Social Media: The Super Bowl’s Other Big Score
The Super Bowl is so much more than a big game; to millions, it’s practically a national holiday. What is it about the Super Bowl that makes us all just a little crazy? Why is it such a unique bonding experience shared among friends, family and strangers around the world? No other televised event captures the enthusiasm, suspense, and engagement that the Super Bowl does, as was evidenced by this year’s game, with 111.3 million viewers glued to TV screens across the globe. This is the third time in three years that the Super Bowl has set the record for the most watched broadcast in U.S. television history.
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One of this year’s biggest groundbreaking Super Bowl developments was the NFL’s new Social Media Command Center, a 2,800 square-foot-space in downtown Indianapolis designed to help locally manage the world’s largest annual sports event. Strategists, techies and analysts monitored fans’ digital dialogue before, during and after the game via Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms, and were on deck to provide parking assistance, information about the city, and disaster preparedness.
The Command Center’s social media strategy was just one way the Super Bowl used real time data sharing to engage in social connection. For advertisers, this is the most important and anticipated marketing event of the year, having evolved from a one-way television broadcast to a worldwide interactive social media event. Because one 30-second TV slot costs $3.5 million, companies are realizing that in order to get the biggest bang for their buck, they need to do more than just put a one-way ad on television; many also used powerful and proven social media strategies.
Coca-Cola launched one of the more innovative interactive social media campaigns during the game. The iconic polar bears made their return, this time in a running video stream at CokePolarBowl.com. On the website, hosted within Facebook, the bears “watched” the Super Bowl, responding in real time to touchdowns, bad calls and even commercials for other products. Hundreds of reactions were programmed into the bears, which were cleverly puppeteered by human controllers. There were plenty of Twitter updates, and viewers were invited to upload their own photos to a live stream. Coca-Cola’s mission was to be everywhere consumers were on Super Bowl Sunday, present on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other social media sites.
Other companies provided sneak peeks into their Super Bowl media campaigns before the game. Some, like Lexus, Volkswagen and Bridgestone, posted online teasers for the full-length advertisements they ran during the game. Others, such as Century 21 and Coke, created Facebook apps for tablets and smartphones that offer behind-the-scenes footage and vouchers for free “victory” or “sympathy” colas.
Twitter was also a big player in this year’s Super Bowl ads. In many of the commercials, Twitter hash tags were prominently displayed during the commercials. This allowed twitter users to tweet about their favorite – or not-so favorite – commercials using the tag. While not all of the tweets may have been positive, this was a great way for the companies to monitor what their target audiences thought about their advertising message, giving them invaluable, constructive data for future advertising campaigns.
Smart marketers have realized the benefit of extending their multi-million dollar 30-second spots into social media campaigns that stretch out over several weeks and use a variety of platforms to get their message effectively delivered to consumers. Super Bowl lovers don’t have to limit their enthusiasm to their living rooms anymore; through the power of social media, we can now share our excitement with family, friends and fans around the world.
Maintaining a positive brand reputation is critical to success in today’s business world. With millions of Internet users commenting and sharing stories on a growing number of social media platforms, business and marketing professionals need to embrace the opportunity to learn the skills and techniques required to use social media to their advantage.
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