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The good and the ugly marketing campaigns from this year’s Super Bowl XLVIII

The good and the ugly marketing campaigns from this year’s Super Bowl XLVIII.

Was it touchdown or shake down for H&M and Coca Cola?

By Anas Kasak

Another year, another Super Bowl. While Seattle Seahawks celebrate winning the Championship, the biggest businesses across the globe were also waiting to see how one of the most watched sporting events in the world affected their reputation.

The Super Bowl is one of the hottest times for brands and advertisers and a way to reach over 120 million viewers simultaneously.

Last year, a whopping 164.1m viewers were reported to be watching some portion of the game.

Unsurprisingly, airtime during the commercial break of the Super Bowl is big business. Many brands and businesses plan their entire marketing year on the Super Bowl. Get it right and a good campaign could see a brand demand soar immediately after the event and continue for a good few months. Get it wrong and you could see your brand reputation plummet.

With so much at stake and a chance for quick wins for your brand – advertising spaces are thus at a premium and increasingly high. This year, advertisers were willing to pay about £2.54 million for a 30-second Super Bowl spot.

It may sound expensive but with the right campaign a brand can make that back before you can say touchdown.

With social media and online as one of the main platforms for advertisers, we thought it would be good to look at the good and the ugly from this year’s Super Bowl?

Which brand engaged with its fans and followers and really created a good campaign and who didn’t?  See below for two huge brands which had contrasting results!

  1. H&M: The comeback.
David Beckham, H&M
David Beckham and H&M advert

#Covered #uncovered campaign

See the advert below

http://youtu.be/A3WOtERvBWQ

After a year away, the Swedish fashion retailer returned to the Super Bowl with a advert campaign for David Beckham’s Bodywear range. Mention of David Beckham and underwear in the same sentence is enough for a good campaign.

However, this ad was different as because it use “t-commerce” technology.  Live during the game, Samsung Smart TV owners were able to buy products directly from the TV shop marketplace, with their remote control making it the first shoppable ad on TV.

David Beckham, H&M
David Beckham and H&M

#Covered or #uncovered?

In addition, the brand has decided to create a participative campaign, which was allowing followers to decide if they want see Beckham covered or uncovered in the run up to the Super Bowl

H&M has prepared two endings for their 30-second TV commercial with fans able to preview 10-second excerpts from “Covered” and “Uncovered” on the website and vote for their favourite version. Loaded with plenty of teaser ads coming towards the big “reveal” the answer to the question was shown during the Super Bowl

By suggesting two alternatives ending of the spot the brand expected to engage with its target audience

Surprise surprise, when you ask the general public to vote between two adverts starring David Beckham in underwear, the hashtag #uncovered got many more votes than the #covered.

  1. Coca Cola – when things get nasty

 

Coca Cola NFL Super Bowl 2014
Coca Cola Super Bowl 2014 advert

The second advert we looked at was #AmericaIsBeautiful, by Coca-cola. This spot features the song “America the Beautiful” sung in a variety of language highlighting the diversity of the American population. It celebrated the many kinds, colours, lifestyles and origins of American.

See advert below

http://youtu.be/443Vy3I0gJs

The marketing team behind Coca Cola probably thought that the Super Bowl was a good a reason as any to celebrate the diversity in America.

In some ways, Coca-cola wanted to make the argument for the result of the American dream, which is is an idea that suggests that anyone in the US can succeed through hard work and has the potential to lead a happy, successful life.

America is a country which is made up of a diverse range of cultures such as those who speak Spanish, Italian and Arabic. Highlighting those cultural differences, for an universal product such as Coca-cola was always going to be an interesting idea. However, maybe, with a topic like multiculturalism, it was always going to be risqué.

With social media, a brand is always open to criticism and we saw some nasty racist comments spread across platforms, especially Twitter.

@tedbrewster tweeted: “America being overridden by multiple cultures and languages will divide and weaken us, not make us stronger. #SpeakEnglish #SpeakAmerican.”

Or

“Dear @CocaCola : America the beautiful is sang in English. Piss off. #Dont@$%#WithUs.”

“Nice to see that coke likes to sing an AMERICAN song in the terrorist’s language. Way to go coke. You can leave America,” tweeted one disgruntled viewer.

Maybe Coca Cola didn’t think the repercussions through when planning the advert.

One of the things we do at Seventy Nine PR and Marketing during the planning phase is look at all angles in a deep way. Any planning strategy must include the impact and repercussions of any marketing campaign.

We have created a new planning toolkit called the Communication Chain which every client must go through. It has three stages starting from Demand Identification which then moves on to Building Strategy through to Demand Creation.  This thorough analysis helps us create the most effective platform

If you have any questions about our services hor want to put yourself through the Communication Chain then please call Anas on 0116 319 0990 or send an email to info@seventyninepr.co.uk