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Super Bowl Ad Preview: 60% of the Most Successful Campaigns Launch Before the Big Game

Written on
Jan 16, 2014 
Author
Richard L. Tso  |

ADOTAS – Did you know that most shared ad from 2013’s Super Bowl has received over 15.6 million views and was shared over 2.74 million times? With Super Bowl Sunday just around the corner, several brands like Budweiser, Nestle, and Doritos have already begun to launch their multi-million-dollar campaigns in preparation for the big game.

“You can’t shock people any more with nudity or foul language,” says Barbara Lippert, advertising critic and columnist for Mediapost.com. “Instead, you have to create these visual things that you wouldn’t ever have put together in your own mind.”

With GoDaddy expected to curb the sex appeal in its ads this year, Butterfinger just launched its own highly suggestive ad teaser that pokes fun at the antics surrounding couples counseling waiting room humor. Nestle’s Butterfinger brand plans to air its first-ever Super Bowl video on February 2, the same day that Budweiser is expected to begin showing its new spots featuring celebrities, its iconic Clydesdale horses and a salute to military troops.

“Some food pairings are better with a twist,” says Jeremy Vandervoet, brand manager for Butterfinger. “We’re just trying to be funny with food — and not over-think it.”

Also, as part of Doritos’ consumer-driven “Crash the Super Bowl” competition for Super Bowl spots, on top contender features a guy whose mission in life is to suck the fingers of Doritos-eaters who have that familiar orange-flavoring stuck on their fingers after eating the chips. According to USA Today, One Bud Light ad will showcase A-B’s new re-closable aluminum bottle. The other two Bud Light ads are about an “epic night” and will have celebrity tie-ins.

Marketing technology company Unruly just published its latest Super Bowl Playbook and infographic that highlights some key findings about the popularity and virality of last year’s video spots. According to Unruly, the top ten most shared ads from Super Bowl 2013 generated a total of 10.2 million shares across the social web, an 89 percent increase from 2012’s numbers of 5.4 million.

Other stats included in Unruly’s infographic, ‘Super Bowl: 10 Facts Every Brand Should Know’, are:

  • The most shares (3.3 million) from Super Bowl 2013 were recorded on Super Bowl Monday (February 4) – twice as many as the next biggest day, February 5 (1.6m shares) and nine times bigger than the number of shares recorded on Super Bowl Sunday;
  • The average length of the top 10 Super Bowl ads more than doubled (112%) from 2010-2013, from 42 seconds to 89 seconds;
  • The average share rate (the % of viewers who also shared the ads) of Super Bowl ads nearly doubled between 2012 and 2013. In 2012, it took 57 views to generate one share, in 2013, it took 31 views;
  • 3 of the top 10 most shared Super Bowl ads of all time are movie trailers (Fast 5; Fast and Furious 6 and Star Trek Into Darkness);
  • 60% of the most shared Super Bowl ads of all time were launched before Super Bowl Sunday;
  • 7 of the top 20 most shared ads from Super Bowl 2013 were supported by teasers;
  • The most shared ad of all time is a Super Bowl ad: VW’s “The Force” (5.2 million shares). The second is Budweiser’s “9/11 Tribute” from 2002, which trends every September, while third is Budweiser 2013 ad, “Brotherhood” (pictured above).

“The Super Bowl is no longer just about creating a compelling thirty-second TV spot that will be the talked about at the office on Monday morning,” said Unruly’s U.S president, Richard Kosinski. “With more than 500,000 shares of branded video every 24 hours, the Super Bowl offers advertisers a unique opportunity to efficiently extend the reach of their Super Bowl investment and generate excitement leading up to Super Bowl Sunday and beyond.”

We’re pumped. Are you?





Richard L. Tso is a reporter for Adotas and an avid writer covering the intersection of technology and advertising, fashion and music. With over 12 years of experience in the Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations industries, Richard has held executive positions at global agencies and technology companies and is founder of the interactive communications firm Pseudosound Consulting LLC. A classical cellist and painter, he believes that sometimes sound carries more weight than words. He is a graduate of Stanford University.

Reader Comments.

Unfortunately the bang for your buck that brands get from a SuperBowl commercial is negligible when you consider recent studies showing that brand recognition from an add is minimal and there’s no way to track viewership to conversion.
Why not focus on all of the pre-Game marketing and keep the tens of millions you’d otherwise spend on the media but and commercial production and put it into social media campaigns?

Posted by Michael Durwin | 12:14 pm on January 16, 2014.

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