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05/02/2013 by
2793 views

The Best Of Super Bowl 2013: Commercials And Social Media

On Sunday night, the Baltimore Ravens beat the San Francisco 49ers 34 – 31 in the Super Bowl 2013 in New Orleans, concluding the American Football season. But of course, we as (social media) marketing enthusiasts are more interested in the ways brands leveraged the most sought after broadcasting opportunity on American television.

What were the best commercials, social media campaigns, and other marketingrelated stunts? Let’s take a look.

Commercials
In total, the Super Bowl 2013 commercials took up 47 minutes of airtime. Some of 30 second ad spots cost as much as 4 million dollars, which is half a million dollars more than last year, according to CBS. It is no surprise that in the last 10 years, 1.85 billion dollars was spent on Super Bowl advertising by a total of 130 brands.

A waste of money? Not when you factor in that only an average of 0.07% of viewers tunes away during the Super Bowl ads. With a viewer count of 108.41 million, that is no laughing matter.

Furthermore, a number of brands had already released their ads on their websites and YouTube, to keep in mind viewers watching on second screens and double the amount of views.

The commercials have become famous for their awesomeness, funniness, extravagance, and overal greatness. Commercials as commercials should be.

So which ones were some of the best of 2013?

Jeep’s “Whole Again”
If you’ve got Oprah, you’ve got a hit. Jeep’s ad is about the return of American troops, focusing on soldiers coming home to their families, while Oprah narrates the story. ““Because when you’re home, we’re more than a family—we’re a nation.” Try to watch this without tearing up just a little bit.

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Volkswagen’s Get In, Get Happy
Even though Jamaican accents don’t have anything to do with Volkswagen, they are (and this commercial is) guaranteed to put a smile on your face when you’re working a boring job.

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Best Buy’s Asking Amy
Comedy is everything. And Saturday Night Live’s comedians know good comedy. Naturally, adding one to your commercial is going to make it legendary. “What is the cloud? Where is the cloud? Are we in the cloud now?!” Amy Poehler sure has a lot of questions.

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Seth Rogen & Paul Rudd for Samsung
More funny people. Samsung has managed to cast comedy legends Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd (and that awesome lawyer dude from Breaking Bad) in this hilarious ad. Saying Super Bowl, or the team names, in the commercials is apparently not allowed. So Rogen and Rudd come up with some pretty good alternatives. San Francisco 50 Minus 1ers, enough said.

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Kia Sorento’s Space Babies
“Dad, where do babies come from?” Ah, that age old question never seizes to make parents uncomfortable. The daddy in this video lets his imagination run wild.

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Audi’s Prom
Audi, it’s all about bravery. And this commercial quite frankly kicks ass in the bravery department. Teenager goes to prom in his dad’s Audi, and suddenly feels like he’s king of the world

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Got Milk? & Dwayne Johnson
Got Milk’s first ever Super Bowl ad is pretty funny. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (in his PJs) sees he’s out of milk, and goes through great lengths to get some.

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Combining Commercials And Social Media
But what about social media? Well, plenty of brands saw the benefit of involving the audience with their ads through the social networks this year. Marketing Land did an analysis of social network use in ads by brands:

  • Twitter or hashtags were mentioned in 50 percent of ads
  • Facebook was mentioned in 8 percent of ads
  • Google+ was mentioned in 0 ads
  • Instagram was mentioned in 1 ad
  • YouTube was mentioned in 1 ad

So what exactly did some brands do? Let’s take a look!

Oreos & Instagram
Cookie or cream? Which one is the best? Oreos adds a call to action at the end of their commercial, that encourages viewers to show Oreos their favorite part on Instagram. The campaign got them tens of thousands new followers, which is a big win considering they started out with 2200. However, the ad space cost them 4 million dollars. Expensive for 20.000 followers, right?

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Coca Cola & Twitter
People love voting for stuff on Twitter. Coca Cola knows that. So why not let viewers vote for the ending of the commercial? (FYI, the showgirls won!)

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Social Media Use During Super Bowl
Of course there was also enough social media activity during the Super Bowl that wasn’t planned. Let’s take a look at some statistics.

Twitter
The moments generating the biggest peaks of Twitter conversation (measured in Tweets per minute, or TPM) during the game:
– Power outage: 231,500 TPM
– 108-yard kickoff return for Ravens TD by Jones: 185,000 TPM
– Clock expires; Ravens win: 183,000 TPM
– Jones catches 56 yard pass for Ravens TD (end of 2nd quarter): 168,000 TPM
– Gore TD for 49ers: 131,000 TPM

Facebook
The biggest moments on Facebook:
1. Ravens win the Super Bowl
2. Beyonce’s halftime performance
3. Blackout in the Superdome
4. Jacoby Jones’ 108-yard kickoff return for a Ravens touchdown (and Justin Tucker’s field goal kick)
5. Joe Flacco’s 56-yard pass to Jacoby Jones for a Ravens touchdown (and Justin Tucker’s field goal kick)
6. Joe Flacco’s 13-yard pass to Anquan Boldin for a Ravens touchdown (and Justin Tucker’s field goal kick)
7. Frank Gore’s six-yard run for a 49ers touchdown (and David Akers’ field goal kick)
8. Destiny’s Child surprise appearance with Beyonce during the halftime show
9. Ray Lewis’ retirement
10. David Akers’ field goal kick from 27-yard line

There is a noticeable difference between the times that are most prevalent on Twitter, and Facebook. Twitter users go for sudden, unexpected situations in real time, like the power outage, and Facebook users focus more on the big flashy moments, like the big win. Instagram was also alight during the game, with more than 3 million photos shared that mentioned “Super Bowl-themed keywords.” More than 450 photos were posted per second at peak.

Winner of the Social Media Super Bowl?
The absolute winner of brands using social media? Oreos. Not only were they the only brand to launch an Instagram campaign during the Super Bowl, they also were clever (and quick!) enough to see the sudden power blackout during the game as an ad opportunity. They posted the following photo on Twitter:

The picture has been retweeted more than 15.000 times, and has received over 5800 favorites. It is spontaneous content like this that will make a brand stand out, and it is why marketers have unanimously voted Oreos the winner of the Social Media Super Bowl.

My Opinion
All in all, the commercials were great. I’m a big comedy fan, so seeing brands actively involve my favorite comedy actors in their commercials might have affected my enthusiasm. Making people laugh, or playing on their emotions in any way for that matter, is a sure way to gain their attention, so brands like Samsung, Best Buy, and Jeep have got it covered.

Viewers want to see something that gets to them, moves them in some way, and the mentioned brands and commercials all do this.

Giving people a call to action makes these commercials even more brilliant. For that reason I wholeheartedly agree that Oreos is the big winner of this year’s brand Super Bowl.

People love photos, that has been proven several times by the success of Instagram and the photo features networks like Facebook and Twitter have launched. Using Instagram in your Super Bowl campaign, and being the only brand that does so, means only good publicity for Oreos.

I can only say one thing about topping this all off with an act of sheer genius during the power outage: bravo!

Your Opinion
What do you think of the commercials and the social media stunts? Which one is your favorite?

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About the author
Marion aan ‘t Goor is a Social Media Consultant at Share Force One. You can connect with Marion via Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

 

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