08 Feb Which Brands Won the Not-So-Social Super Bowl
Super Bowl 50 won’t go down as the most exciting game ever played. Nor will it go down as the social Super Bowl, as very few of the ads had social tie-ins. But the few notable exceptions show how powerful social media can be at extending a message.
In fact, the most tweeted brand of the Super Bowl didn’t even buy an ad during the game (wise move perhaps, given their $5m price tag). Esurance instead chose to give away $1m to people who retweeted their hashtag. It was a blatant promotion, but lots of folks took the bait.
The trophy’s been awarded, but we still have $250K to give away. #EsuranceSweepstakes #SB50 pic.twitter.com/FdAfQ84q1O
— Esurance (@esurance) February 8, 2016
Esurance ended up with almost 4x more tweets than any other brand during the game, with over 835,000 of them. Doritos lit up social media through quality commercials (particularly the ultrasound spot) and they were rewarded with over 238,000 tweets.
Coming too late in the game to reach the top ten in tweets, Budweiser had a strong #GiveADamn hashtag tied to their equally strong Helen Mirren spot against drunk driving. They even paid Twitter a reported $1m for a custom emoji set to help spread the message. Good marketing, although a fair percentage of the Twitterati found it hard to believe that Mirren drinks Bud.
