By Julian Steinforth, Expedition PR
With more than 111 million viewers glued to the TV, traditionally the Super Bowl has been the launch pad for the year’s most exciting TV ads. But today TV is not the only star of a successful Super Bowl marketing campaign. Weeks prior to the game kick-off, marketers start drumming up excitement and even crowdsource content from audiences for their campaigns on YouTube. While the Super Bowls draws millions of viewers on game day, YouTube engages more than 1 billion unique users each month. According to ComScore, people are willing to spend 2.7 minutes watching an online video.
Last year Mashable published a YouTube report stating that Super Bowl ads shown before the Big Game generate 600 percent more views. Ads (including teasers) related to the game were viewed more than 66 million times on YouTube prior to Super Bowl Sunday.
Some brands launched campaigns that engaged the audience prior to the game. One example is Frito-Lay’s Doritos brand and its “Crash the Super Bowl” campaign that airs multiple ads that were sourced and selected by fans.
The idea behind Frito- Lay’s Doritos hosted “Crash the Super Bowl” challenge is that fans can submit commercials and the online community votes which spot will be shown during the next Super Bowl. Next to the fan pick a second spot is picked by the company’s marketing board. To be able to vote for one of the spots, users need to connect with their Facebook profile and spread the video on social media. Last year’s popular vote winners – “Goat 4 Sale”, “Fashionista Daddy” and “Road Chip” – were aired during the Super Bowl and got rave reviews by fans and critics alike.
AdWeek reported that Doritos was the most mentioned brand across all social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, WordPress and YouTube) during the Super Bowl, based on research by Attensity Media. Runner ups were Audi and Calvin Klein.
This year’s Crash the Super Bowl”, which had started last October, just unveiled the five finalists. Now fans can vote until the end of the month and share the videos they like on YouTube and other social media channels.
Another example of engaging the audience with a Super Bowl campaign is Coca-Cola’s Coke Chase, an interactive commercial in which three teams (Cowboys, Showgirls, and Badlanders) race to get a Coca Cola bottle. The audience could pick a team they wanted to win and while sharing their favorite team online it was possible to unlock content, including 50,000 coupons for free bottles of Coke. The team that got the most votes was shown in the final commercial that showed the outcome of the race. By giving fans the opportunity to determine the outcome of the chase for the Coke bottle, Coca-Cola had created one of the most anticipated commercials during the Super Bowl.
Watch out for more campaigns that engage fans via crowdsourced content via YouTube for this year’s Super Bowl. It is going to be an exciting Super Bowl game, not just on the field.