Game on – and it’s not about football
On Feb. 5, Oklahomans will join the rest of the nation and tune in to watch the NFL’s biggest game of the year – Super Bowl XLVI. Historically, this game has always been hit or miss, but this year, Tom Brady will lead the New England Patriots into Indianapolis with a vengeance. It’s a classic rematch, with Brady and company looking to avenge their loss four years ago in Super Bowl XLII to Eli Manning and the New York Giants. This is what you would call, game on.
In addition to being the biggest football game of the year, the Super Bowl has also become the biggest game for advertisers. This year, you can expect to see several major advertisers returning to the “big game,” plunking down 3.5 million dollars hoping to become the fodder of water cooler talk the next day. Why not? Isn’t this the real reason people watch? It’s all about the commercials.
But something else happened along the way to the water cooler. With the advent of social media, these ads have a far longer shelf life than the 30 or 60 seconds that appear on television. Now, more than ever, people are not just sitting down with a slice of pizza and cold one. They are sitting with their smartphones and tablets, anxiously waiting to tweet about their favorite ad or post their opinions on Facebook. So many of the ads we now see have gone viral, and those benefiting the most are the advertisers themselves.
In 2011, the ad that took the nation by storm was the Volkswagen Darth Vader commercial. It certainly gave its 6-year-old star Max Page his 15 minutes of fame. The commercial not only went on to be named Adweek’s top commercial of 2011, it continues to flourish on YouTube with nearly 50 million hits. Volkswagen says “thank you,” by the way.
Not only are these social media outlets becoming standard for companies to showcase their brands, they are offering the opportunity for people to become engaged. Brands are taking interaction so far that some are actually offering the public a chance to create the ads. Doritos is once again sponsoring the “Doritos Crash the Super Bowl Ad Contest,” where anybody can create and submit their own commercial with the hopes that it’s chosen to be one of the spots aired during the Super Bowl. The spots are loaded onto the Doritos website, and people vote for their favorite. The winning commercial becomes one of the super elite and will be seen by billions of people. If the commercial takes the top spot on the USA Today Ad Meter or USA Today Facebook Super Bowl Ad, the person who created the commercial will win one million dollars.
So, it’s game on. Advertising has become much more integrated, and advertisers are taking advantage of this ever-growing new media. For the brands themselves, the best part is, we are all eager to play.
Dan Martel is senior vice president and chief creative officer of Saxum, an integrated communications agency in Oklahoma City and Tulsa offering public relations, marketing, advertising and social media services to clients nationwide.
