Katy Perry’s dancers were misbehaving. The Budweiser Puppy melted hearts worldwide. Even The Proclaimers were getting in on the action.
More famous for its PR opportunities than the whole thing that started it, the football match. What else could we be talking about but Super Bowl Sunday?
It would be easy to forget that this event is actually about football.
Every year, brands are pulling out all the stops to get exposure at the Super Bowl. So I wanted to find out whether it’s all worth it and how much a short ad might set one back.
OK, so this year had a captive audience of 100 million. That’s a lot of pairs of eyes on your advert (albeit probably fairly unfocused – this is a BIG drinking event).
This means a 30 second slot during the commercial breaks cost upwards of $4.5 million (£2.97 million).
While some brands uploaded content in the run up to the game, a live reveal on television during the football game maximised the suspense. Intensity of the battle of the brands heightened which is all part of the fun.
Away from television screens, Twitter and Facebook were ablaze with ad campaigns as companies fought for the most shares across social media. The two social media giants couldn’t resist boasting, with Twitter reporting 28.4 million game related tweets versus Facebook’s astronomic 60 million.
As we all know, the UK loves a good American bandwagon and we were taking it all in our stride. Wembley held a pre-match American football game on Sunday before Brits stayed up in to the early hours to watch the main event. And, a personal highlight, The Proclaimers put themselves back in the spotlight with their one hit wonder and all time classic, 500 Miles, which is said to have earned them £1 million in royalties for featuring in the prime time Budweiser ad. Not too shabby at all.