On a night where Americans took a break from watching the spectacle at the White House to see the Patriots beat the Falcons in overtime, brands had the chance to promote themselves to a worldwide audience. Companies paid millions for the right to show their TV spots during the event; Snapchat reportedly charged $3m for companies to have 2 image overlay filters to promote their brand during the Super Bowl, and Skittles paid almost $10m for their 50 second spot.
But how do companies go about getting the most out of their spots? 110 million people watched the game and, with social media becoming a major part of global events (the 2014 World Cup final was tweeted about 600,000 times per minute), companies want to get the audience talking about their ad. Because of this, brands vary in their approaches to Super Bowl ads; some try to push awareness through a social media campaign, others opt for a more traditional branded message.
Here at AML, we value simple ideas to deliver a message, so we had a vote in the agency to see which of the ads shown last night best was the most powerfully simple. Below are the results:
1 – John Malkovich for Squarespace
2 – Ford Go Further
3 – Budweiser “Born the hard way”
4 – Mercedes “Easy driver”
5 – T-Mobile #UnlimitedMoves
Honourable mentions:
1 – 84 Lumber – Created such a buzz on social media (mostly because it was controversial) that their website crashed!
2 – Mr Clean – Used the stereotype that men don’t clean the house to great effect.
3 – Skittles – Used the trope of teenage boys throwing pebbles at their girlfriend’s window with a ‘sweet’ twist.
