Marketing Lessons from this Year’s Super Bowl Commercials and Social Media Frenzy

This year’s Super Bowl is in the history books. However, the marketing and advertising world is still talking about the Super Bowl Commercials. The marketing analysts are working overtime, still analysing the ads, their consumer appeal and social quotient; all long after the football analysts are done picking apart the defence and offense on the field.

The Pre-Game Show

This year more Super Bowl ads were released before game day than any other year. There is something to be said about creating buzz ahead of time, but it just seems so anticlimactic to be able to watch the commercials before game time. Many of the Super Bowl Commercials were broadcast the week before the Super Bowl on social media sites. It does lengthen the time, but it takes the surprise out of seeing it during the Super Bowl and the “special” factor is no longer there.  If you are going to spend $4 million US dollars for a 30 second commercial spot, you do have to make the most out of the investment but it just doesn’t seem to make send to release the commercials ahead of time when they are often the focal point of watching the Super Bowl.

Other brands were successful in garnering attention with their Super Bowl ads that were banned from being aired. SodaStream’s commercial with Scarlett Johansson was one of the most talked about commercials. Instead of being banned from being too risqué, it was banned because they called out two of the Super Bowl’s biggest advertisers by saying, “sorry Coke and Pepsi”.

M&M Mars Company tried a different pre-game strategy with a cliff-hanger commercial airing before the Super Bowl that showed the Yellow M&M being kidnapped. The “ransom note” told the audience to find out what happens to Yellow on February 2^nd. The conclusion was a decidedly anticlimactic when we find out he was kidnapped by the Russian mob who plans to crush him up and put him on ice cream.

Social Media & Real Time Marketing

Evidently the real time marketing and Twitter Super Bowl fizzled out faster than the Bronco’s offense did. Oreo was last year’s Super Bowl star in Twitter’s real time marketing conversation Tweeted at the very beginning of the Super Bowl and many other brands followed suit.

The companies that did try to emulate Oreo’s famously successful tweet during the Super Bowl last year failed terribly at it. JCPenny made a play for attention and evidently didn’t think it through very well. It backfired and let to a host of other companies tweeting to them and each other. Why would or should consumers care?

Super Bowl Commercial Winners and Losers

Determining the Super Bowl ad winners and losers is difficult. It can be somewhat subjective and also ultimately depends on each company’s sales and branding lift. USA Today’s ad meter  had Budweiser’s Puppy Love Commercial in the # 1 spot of their top 10:

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