In advertising they say that “any publicity is good publicity”. Simply put, the main goal of advertising is to get people to take notice and, hopefully, remember the content that they saw from whatever advertising medium was used. While Internet advertising continues to become more powerful and mobile advertising on devices like smartphones and tablets continues to grow by leaps and bounds, the crown prince of advertising dollars is still the National Football League’s SuperBowl.
For SuperBowl XLVIII dozens of companies are going to be advertising, spending approximately $4 million for a half minute commercial during the game. That’s some huge money and of course limits these commercials to only the really “big hitters”, and you can be sure that they use everything at their disposal in order to make sure that it’s money well spent. However, being able to spend that much on TV doesn’t necessarily mean that you should. While some SuperBowl TV ads are very memorable, it’s the companies that take advantage of all media tools available that really make the biggest mark. Below are three examples from last year’s SuperBowl that might surprise you and will definitely, if you are a marketer, give you some insight into how engaging advertising linked to the SuperBowl is created. Enjoy.
Dunk me!
One of the most memorable ads run during last year’s Super Bowl wasn’t on TV at all but instead was on Facebook and Twitter. It was from Oreo, the cookie people, and it was thrown together at the spur of the moment after the lights went out down in New Orleans. Incredibly, the people from Mondelez, Oreo’s parent company, had been working around the clock for 100 days prior to the big game in order to make sure that they were ready to do something “different” should something “different” happen during the game.
They got their chance when the lights went out. Within 15 minutes of that happening, less time than it actually took to put them back on, Oreo had an advertisement on both Facebook and Twitter with the tagline “You can still dunk in the dark.” It was an instant hit and within an hour had been “retweeted” over 10,000 times and had garnered over 18,000 “likes” on Facebook.
For the love of horse!
One Super Bowl TV and you can always count to be endearing and engaging every year is from Anheuser-Busch and their Clydesdale team. Last year’s spot was entitled “Brotherhood” and featured the story of a baby Clydesdale growing up to become one of the mighty horses that pull the Anheuser-Busch beercart in the commercial. While riding by it recognizes the young man who trained it and stops, a gentle and touching moment that resonated with viewers.
That commercial actually started nearly seven months before it was shown, and the advertising company had to wait for an actual baby Clydesdale to be born before they could start shooting! They also had to find someone who was extremely comfortable around the giant Clydesdale horses as part of the commercial involved that person sleeping in a barn next to the baby horse. In the end was so well received that Anheuser-Busch is going with something similar this year about the relationship between a Clydesdale and one of the dogs that rides the Anheuser-Busch cart.
Jamaican me crazy, mon!
Volkswagen got into a short but heated problem last year after their “Get Happy” advertisement for their VW Passat was released during the big game. After a number of months of testing and five different concepts that were focused on showing the optimistic nature of Volkswagen drivers, they settled on and add that showed a Passat driver breaking into a Jamaican accent because he’s so happy.
It was cute, clever and well done. The problem was that many people saw it, as happens too often these days, as racist. Luckily for Volkswagen, Jamaicans themselves, including the Jamaican Tourism Board, stood by their side and said that not only was it not racist but also was quite endearing and that they had no problem with it at all. Problem averted.
Which, again, shows that sometimes even the worst publicity can be excellent publicity.
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