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Matthew Burns:
We all remember the car chase. Okay, so O.J. Simpson is not a brand.

Stephen Semple:
I want you to put the glove on. That’s all I’m saying.

Matthew Burns:
Listen, if the glove don’t fit, you must acquit. Really good brandable chunks came out of that trial, but we’re not going to talk about the trial. We are actually going to talk about something else. Steve found some data that I love. But we’re going to talk about Broncos and pizza and the chase, so you might as well just jump into this one, Steve.

Stephen Semple:
So this is crazy, and it speaks to a whole pile of things. And one of the things is sometimes how these unexpected weird things can have actually major impacts. And it’s also part of the reason why it can be very, very difficult to track results on things because these weird things happen. So one of the weird things that happened was we all remember if we’re of a certain age, the car chase. So here was O.J. Simpson, who was, look, we also forget he was a beloved celebrity. He was in Samsonite commercials and car rental commercials, and he was this amazing football player and he had these fun things and police academy movies. And look, he was loved. He was a loved celebrity. And then all of a sudden, one day on television, he’s in the back of a white Ford Bronco being chased by I forget how many police cars down the LA Freeway.

Matthew Burns:
It was like a four hour chase.

Stephen Semple:
Here’s how engaged people were. It happened over dinner time and the best sales day on record for Domino’s Pizza was that day.

Matthew Burns:
Ever.

Stephen Semple:
Ever. In the history of pizza sales, because people did not want to step away from the television. They were watching this. They were watching this live thing that they couldn’t believe, and they were so engrossed. They were like, honey, order pizza. I’m not getting away from the fricking tv. Have it delivered.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah. Oh my God,

Stephen Semple:
We’re not making anything. We’re getting pizza delivered. Best sales day for pizza on that day. That’s how much of a shared and engrossed experience, we talk about sticky sales stories, that was a story we were watching unfold before our eyes that we could not step away from.

Matthew Burns:
I love what you said there too, it’s a shared experience. This is something that, we’re talking about this now.  Listen, we find ways with our clients to work in shared experience into a lot of the advertising that we do, because it allows affinity groups of people to follow our brands. And this was an affinity group like no other. None of those people outside of the fact that they knew O.J. Simpson existed, had anything else that everybody was connected with except for O.J. It was an incredible affinity group and a massive shared experience.

Stephen Semple:
And we’ll come back and talk a little bit more about Taylor Swift and football and shared experience in a moment, but it was a white two-door Ford Bronco.

Matthew Burns:
That’s right.

Stephen Semple:
Guess what Ford had been planning on doing before this little car chase happened? They were planning on actually discontinuing the two-door Ford Bronco. They extended it by a couple of years.

Matthew Burns:
The manufacturing of that vehicle?

Stephen Semple:
Yeah, because interest in sales and Ford Bronco spiked following that of the two-door.

Matthew Burns:
Have you seen the new Ford Broncos that are out now? They’re beautiful vehicles.

Stephen Semple:
They are. But I’m talking that specific two-door white one. And if you go to Kelley Blue Book and you take a look up that year, if you can get that year’s Ford Bronco White two-door, it’s sold at a premium price.

Matthew Burns:
Oh, damn.

Stephen Semple:
Now I want to share this. This was somebody being chased by the police.

Matthew Burns:
Right. Exactly.

Stephen Semple:
On live television. It wasn’t like a really positive event, but yet in our psyche. And no one says, Hey, why do you want the white two door Ford Bronco? It’s like, I don’t want to be chased down the LA Freeway just like O.J. No one’s ever going to say that, but there’s something about that event that we want to be connected to, right? It’s crazy.

Matthew Burns:
A huge powerful story. Because it didn’t last for just those four hours. I mean, yes, the chase did this thing, but I mean the trial of the century.

Stephen Semple:
Trial of the century, the chase was replayed many times as part of the trailers for the trial. The trial was showing on live television and all this other craziness all around it, right?

