigns need to be looking not just at how creative they can be, but also at the data before, after and especially during a campaign to see which strategies are bothering an audience and which are well received.

"These campaigns can't just be seen as creative only: 'Does this look good?' or 'Is this a compelling message?'," he said. "They need to look at the stats that come from those campaigns, and then use these stats to inform the campaign as it goes along."

CBS should have no problem drawing at least 110 million viewers to its Super Bowl 50 broadcast on Feb. 7, but the network has even grander ambitions for what could turn out to be a record-breaking audience. For the first time, the network has given over its coveted post-Super Bowl slot not to one of its prime-time series, but to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the biggest spotlight ever for a late-night broadcast.

It's a huge vote of confidence in—and an even bigger opportunity for—Colbert, who has accomplished nearly everything that CBS hoped for since he left Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, on which he satirized conservative hosts like Bill O'Reilly for nine years, to take over for David Letterman, who retired last May. Since launching in September, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has grown 18 percent in total viewers (3.16 million), 67 percent in adults 18-34 and 60 percent in adults 18-49 (0.8 rating) versus last season, and has overtaken Jimmy Kimmel Live as the No. 2 show in adults 18-49. (The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon remains comfortably in the lead this season, with 3.88 million total viewers and a 1.09 demo rating.) Most importantly, Colbert has made late night a lucrative daypart once again for CBS. During the fall, the network doubled its Late Show ad rates from a year earlier, according to SQAD NetCosts.

Sunday's live show will be all about the Super Bowl, Colbert says.Andrew Eccles

The network hopes Sunday's broadcast will continue Colbert's momentum and help The Late Show gain even more ground on Fallon. "It's going to be the greatest late-night, post-Super Bowl show ever," said Colbert of the episode, which will feature Tina Fey, Will Ferrell, Margot Robbie, Key & Peele, and at least one surprise guest. "The only, but also the greatest."

As he prepares for his post-Super Bowl debut, Colbert talks about how The Late Show has evolved since September, his biggest fear about moving to CBS, why he loves brand integrations and which other late-night host he is "jealous" of.

Adweek: Why are you doing the post-Super Bowl show from New York as opposed to near the game in San Francisco?
Stephen Colbert: I think a live show is hard enough, and you want to do it in friendly confines. Also, I don't know if you've seen what we've done to the Ed Sullivan Theater, but we're like a family that bought a beach house. We're not going on vacation anywhere until we get our money out of the beach house.

What do you have planned for the show?
Everything's about Super Bowl. We'll do our live analysis, and we'll have our live analysis of the most important thing: who won the commercials. And we'll have our own Super Bowl commercial. We'll be watching the game and writing the show as we go. We practiced doing the Patriots-Broncos [AFC Championship game] because that's something we've never done before. We've written jokes live about an election, but how do you write jokes about a Super Bowl? We've got to turn the jokes around in 20 minutes.

For many of those viewers, it will be the first time they've seen your show.
Oh, yeah. It's 10 times our audience, and I want people to see an indicative show because I really like our show. And I don't want to bait and switch. If you like what you saw, tomorrow is going to be a different subject, but this is what you're going to get.

This will likely be the largest audience you'll ever have. Are you nervous?
Doing a show for 3 million people or doing the show for 25 million people, we can't feel the difference—it's doing it live that's the difference. We did one just for schnicks [last month] because no one had ever done The Late Show live. The energy is fantastic. If I didn't have to stay up until 11:35 to do it, I would do it every day. Now we're doing the show absolutely to the second, live to tape because we love that energy so much and don't want to lose it.

That's a huge switch from your early shows last September, where tapings ran long and you had to quickly edit the shows down.
We were super-long because doing an hour instead of doing a half-hour and working with 90 people as opposed to 210 people, that's a huge difference. We slowly wrestled Goliath to the ground here. Now we start at 5:35 p.m. exactly—the bell rings, I go out. At 6:35, I'm done.

