No, I can’t wait until the morning after, when all the amazing SuperBowl adverts get uploaded to the internet. Companies intent on making a statement advertise during the event. Heck, the sport often pauses just for TV Spot breaks. For a budding marketeer like myself, I always make a point to try and watch all the noteworthy adverts. This year was no exception and provided some very interesting trends.
The first is something America is very good at. Patriotism. There are many examples of this in 2013, such as the Dodge RAM pickup truck advert about religious farmers. But, the best (or worst) example this year was the Jeep advert. So “U.S.A.”, it’s no wonder that a great deal of American’s don’t know the wider world. Here we have dramatic music, American cars that are made in America, a voice over from Oprah Winfrey and a celebration of Jeep actually sponsoring the US troops and placing commemorative badges on the ve-hicles! It seems that if you want to sell in America, make it in America. Even the Korean Kia Sorento is now “Made in the US”.
Not going the Patriotic route? Find it too, well, predictable? Well, it would seem, the other trend was to be wacky. A bit out there. VW tried to recapture the public like their previous years attempts with a man speaking like a laid back Bob Marley (a not-so-subtle hint back to the days of Flower Power VW Beetles) but ultimately missed the mark a little. Website hosting service GoDaddy wheeled out both Patriotism (the first famous lady racing driver, Danica Patrick, who is American) and Wacky (a stereotyped geek, kissing a leggy blonde model). But far from the perfect marriage, it was a bit sick.
Other noteworthy weirdness was Fiat suggesting the electric 500 is good for sex, Stevie Wonder promoting Budweiser and Axe (or Lynx as we know it in the UK) running a promotion to literally send a competition winner into space. While we’re on a role, how about Mercedes-Benz trying too hard to be hip. The advert for the new CLA car features a young man, but the soundtrack is the Rolling Stones. Then Usher appears. Talk about not-cool Uncle talking about how many Friends he has on Facebook....
All the weirdness, is of course, very deliberate. It causes people to talk about the brand. So they hope. But there were a couple of spots that were genuinely funny. The M&M advert where they parody Meatloaf’s I Would Do Anything For Love was particularly smart, and Dwayne Johnson (aka The Rock) being self aware to promote milk while there is an apocalypse showed a certain self awareness.
We were also treated to PSY doing a version of Gangnam style.....but about....Pistachio nuts. No really. It has to be seen to be believed.
But lastly, the overarching theme was Social Media. Every single ad had to have an official #Hashtag. They were literally everywhere. Once a nice way of monitoring if your advert was a success of not, now very much de rigueur. More importantly, the hashtags used were universally odd. For instance, Audi's wasn't #Audi or #AudiSuperBowl but #Bravery. yes, it may get people talking on the internet, but is it on message for the brand?
However, despite all the gigantic sums of money paid for the advertisement slots, Oreo stole the show. Not only was their advert funny and clever, but their marketing team pulled an allnighter. During the game, the stadium suffered from a power-outage for about an hour. Oreo tweeted a pic, and they got more Tweets, Mentions and Retweets than anyone else. Well played Oreo.
Until next year, #SuperBowlAdvertHashTagOurBrandIsCool.
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