Super Social

At this year’s Super Bowl, every brand was looking for its “Oreo moment.” In the past, a brand could "win" the Super Bowl by airing the most talked-about TV spot. Oreo changed all that last year, when they tweeted about the Super Bowl blackout. That simple tweet created more buzz than- any of the advertisements that appeared in the actual Super Bowl broadcast, and best of all, it didn’t cost Oreo a thing. Ever since then, brands have been looking to use clever, well-timed messages to capitalize on the popularity of major events like the Super Bowl to maximize brand exposure.

Unfortunately, with such an uneventful game on the field this year, brands had a hard time finding one seminal moment that would become part of a culturally relevant conversation the way last year’s blackout did. Instead, social media marketers engaged in what is quickly becoming a bizarre theme: brand-on-brand action. There was more competition online than on the field.

Who scored?

JC Penney led the conversation this year and was the clear winner in this year’s social media game. The troubled retailer spent the early part of the game sending a slew of misspelled and illegible texts, including such nonsense as “Who kkmew theis was ghiong tob e a baweball ghamle. #lowsscorinh 5_0,” leading many to believe that the either the person typing the tweets was drunk, or the account had been hacked. They got people’s attention.

Other brands launched an onslaught of snide tweets against JC Penney, including Coors Light (“We know football goes great with Coors Light, but please tweet responsibly”), Snickers (“Eat a #SNICKERS, you’re not you when you're hungry”) and Kia Motors (“ Hey @jcpenney need a designated driver?”)

In the end, the joke was on them: JC Penney had planned the misspelled tweets as part of a clever social stunt to promote Team USA mittens ahead of the Winter Olympics: “We were #TweetingWithMittens.” JC Penney’s smart play was making fun of real-time marketing, while simultaneously benefiting from it. The brand added over 10,000 followers in one night. Although the JC Penney was not even an official Super Bowl advertiser, they became second-most mentioned brand on social media that night, with over 120k mentions.

Other brands were prepared in advance, too. Because many commercials were pre-released before the big game, it created a huge opportunity for brands that did not run a Superbowl commercial to develop “counter-creative.”

Both Tide and Priceline did a great job of riding the coattails of other brands’ commercials and used their resources to create Facebook, Twitter, Vine and Instagram promotions to during the game.

Newcastle Brown Ale used the “#IfWeMadeIt” tag to promote their spoofed commercials. Their efforts resulted in 13,000 new followers during the game.

One reason that so much attention on the social media arena this year was likely because there was so little going on in the actual game to keep the attention of the viewers.

DiGiorno Pizza was able to make a crack at the quality of the competition, while also offering a bit of self promotion with their “YO, THIS GAME IS LIKE DIGIORNO PIZZA BECAUSE IT WAS DONE AFTER TWENTY MINUTES” tweet. That one quick line was able to be retweeted 11,000 times.

Buffalo Wild Wings is known for their hilarious sports themed commercials. An older spot had a man in a command center press a button that tripped a player, causing the game to be extended (so people would spend more time at the restaurant.) They couldn’t resist referencing the poor showing of the game with a tweet, “Sorry fans, we don’t have a button for this.” Over 24 hours, that tweet was shared over 30,000 times.

Hillary Clinton (or her social media team) effectively used Twitter during the game to poke fun at politics, while also hinting at a potential presidential run in 2016. Her tweet, “It’s so much more fun to watch FOX when it’s someone else being blitzed 26%! #SuperBowl” was retweeted 53,000 times.

Although the Oreo didn’t even try to match the success they had last year, they still got plenty of buzz just from announcing that they weren’t going to try. "Hey guys … enjoy the game tonight. We’re going dark. #OreoOut.”

While many were disappointed that nothing “spectacular” happened in real-time marketing this year, keep in mind Oreo didn’t do anything so amazing last year, either. They got lucky: they simply found something exciting and novel to react to. Now witty reactions and comebacks are the norm.

The key to winning the viral-marketing buzz game is finding creative ways to be relevant, get the buzz, and stay above the noise.

While the playful Twitter spats between brands got a lot of attention from journalists and social media insiders, the question remains whether this back-and-forth is actually part of a strategy to capture consumer attention, or if it’s just marketers trying to outdo each other and impress a very small set of social media professionals in the endless pursuit of industry affirmation.

On the other hand, winning industry awards and peer recognition has always been an important part of the marketing industry. Social media is just another channel. There’s no reason that the desire to get both consumer attention and industry recognition can't continue to peacefully coexist.

To learn more and see the tweets and the creative highlighted in this post at Smarti’s new Pinterest page.