When were you finally able to take a breath and say, OK, I've got a handle on the new show?
There wasn't really much time for reflection until Thanksgiving when we had our first dark week. That was our chance to go, OK, what the hell just happened? We spent about an hour and a half every day for the first three days watching game tapes. We took notes and every department head was allowed in, and that's when the show took a turn for me. I went, oh yeah, we know how to do the show. Now, do we know how to change it? Because the imperative of [taping] every day and having no Fridays [off] makes it very hard to make the changes.

How have you changed the show since then?
Those next two weeks after Thanksgiving were a totally different approach to the guests. We changed the way we shot it. We changed the rhythm of the performance. We pulled the graphics out because I can't improvise with graphics—I can't play with my script if there's an OTS [over-the-shoulder graphic] here. It's improvising with a robot; it won't let me change the subject. I understand why you have an art card now. It seems old-fashioned—Carson held up an art card—but I can put it down or hold it up if I want. You're in control.

What was your biggest fear about moving over from Comedy Central?
That I wouldn't like my own show. You cannot pretend that you like your own show to the audience. They will smell the lie. This is a revelation I had at the old show: We do the show for each other, and at the end of the day, I have the privilege and responsibility to share with the audience what we did. But if there's no joy in putting the show together, then you're lying to the audience. And if I didn't like it, then there would be no worth doing it. Well, I have a little crush on my show. Oh, she's kind of a cute girl. I hope she likes me!

Do you miss your Colbert Report persona?
No. When I first started interviewing people, like when I had Jeb [Bush] or [Donald] Trump or [Ted] Cruz on, he'd sit on my shoulder, like the devil on my shoulder. And he would say, "Let me do this one. I can make every sentence a joke." I just wouldn't let him out. I went in the opposite direction. One of the things that I enjoy about the show is there is no obligation for me to have a sword and shield. I'm so happy to lay that thing down by the riverside. So, it was easy for me to tell him to go away.

Colbert is "not opposed" to integrations.Andrew Eccles

You're collaborating with the ad sales team and brands, which is something your predecessor never did.
I'm not opposed to it. The way I look at it is, of all the things that CBS would want me to do, integrated advertising is the thing that is most appealing because it's content for me. We've done small ones already. We've got a couple of things we hope to do for the Super Bowl as well, but we're still finding the right company who wants to play ball.

What's your approach to integrations?
It's like, the beast is hungry. You've got the first 30 seconds of my script all ready, and I can make jokes about what it is you wanted me to say? That's fantastic because a lot of our life is what is advertised to us. The advertisement itself is the content of our lives, and it's crazy to not acknowledge it. If someone's going to allow you to acknowledge it and even make fun of it, that's perfectly fine. I think ads are a great source of comedy that everybody can relate to. That's a perfectly lovely Subaru ad. I'm not entirely sure it needed to make me cry. Why is Cheerios trying to break my heart? I just want something with fiber!

You did that Sabra hummus integration on your very first night.
I said, well if I'm ever going to do them, I'll do it in the first show. Because it also acknowledges, OK, something is different here. I love being a company man, to a fault probably. I'm like, fuck yes, CBS! I've moved into a bigger apartment, and I don't mind wearing the badge. Nobody tells me these numbers, but they made coin on that and it suited a joke we already had. Well, that works fine.

Letterman was famously obsessed with ratings. Are you the same way?
I would like a lot of people to watch our show. You want people to come to your kid's play. I don't check them because all I can do is do the best show I can. CBS tells me they're perfectly happy, and whatever they are, they're way more than I used to get. And CBS tells me they're more than Dave got. So everybody's happy as far as I can tell.

Having clips go viral has become such an essential part of late night. Do you feel pressure to deliver those viral moments?
No. It's nice when that sort of thing happens, but CBS hasn't asked for it. For me, putting that cart before our horse as we're finding exactly what we want to do, that way lies madness. You can't create something for distribution; you have to create something because you like it.