Matthew Burns:
Yeah. Like you said, anybody that was around back then who was old enough to care, we all know that experience. We all watched, if not the whole thing. Now we’re Canadian. So I definitely didn’t watch the whole thing, but I definitely was wondering what the heck was going on and whether or not there was going to be an awesome end or a fiery crashing end. You don’t know with the car chase, and it was the most civil car chase I’ve ever seen, from memory, just slowly 60 miles an hour, 50 miles an hour, not a hundred miles an hour down the highway, just meandering.

Stephen Semple:
It was spoofed on Seinfeld. There was a Seinfeld episode where they spoofed it, right?

Matthew Burns:
Oh yes, that’s right.

Stephen Semple:
Where Kramer was driving the car.

Matthew Burns:
But a story that everybody knows and shares.

Stephen Semple:
Yeah, and it had this weird impact in these funny places and this concept of shared experience. Look, the most successful entertainer of our day, Taylor Swift really understands how to tap into that shared experience.

Matthew Burns:
Yes, she does.

Stephen Semple:
She releases her songs in a very specific way so that her deep fans can all listen to the new release together at the same time. Shared experience. And her fans are so much in the shared experiences that the football games that Taylor Swift would appear at, viewership went up dramatically. And it wasn’t just because people wanted to see a clip of Taylor Swift. They wanted to share an experience with Taylor Swift. I get to watch the same game she’s watching at the same time, along with all the fans, a massive shared experience.

Matthew Burns:
My best friend, his wife and daughter are big Taylor Swift fans. And when he’s home, he works on oil rigs down in Mexico now down in the Gulf. And so he’s gone for four weeks, comes back for four weeks, and at the end of those four weeks he comes back. We try to spend the weekends together and so on Sundays we’ll go over and we’ll hang out. We’ll have a dinner. During the fall when there was a Chiefs game on my butt was — I hate watching football. And every time that Swift appeared on screen,  I’m like, “Oh my God!” So yeah, a hundred percent. And she’s brilliant at that. But I think it’s so important that people realize the power of that.

It’s hugely powerful. So you bringing this up and saying, “Hey, listen, I know it’s not really, it’s not an ad except for it resulted in the best pizza day ever for Domino’s, for revenue, and it revitalized a car brand for a couple of years.” And all of a sudden, the new ones are one of the most breathtaking Fords that they’ve put out a long time. It’s refreshing, right? Holy crap. Talk about, “Oh, thank God. O.J.’s an idiot. Totally saved our month.” Oh my God, that’s incredible. We both believe this, but there’s so much power in what a really good story is. And the more fantastical the story, the more powerful the story, the more emotionally invested we are in the story. This is what happens.

Stephen Semple:
And there’s no focus group on the planet that would say the reason why I bought a two-door white four Bronco of that year is because of O.J. Simpson driving down the road and being chased. No one is going to say that ever.

Matthew Burns:
You’re right.

Stephen Semple:
Ever, ever, ever. And this is one of the challenges when we look at winning the heart, the heart is not measurable, because the heart is screwed up and totally illogical. It is crazy. You cannot measure it. And yet everybody goes, well, I want to measure how effective the ads are half the time. You can’t.

Matthew Burns:
I love how powerful of a message that is. If you’ve heard that message, understand it really well. Listen, everybody dated a crazy person in high school and there was no reason, except for something really cool happened right before you decided to ask first thing, and then you realize that three weeks later and you were gone. But anyway, that’s not the point. The point is it made you move. Fantastic. Thank you so much for this one, Steve. Again, you like to see things from a very unique angle. I think it’s amazing.

Guys, if you have another, really, if you want to hear another story, bring it up in the comments. Guys, we really do listen to you. We want to be able to give you back what you’re asking for. So let us know what you want us to talk about. We’re there for you. Steve, thank you for another very weird, interesting way of looking at Sticky Sales Stories. I always appreciate you and we’ll see everybody in the next episode.

Stephen Semple:
The glove don’t fit. You must acquit!

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