Although Malcom Smith is a well deserved MVP for the Seattle Seahawks domination over the Denver Broncos on Sunday, the game was not the event making buzz. Even with the lack luster combination of football and advertising, Sunday's Super Bowl set a record with the audience reaching 111.49 million (surpassing 111.35 million viewers from 2012 Super Bowl against the Giants and Patriots). Fox even stated that the game had more viewers than "any other television program in US history." Pretty anti-climatic outcome for all those viewers if you ask me. However while many considered the ads dull, major corporations turned to a new form of advertising that I had expected to see this year, a tie between social media and traditional marketing.
According to CNN money, 57% of Super Bowl commercials featured hashtags. Many companies made the right choice by getting on the hashtag bandwagon; over 25.3 million tweets related to the Super Bowl happened over the course of the game. Personally, there were two advertising MVPs for this game.
1. Esurance (#EsuranceSave30)
This genius commercial aired just after the game with a simple promise to save people money on insurance. They proved this and generated buzz by promising to give away all the money they had saved by purchasing the first ad after the SuperBowl, a whopping $1.5 million to one lucky tweeter. As of yesterday, over 2 million tweets have included the #EsuaranceSave30. Keep expecting to see this continue until Wednesday night when the winner is revealed on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Esurance did a fantastic job of integrating the traditional Super Bowl advertising with the growing social media outlet. However, does this mean that more people will switch to Esurance? Only time will tell but one thing is for sure, Esurance definitely generated buzz!
2. Chevrolet ("Life")
This is not the traditional ad one would have expected to see at the Super Bowl. Most companies are all about creating clever commercials to be shared over and over between friends and family, however, Chevrolet decided to invoke emotion to get the attention of consumers and I love it! They made us cry, relate, understand their message and most of all they made us want to do more. Chevrolet teamed up with the American Cancer Society and created the #PurpleYourProfile campaign to not only increase brand awareness but inspire "facebookers" to get involved. How could you not take the call to action and purple your profile in honor of World Cancer Day? Better yet, Chevrolet will donate $1 for every purple profile up to $1 million. I felt like part of a group and purpose yesterday when I saw all the purple profile pictures and that was exactly the goal Chevrolet and the American Cancer Society had in mind. Chevrolet raised cancer and brand awareness with perfectly subtle advertising.
There were many other noteworthy competitors, but to me personally these two took the MVP awards. I'll let you be the judge of your favorites.
I completely agree with your two MVPs. Everyone was using the Esurance hashtag on Twitter and almost everyone changed their profile picture to a purple tint on Facebook. It's amazing to see so many people get involved in something because of social media marketing.
I completely agree with your two MVPs. Everyone was using the Esurance hashtag on Twitter and almost everyone changed their profile picture to a purple tint on Facebook. It's amazing to see so many people get involved in something because of social media marketing.
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