Colbert knows Sunday's broadcast will likely bring his largest audience ever, but he's not nervous.Andrew Eccles

What else do you hear from CBS?
They've been very supportive. The notes from the network have been practically nonexistent. I thought I would go from cable—where it was like we were putting out a college newspaper where they gave us paper and ink, and at the end of the year they said this is your budget for paper and ink next year—and I'd come over here and I feared I would be a dog on a leash. Dave owned the show; I don't own the show. Dave was his own entity, an island unto himself; I'm not. But regardless of their promises, I was afraid somebody would yank my chain. No one has yanked my chain. Now that I think of it, that actually was my biggest fear.

CBS really likes you and The Late Late Show host James Corden as a late-night team. You've done promos together. Is more collaboration planned?
We're going to do some live tosses. I would do more with him if I had Fridays [off]. He doesn't do shows on Fridays. Man, I look at the things that he's able to do and I'm so jealous because I remember what it was like to be able to go out into the field. His Carpool Karaoke is fantastic. I'm like, Jesus, I wish I had that time. I remember that guy!

One thing that distinguishes you from your competition is your substantive interviews and eclectic guests. That's something we used to see a lot more of than we do now.
Well, I would like to return to that. I consumed a lot of that when I was younger: Johnny, Steve Allen's second show, Jack Paar, [Dick] Cavett. I like talking to actors, but I also like talking to [civil rights activist] DeRay Mckesson because that conversation was a gift to me. If I didn't have a late-night show, I'm not sure I'm sitting down with DeRay Mckesson to talk about Black Lives Matter or white privilege. And I'm allowed to make discoveries in this context that I could never before. So yeah, we want to do different interviews because I believe that's what the show provides you, not because this format resists it.

That was evident all the way back to your third show, when Vice President Biden opened up about the death of his son.
When Mr. Biden left, I said to my executive producer, "Oh, that nice man just gave me my show." Because I had to be my deepest self to receive the gift he gave us of sharing that. That has happened multiple times over the past five months. Those are the moments I go, oh, this is why I took the show.

This story first appeared in the Feb. 1 issue of Adweek magazine. Click here to subscribe.

The La Brea Tar Pits and Museum commissioned a campaign from creative agency Imaginary Forces to celebrate its renovation. They somehow got Will Ferrell to help them out, and from there, it's pretty clear they didn't know what to do. They got access to one of the funniest men in America, someone who could have catapulted their campaign to instant Internet hilarity and stardom. And they wasted him. 

In the series of what will eventually be nine videos, Ferrell takes questions from kids and ad libs funny answers. It should be funny. It should be great. There's even some great lines and a few great shots of kids giving Ferrell sassy eyes. But the production, lack of editing and even the constant drone of the freeway left in there by the (possibly non-existent) sound editor just kills it.

I mean, if you're going to get what I assume was free talent at the caliber of Will Ferrell to help out your nonprofit, please do the responsible thing and pay for some top-level production and editing. Or go the opposite route! Make it so bottom-barrel badly produced and horribly train-wreck-tastic that we can't look away and we all have to share it.

There's no excuse for stale jokes and mediocrity that could have been so much better with an editor with better timing or, maybe I dunno, multiple takes? Maybe let Will go on for like 10 minutes until he devolves into absurdity and cut down to the best bits? As a copywriter, I would kill, metaphorically, to have a half-hour of Will Ferrell ad-libbing. Whoever made this had that, along with a gaggle of kids—who are naturally hilarious by the way—and somehow … it falls flat.

They also got artists Gary Baseman and Mark Bradford and science communicator Cara Santa Maria to join the campaign, and they also filmed some mediocre videos of them with horrendous sound. But let's focus back on Will Ferrell. It just makes me so rage-filled.

They've got a lot more celebs committed to the campaign: Laura and Kate Mulleavy of RODARTE, artist Catherine Opie, author D.J. Waldie, landscape architect Mia Lehrer, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and KCRW DJ Anthony Valadez. And all of them are going to talk about how much they love the tar pits. Please, for the love of all that is advertising, produce the rest of them right.

And would it kill you to hire a sound guy?