Owen had its first ever Super Bowl Twitter Party on Sunday night, using the to collect our various musings on the best and worst of the night. It was a fun exercise and collected a nice diversity of thought. For example, after Doug opined that the Cars.com “creepy second head representing the buyer’s confidence” commercial did not exactly warm his heart to the brand, I shared my differing opinion.
While exchanges like this happened all night, they were noteworthy not so much for the quality of their content (in something as subjective as this, we are all amateurs and our opinions are valued as such) but more for the fact that these exchanges were happening at all. And they were, all over the internet. According to Peter Kafka at All Things D, there were somewhere between 11 and 16 million social media comments during the game. While the increasing number of platforms make such estimates increasingly difficult to gauge, all estimates point to a substantial uptick year-over-year. , the final three minutes of the game saw an average of 10,000 tweets per second, peaking at 12,233 and setting a new record for the site.
This phenomenon extends far outside the scope of athletics. Many people Sunday night followed the Super Bowl by the latest episode of “Downton Abbey,” and I’ve found that following certain Twitter hashtags while watching political debates is both entertaining and educational. This “second screen experience” vitally enhances the primary programming and programmers will become increasingly enamored with using it to enhance the viewing experience.
Now, back to the commercials. What did we learn? Well, sex still sells, and advertisers still know it. While it didn’t show up on any “best of” lists, H&M’s David Beckham underwear ad was the most talked about ad on social media, according to Bluefin. Other ads that used a gratuitous amount of sex (GoDaddy.com, Fiat and Teleflora) may cause a fair amount of groans and eye-rolling, but they still get talked about. And I challenge you to name another company that has seen a market share increase like what GoDaddy has experienced since their first eye candy Super Bowl ad.
Dogs were a big hit, as evidenced by USA Today’s Ad Meter results, 1. Doritos “Man Best Friend,” 2. Volkswagen “Dog/Star Wars,” 3. Skechers “Mr. Quiggly.” All three ads featured a dog (killing neighborhood cats and bribing his owner, losing weight to chase down VWs, and moonwalking, respectively). People still love watching animals do things humans do.
Another trend we’ll probably see more of is the crowdsourcing of content to fans/users. Of TiVo’s top 3 rated commercials, 1. Doritos “Man’s best Friend, 2. M&M’s “Ms. Brown,” & 3. Doritos “Sling Baby.” two came from Dorito’s highly successful crowdsourcing initiative. While crowdsourcing has its drawbacks, it does increase brand loyalty and investment among those who participate, and because the ads don’t have the budget to lazily rely on celebrity endorsers or fancy special effects, the core idea has to, you know, be good.
Releasing ads prior to the game has increasingly become the industry norm, for many of the reasons articulated in Megan Garber’s excellent Atlantic piece:
Super Bowl ads are no longer simply ads, in the Traditional Teevee sense; they’re campaigns that play out, strategically, over time. Instead of functioning as commercial broadcasts unto themselves, they’re acting more and more like episodic touchpoints for an expansive cultural conversation.
While the $3.5m price tag for a 30 second spot causes emotions ranging from bemused awe to consternation among many, the Super Bowl is a sort of last gasp of the monoculture that existed 30 years ago. As Garber explains:
Super Bowl ads are increasingly valuable because the kind of mass-conscious event they’re part of is increasingly rare. Mass-ness itself is increasingly rare. Overall, in the U.S., TV viewership is declining. Audiences are fragmenting. The Gladwellian connectors that used to bring us together — Lucy, J.R., Oscar – are departing, leaving individual impulse as the driver of our time.
That being said, their early release definitely erodes the thrill of seeing the ads for the first time during the game, enjoying them just as you enjoy a last minute scoring drive, in real time and among friends.
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