Smart Marketing: Super Bowl Commercials

I did some research on Super Bowl ads today. Every year I look forward to the ads and thanks to social media, you can find a lot of the ads (or parts of the ads) online in advance of the big game. The cost of an ad in this year’s Super Bowl is between $2.5 - $2.7 Million per 30 second spot. The reason an ad costs so much is mostly because of the size of the audience watching the Super Bowl but also because the ads themselves get extended shelf life because news programs feature the “top ads” and Internet websites carry the ads.

This year I’ve also found several categories that correspond with the ads such as UGC, Facebook components, and Stunts - i.e. “banned” commercials. I’ve listed this all below with some commentary.

Superbowl Ads via Facebook

Budweiser – www.facebook.com/budweiser

Budweiser made it so if you became a fan of their Facebook page, you could vote on what commercial got picked to run during the Superbowl.

Coke – www.facebook.com/coke

Coke took a very active Social Media approach to their Super Bowl ads in response to Pepsi pulling their Super Bowl ads in favor of digital marketing. Coke took the social part literal and geared some extensive social media marketing around their Super Bowl ads towards social cause. Per an article I read: "Coke plans to give up to $500,000 to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and will raise half of that money through a campaign tied to the company’s Facebook page. As of Wednesday, Coke started offering branded virtual gifts that Facebook users can send to their friends for free. For each gift sent, Coke will donate $1 to the Boys & Girls Club."

UGC

Doritos – Crash the Superbowl - http://bit.ly/9fBX0U
Career Builder – HireMyTVad - http://bit.ly/9qvwFk

These guys took the same idea as Doritos. And the results are really good. I personally love the one called "Casual Friday." Also, there is one they label Too Hot for TV for some added social media value. Here is what I read about this program: "Close to 1,000 entries were submitted to the HireMyTVAd contest and while CareerBuilder originally set out to hire only one concept, in the end, three ideas were selected and each received a $100,000 prize."

Banned – These videos go for the “banned from the Super Bowl” stunt-type exposure. The KGB one is really good and the GoDaddy one is typical of GoDaddy’s annual Super Bowl campaign.

GoDaddy – (Lola) http://bit.ly/92OpbP
KGB – http://bit.ly/9UcFH7

Teasers

Dockers – http://bit.ly/cs4FuJ

No idea what this will look like, but notice the integration of the Shazam iPhone app in this one. I tried to test it but the clip is too short to see what is supposed to come up on Shazam.

eTrade (outtakes) - http://bit.ly/9xX69h

I love this. It’s an “outtakes” real for the eTrade babies.

Bridgestone – http://bit.ly/a9uoOQ

Full Commercials

ManCrunch - http://bit.ly/a7gdao

This is the commercial getting all the press this week because it was rejected by CBS to run on the Super Bowl. They claim it’s not a stunt and they were really prepared to spend $2.7 Million to run it. They also argue that CBS is allowing a politically charged "Focus on the Family" commercial to air that is very Right Wing and Pro-Life so why can’t they air this? I tried to find that Pro-Life commercial but it wasn’t available yet.