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Super Bowl XLVI: The TV’s Not Alone..
Posted February 9, 2012
PromoAid is based near Chicago, so naturally we were gunning for the Bears to head to the Super Bowl. But alas, Giants versus Patriots, it was. No matter, because it was an epic game, and our support goes out to all our buddies in New York.
Sure, the Bowl is about the great game of football. But everyone tunes in just as much to watch the commercial breaks in between; a cool 111.3 million this year, making Super Bowl XLVI the most-watched telecast on record.
In 2012, the event certainly featured the old favorites: drinks, films and automobiles. From Coca-Cola to Kia, from Pepsi to Paramount, the ads this year did what they always do – showcase brands in an offbeat way to pique interest with a side of entertainment. And everyone has their favorite ad, right, that they shared at the office on Monday? What was yours?
To talk price, on average, 30 seconds meant as much as $3.5 million. Phew! That’s a lot of Doritos to sell. TV advertising, like most traditional media, is expensive. And moreover, it doesn’t necessarily provide hard data on ROI; you blast your ad, and hope consumers will buy your product so the revenue streams in.
Affordability is one advantage, among others we’ll tell you a little about, of nontraditional marketing. So how did brands integrate nontraditional tactics like digital and mobile into their Super Bowl campaigns this year? And more importantly, what were the benefits? 2012 certainly was a year of firsts for Super Bowl marketing…
Mobile: M&M’s over Manning?
The Interactive Advertising Bureau recently circulated a study entitled, “The Super Bowl Goes Mobile.” They asked viewers how online media would play a role during and after the big game. Roughly 74% planned to use their mobile devices during the game, mainly to post updates to social media.
But what about the ads, specifically? 18% of respondents said they’d watch the ads during or after the game on their computers, whereas only 8% planned to watch game-related content like highlights or replays online. When it came to digital media, fans were more likely to watch Madonna than Manning.
And one more statistic for the mobile marketers: 10% of participants intend to utilize their mobile device to get more information explicitly around Super Bowl ads during or after the game.
Quantify the mobile presence in this year’s Bowl: check. How did the smart brands integrate mobile marketing into their Super Bowl campaigns?
Ads from Cars.com, Toyota, Pepsi, Best Buy, among others, were enabled by Shazam, the audio recognition app, with specific calls-to-action. “Shazam” the Best Buy ad while it’s on TV, tag it, and watch…
Shazam CEO, Andrew Fisher, said, “The Super Bowl was our first major live network television event where we enabled people to interact with all aspects of the game, including the ads and halftime show.”
Location-based app, Foursquare, also got some game time. American Express and Pizza Hut teamed up to offer a pretty neat promotion: beginning a few hours before kickoff, and running until the end of the game, Foursquare users can check into a universal location called “Super Swarm Sunday”. When they do, they unlock the deal: when you spend at least $10 at Pizza Hut, you’ll get a $5 credit on your AMEX card.
For one more example, Chevy launched its Game Time app, which users download to participate in a giveaway of 20 Chevy vehicles. They even promoted it with a YouTube video that has over 196,000 views as of a couple days after the game.
The IAB had it right: the big brands certainly went nontraditional with their integration of mobile in 2012.
On The Offense With Social Media…
And then there’s social media. Of course, the brands are integrating their Super Bowl messaging and design into their social media properties, and monitoring them for interaction to respond and generate word-of-mouth.
But they also utilized social media to craft a longer campaign that extends beyond the actual game, to before and after. Through teaser videos, clips, outtakes, and extended versions, brands paced it out with various releases to prolong engagement in their Super Bowl ad campaigns.
Did you see the Honda CR-V ad with Mathew Broderick on Sunday? Great ad! Honda actually uploaded a 10-second teaser to YouTube on January 26th, followed by an extended version a few days later. Video 2 alone garnered around 11 million views by game time. Check it out…
More than a few brands this year, like Hyundai, Bridgestone, and General Motors, worked phases of testing through focus groups into the equation, and tweaked ads accordingly. This is, in part, due to past response to ads like Groupon’s commercial at last year’s Super Bowl that alluded to Tibet, and sparked a wildfire of disapproval on Twitter after it aired.
Second Screens.
And not to be forgotten: this year’s employment of social TV. Building upon the theme of “extending the viewing experience”, big brands like Coca-Cola and General Motors joined social TV companies like GetGlue to maximize exposure by serving ads not only on the television screen, but on “second screens”, like tablets and smartphones.
GetGlue is an app for your mobile device where you check in to entertainment you’re enjoying, like movies, TV shows and music. As a result, you grab discounts, receive recommendations based on your taste, and see what your friends are watching/listening to. No doubt if you were using it during this year’s Super Bowl, you saw some ads on GetGlue that may have just crossed your TV screen, as well.
The NY Giants On Facebook.
Advertisers weren’t the only ones dipping into nontraditional – the teams did too! The New York Giants ran a promotion they called the, “Tolly Cam”. Defensive end Dave Tollefson carried a FlipCam with him during the days around the Bowl. Fans saw the team in-flight to Indy, in the locker rooms, and more for a “backstage” pass to life as Super Bowl contender. The videos all lived on the team’s branded Facebook Fan Page.
The Super Bowl, like Black Friday and Christmas, is one of the major advertising opportunities for brands everywhere in American culture. With all the competition (on and off the field), what better time to think out of the box by launching nontraditional marketing strategies?
Who knows…by next year, we may just be watching the game on our smartphones. But until then, the brands that won big were the ones who integrated nontraditional tactics like mobile, social media, and discount promotions into their traditional TV campaigns.
P.S. Super Bowl 2013: Bears.