Archive for the ‘Super Bowl’ Category
The Real Winner of the Super Bowl: Google
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010It’s undeniable that the Saints and the people of New Orleans were the real winners of Sunday’s Super Bowl XLIV, but there was also a different battle being waged— not on the gridiron, but in 30 and 60-second intervals between stints of athletic prowess – the commercials.
Yes, the storied Super Bowl commercials were out in full force again this year, aiming to bring laughter, thought, and that sudden urge to reach for one’s wallet through the TV screen and into the real world. Where typical Nielsen ratings and surveys drop off, the world of social media will step up to fill the data void.
Using Radian6, we tracked Tweet volume of the top brands using a combination search of “Super Bowl” + “Brand Name” and here’s what we found . . .
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Chatter surrounding Google’s first-ever television venture, dubbed “Parisian Love,” overshadowed that of even the second-place finisher, Doritos, which ran more than four ads total during the game. Brands such as Audi, Bud Light, GoDaddy.com, and others saw continued success via the buzz and heightened talk around their brands in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl. One advertisement that got a good deal of attention around the Web but didn’t translate into quite as much of an actual reaction on game day was the Focus on the Family 30-second piece featuring Heisman Trophy winner/ Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother Pam Tebow.
Looking at brand mentions on game day, we were able to expand beyond Twitter to blogs, forums and other social sites to pull in brand mentions from a wider spectrum. The numbers collected go on to back up their heightened ranks in the Twitter mentions and show that those ads deemed important enough to tweet about were also important enough to be shared through other social media tools. The numbers broke down like this:
In order to see how the discussions moved through other social media channels, we widened our search for a period of 72 hours after the game and found some interesting aftershocks that we attribute to a second wave of users seeing and talking about the ads.
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Likewise, you can see the downstream effects of social sharing in the number of brand mention and YouTube video views for some of the most-popular ads. The Super Bowl ad game isn’t just a one-time impression number in the days of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, but instead is a game of staying power and resonance with users.
Audi clearly benefitted from the long-tail discussion of their Green Police spot in the days following the Super Bowl as it jumped in the rankings and pushed Tebow’s Focus on the Family spot off the top five.
So, while the Saints may have taken home the Lombardi Trophy, Google can sit back and enjoy their social Web win with their first foray into television advertising. Not only did they see the largest volume of Tweets the day of the game, they also saw the largest aftershock in the following days. In fact, for every tweet mentioning Google since the Super Bowl, they also received .7 discussions via blogs – that’s a pretty good rate.
So– well done, Google. But we already can’t wait for next year . . . who knows, maybe the answer to “Who Dat?” will be the Seahawks.
Maybe You Don’t Have to Spend (As Much) Money to Make Money
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
When Pepsi announced their plans to forgo their annual bout with Coca-Cola on the Super Bowl airwaves and instead opted for a larger social media spend, the Web went nuts. Now, with the “big game” looming ever larger in our sight lines, the actual buzz has been built up to the point where you can’t help but wonder exactly how all this is all going to shake out on the impressions and ROI end.
Alterian already dove into the metrics side of things with their study on Measuring the Effectiveness of Super Bowl Advertising Using Social Media, which looked at things like mentions and sentiment, but no one is really making any assumptions about how the plan will pay off in the end (or how many folks will be demanding a refund in some possible cases).
It might surprise some (and give others a “No crap, Ron” moment) that my background is in public relations, not social media. From a PR/messaging angle, this is genius. I can’t tell you how many of my Google reader items in the past month or so have been about Pepsi’s decision to run this campaign. For every Ad Age piece, there are 10 smaller publications running the release or quoting a larger outlet – the reach is amazing. Even friends and family who I’m fairly certain know more about how to fix a typewriter than about social media have brought the Pepsi campaign up in conversation, so maybe there’s a win in here buried under the dollar signs.
In a time where nearly 51% of people say they like the commercials more than the action on the gridiron, taking what essentially is paying for eyeballs to see your brand can seem like a bit of a leap – and it is, people (and that’s coming from someone who works in social media). However, I’m sure the minds behind this endeavor weighed the costs and benefits of such an action, just like any responsible brand would do— whether they was used their own internal monitoring and analysis or got analysis from an outside agency.
Essentially, this move will come down to three factors:
- Staying power – How long will the buzz around the Refresh Project continue after the hype about Pepsi not running Super Bowl ads dies down?
- Targeting – Are these social media efforts really going to fall onto the digital ears of those that Pepsi is trying to reach and, more importantly, will they get the message?
- Goals – Pepsi hasn’t published any goals (duh) and most of us probably don’t have any insight into exactly what sort of ROI they expect from this decision, but you can rest easily knowing that SCG (along with anyone else with an analytics department) will be crunching the numbers post-game to see what kind of comparisons we can make.
The $20 million Refresh Project comes out to the equivalent of about 7 Super Bowl ads at the estimated $3 million per 30-second spot rate that most are buying at – well below their $33 million dollar spend in 2009, so there’s some cost-cutting going on, that’s for sure. What’s still left to be decided is whether that cost savings, when added to their Super Bowl concert series and social media campaign, will equal a win for the Pepsi team. The truth is in the numbers, and the numbers are flying out faster than a pass from Peyton Manning.
More to come here, folks— so stay tuned.
