The Year of the #SuperBowl

Unless you’re a Seahawks fan, it seems that everyone is starting the week with a collective sigh of disappointment. The blowout game last night was not so fun to watch and, with few exceptions, even the ads were a little bland. If you were like me, with a not-so-engaging spectacle on TV, I turned my attention to my Twitter feed. In my opinion, that’s where the real action was. I spent four hours actively watching brands go back and forth with one another, and even participated myself (the highlight of my night was having Wonderful Pistachios, @getcrackin, reply to one of my tweets). For those that didn’t get a chance to keep up with Twitterverse, let me give you the play-by-play.

The account I was most excited to watch was Newcastle Brown Ale (@Newscastle) and their #IfWeMadeIt campaign. A few weeks ago, the brewing company released a YouTube video starring Anna Kendrick talking about the big game ad that almost was. In it, Kendrick talks about her frustration of being asked to star in the biggest commercial of the year and goes on to describe all of the cool things that would have happened in it. They then announced that in real time, Newscastle would make their own “Mega Huge” version of each commercial that aired throughout the game. The video got a lot of attention, and certainly prompted me to tune in. It was so fun and impressive to watch just minutes after each commercial aired, Newcastle responded to every brand with their own bigger and better animated copy of the commercial. Most of the brands Newcastle mimicked such as Jaguar and Chobani responded to the light-hearted competition that made for some brilliant cross-promotion entertainment. It just goes to show that brands these days don’t need to shell out the millions of dollars it takes to get a 30 second spot on TV when you can create an engaging and viral campaign that will last longer.

The surprise of the night came from the social media team at JCPenny (@jcpenny). During the first half, the account published two nonsensical tweets that looked more like drunk texts.

This led people to believe that the account was either hacked, or their social media manager was having a little too much fun at their party. People, myself included, started tuning in to see what would happen next. Pretty soon, other brands started catching on and tweeting them. Coors Light suggested they should lay off their tasty beverages, and Kia even offered to be their designated driver. However after halftime, it was revealed that the tweets were a part of their #TweetingWithMittens campaign.

Earlier in the afternoon, JCPenny tweeted a photo of their Team USA mittens in preparation for the cold weather at the game. The tweets were intentionally misspelled due to the mittens hindering their ability to type. I thought it was genius. This had to have been the biggest boost of publicity JCPenny received on their account, and they got other brands interacting with them without even really trying to. JCPenny certainly received a follow from me after last night!

Social media was definitely the name of the game for advertisements this year. Most commercials did feature a hashtag corresponding the ad. One of my favorites was Radio Shack’s #InWithTheNew campaign that paid homage to 80s stars (Hulk Hogan and Chuckie the murderous doll, anyone?). Also Audi’s crazy Doberhuahua raised a few laughs with #StayUncompromised. What were your favorite commercials or social media campaigns of the night? Let us know to keep the conversation going!

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