Four years ago, as CNN anchors John King and Wolf Blitzer analyzed the results rolling in across various state districts, extending the hours-long back-and-forth banter trying to parse who would win the 2020 U.S. presidential election, suddenly the broadcast was interrupted by 30 seconds of rain falling on leaves. 

These moments of calm were strategically placed ads by the Calm meditation app, which also sponsored CNN’s “key race alerts” throughout the night. These moves helped crown Calm the brand winner of the night, boosting its Twitter mentions by 248% and creating a winning advertising moment when most major brands were staying quiet. The eight-hour version of the spot currently has 58 million views. 

LOL. Genius. They bought this ad for the RTs and it’s really paying off. https://t.co/wOoCO28Oh0

— Alexis Ohanian ???? (@alexisohanian) November 4, 2020

Now Calm is back for election night 2024 and ready to once again provide serenity amid the political insanity. For Calm, the night has become its own form of the Super Bowl. “This is about as big as it gets in terms of showing up for people in a meaningful way,” says Blake Beers, Calm’s vice president of brand marketing. 

Silence is golden

Calm has been engaged here and there throughout the election campaign process. On June 27, after President Joe Biden’s notoriously weak debate performance, the brand tweeted, “now let’s all collectively turn off our TVs and go to sleep.” 

But on Election Day, the brand is stepping things up. 

TV viewers following the election will once again get serene ad breaks. This time Calm is dropping a fully silent ad to serve up some quiet amid the noise. The 30-second spots will run all day on CNN and ABC. The goal is to create a stark juxtaposition between the constant talking heads and inherent tension of the moment with complete silence.

“That silence is actually the thing that is going to draw people in,” Beers says. “We’re all in this chaos, and we’re just telling you to take a deep breath and really just have a moment to yourself. We’re excited to see how that resonates.”

Agnostic advertising

Election night is an anomaly in that it is one of the few remaining live TV events that draw massive audiences—the Super Bowl and the Oscars being two others—yet advertisers tend to keep it at arm’s length. As much hype as the notions of purpose and “woke corporations” have sparked, for the most part brands aim to avoid controversy and polarized anger. According to research firm Forrester, 82% of marketers are concerned about how to correctly market their brand during a heated presidential race. 

For Beers, the key to Calm’s success both in 2020 and today is based on the insight that it can aim to quell people’s emotions and alleviate their stress while consciously avoiding any partisan angle. 

“No matter what happens, half the country is going to be really upset the day after we get the results,” Beers says. “So we can be agnostic. Our goal is to be the calm corner of the internet during these moments, and to really create meaningful resources that are a credible place of respite.”

That credibility is key, and can be a fine line to walk for any advertiser in such a fractious, volatile moment, let alone a brand that operates in the mental health space. Beers says the goal behind its election night work is to balance between managing the sensitivity while not coming off as opportunistic. 

“We are very conscientious of not being too irreverent or disrespectful,” she says. “But the insight from 2020 was that there was so much resonance. We’ve built on it, and now what we’ve seen from a consumer standpoint is that people are coming to expect it from us.”

Now, let’s all take a deep breath.