Score a Touchdown with Social Media
Pin ItEveryone knows that the Super Bowl is the Mecca for advertising and commercials. In recent years, even these ads have began to take advantage of social media and web media. Driving traffic and buzz to the web is an extremely effective method to get customers talking about your product.
The company that first effectively used the Super Bowl to drive web traffic and create a buzz online was GoDaddy.com. By using racy ads on the TV and saying the “unrated” version of the ad was available online, they were getting viewers to go check out their website and tell others about what they saw. Their most clever ad didn’t even include anything racy, they simply said that online there was a racy ad and showed a group of people ignoring a football game to watch the ad on the computer.
From GoDaddy, Super Bowl ads have grown out and almost universally incorporate social media. Now ads will refer to their Twitter account or their related Facebook page. Even Twitter hashtags show up to create a conversation for viewers. With the rise in smartphones fans have access to the web wherever they are watching the game.
Youtube has been a boon for Super Bowl commercials. What is better for these companies than having their 1 minutes spots online as soon as the game is over. This season, Honda has taken the Youtube strategy and flipped it on its ear. Instead of creating buzz with their ads during the Super Bowl, Honda started early releasing a 10 second clip of their ad for the CR-V featuring Mathew Broderick as Ferris Bueller.
Only giving the date of the Super Bowl, the internet was abuzz trying to figure out if it was an ad or if it was a sequel to the beloved 80’s movie. The full length version was later posted; it is an excellent homage to the original film.
Interestingly, they used Youtube to preempt the Super Bowl with their ads in an attempt to stand out in the crowd. With all of the ads that will play, it is easy for one ad to get lost in the crowd. Several other companies are doing similar things, with Volkswagen already releasing their sequel to their popular Darth Vader commercial from last year.
It is easy to see how some of the most popular ad campaigns from the past would function in the age of social media. Budweiser would certainly be promoting #wazzzzzzup after the legendary commercial from 2000. The 1984 Apple commercial seems perfectly positioned in the age of Anonymous, social media and revolution and would certainly get plenty of debate.
Social media is no longer a background concern for companies when planning advertisements. They have to consider how to drive customers to their social media platforms and how to create buzz on the internet. The best ads are designed with social media at the core of the campaign so the products can be integrated across multiple platforms and viewers can drive discussion online and off. Social media is the future of advertising and the Super Bowl is where the biggest ads show up.