The time has come where we have all gathered around our TVs – to watch a game being played out on the field for the world to watch.
Okay, you may be thinking of the Super Bowl, but in reality, I am talking about the campaigns and advertisements that were being executed around the big game. This Super Bowl was unlike any other – being played during a global pandemic, forcing everyone to adjust to the new normal and bring to the table new, fresh, creative, and inspiring ideas.
Each year, I try to look at the campaigns from a social media perspective – to see what trends, issues, challenges, and opportunities the event can bring to my work in and out of the classroom.
If you want to check out the top commercials and ads, I’d recommend reading this great article from Adweek.
Here are some trends I saw from the Super Bowl.
It’s all about the data. I feel one of the great things that we have today is access to data. I am very grateful to Talkwalker for providing free access to their dashboard for users to see what is trending, and which brands “won” the social media conversation.
This is a great tool to share w/ students about the metrics of share of reach, engagement, and sentiment to name a few. It’s interesting to see which brands had the most positive sentiment, and which ones did not.
You do not need a lot of time to create a win. Social media is all about capturing the attention of their audience, and if there was a prize for the brand that did this the fastest – it was reddit. They created a five second ad to celebrate the Gamestop stock situation – and received a lot of praise from everyone because of it.
I was surprised Robinhood had a commercial here as well – in light of everything! As to be expected, many people had various reactions to the ad, as discussed in this article.
Responses and more happening on social. GM, Ford, and Audi all bring their A-game to the Super Bowl.
GM had a commercial advertising their new electric car, while making fun of Norway. Audi was not going to let this slide, and had their own video to respond to GM:
We got to see a lot of other brands engage with each other on social – to create more brand awareness for their audiences especially on Twitter, like Miracle-Gro and State Farm to name a few. I think these are good to see, especially to promote a brand voice and tie this into their overall creative strategy here for a campaign like this.
However, there were some other brands that did this (hint, he “passed” away during last year’s event) that appeared to be trying to hard to create engagement. There is a fine balance between being engaged, and being too engaged. You have to listen and monitor the overall environment, while being empathetic to what people want and expect to see.
Some things still happen even in 2021. This is basic, BASIC social media practices. If you have a Super Bowl, and you know people are going to be searching for your brand on social – you have to not only have a presence on each of these channels, but have an active account.
I do not think Dexcom got the memo on this, because with their commercial with actor and singer Nick Jonas, this was their Twitter feed. Such a missed opportunity and it’s extremely surprising to see this happen, especially in 2021!
Integrating cross platform CTAs. I think there were several brands who did a really good job in making sure to tie in offline integrations as part of their social media campaigns from their ads.
Supporting small businesses that have been impacted by the global pandemic was a big focus with these particular ads. Sesame Street x Door Dash did this for their campaign, where they said for every order they get, they will donate $ to the Sesame Workshop. Uber Eats also did this as well for their campaign.
However, I felt what Indeed did was brilliant. They really touched on the challenge of finding a job after losing one, or how difficult it is when you are starting out in your career. As a professor who has been mentoring students in this area, I know this first hand as a topic on every student’s mind as graduation is getting closer.
What Indeed did is not only create a great commercial, but on Twitter, they were sharing open job positions for people to apply to. What a great way to integrate a social media platform to your ad!
Pop culture (and humor) was integrated throughout certain commercials. We can all see what 2020 brought to the table, and many brands were able to integrate this in their commercial. However, M&Ms brought it to light for me personally when they had a segment in the commercial where a young woman was apologizing to another for being named Karen.
I have to say, my name has become quite tied to pop culture (perhaps for not the most popular reasons!), so of course I had to laugh at this. To my surprise, M&Ms was very engaged with their community on Twitter – along with other brands such as Velveeta and others.
I see you there too, M&Ms social media team!
Some brands embraced challenges on Tiktok. One of the things I was really surprised to see – compared to last year – was now there were not many activations and integrations (or at least shared or noted in the ad’s CTAs) for TikTok.
I was *REALLY* surprised with the missed opportunity with Miracle-Gro and how they did not capitalize on doing a TikTok Challenge with John Travolta. Maybe they did and I didn’t see it – but with John trying to dance in the commercial – it would have been great to have some sort of challenge here to extend this here to TikTok.
Pepsi did have one to promote their Halftime Challenge – but I did not see a lot of promotion of this across the different social media channels. If a brand wants to drive interaction and engagement, you have to make sure to let people know 1) what you want them to do, 2) where they need to go, and 3) what the benefits and experiences will be like.
Doritos had their FlatLife challenge trending (and promoted) on TikTok – but their commercial fell a little flat in my opinion. Other brands that were on TikTok with various challenges included TurboTax.
The best Super Bowl placement did not happen during the game. WHAT? Did I just say that? I did. And it’s true! I say this because Ryan Reynolds, David Beckham, and Diddy all created the best placement with all of the successful and modern practices needed today in social media marketing.
All three collaborated together to create a video (that was pretty funny!) about how they would be supporting mixologists during the global pandemic.
Why is this the best from Super Bowl 2021? It’s creative. Funny. Memorable. Social FIRST approach. And – best of all – supporting a group of professionals significantly impacted as well by the global pandemic.
Ryan, Diddy, and David OWNED this space even before the game began. Everyone knew there would be tons of competition during the game for brands and ads, but what about before? That’s the magic of this commercial. You are able to recall AND recognize this immediately.
Well done, gentleman.
So, as you can see here, there are a lot of takeaways here for the Super Bowl. Was it the best ever? I think it was different and while there were some wins and amusing campaigns, there were some missed opportunities. To summarize, some of the missed opportunities included:
- Animals (I missed the Budweiser commercials for sure!) and humor. We all knew 2020 was a tough year, and this would have been the time to acknowledge this a bit more.
- Integration across different social media channels (more needed to be done here)
- Purpose driven initiative that were tied CTAs to business (Sesame Street, Indeed + Ryan’s commercial did this, but others did not)
Let me know what you think! Hope all is well and have a great day.
Best Wishes,
