The start of the month saw the Kansas City Chiefs crowned as champions of the Super Bowl LIV. In our previous blog (read here), we shared with you our favourite Super Bowl commercials from this year, but today we thought we’d touch on our favourite non-televised marketing campaigns from the big game.

We’ve managed to whittle the list down and can now reveal our top 5 non-televised campaigns from the Super Bowl LIV…

5. Pantone

Coming in at number 5 we have Pantone, who created a campaign that used their colour samples as a means to promote its brand, whilst also tying into the action as it happened. They used the hashtag #BigGameColorCommentary so others could keep track of it or join in themselves. We thought this was a great way of increasing brand awareness, whilst posting about the game in a relevant way.

4. Jack in the Box

After their very successful Super Bowl advert last year which saw over 32 million social media engagements across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, Jack in the Box decided that this year they would launch an interactive campaign on Super Bowl Sunday, rather than going for a TV slot again, as they wanted to be a part of the moment for longer than 60 seconds. 

Jack in the Box partnered with Sonic the Hedgehog ahead of Super Bowl LIV to introduce Tiny Tacos – the perfect snack for people on the go, much like Sonic. During every commercial break (19 in total), Jack in the Box offered fans the opportunity to win special prize packs that included Jack and Sonic goodies. 

Following the Super Bowl, Jack in the Box wanted to continue the fun in a gamified way so they then released a Snapchat filter which was available between the 2nd and 12th February. The geo-filter was available in high footfall areas in San Diego, San Francisco and Santa Monica and allowed users to unlock special Jack prizes. 

Snapchat and Jack in the Box then went on to create an interactive lens, allowing users to play a quick game in which they have to collect as many Tiny Tacos as possible in the allotted time. If the users score enough points, they earn themselves a free delivery code to use at Jacks. 

3. Volvo

Volvo comes in 3rd place for their ingenious idea to get people interacting with their brand and promoting the safety of their vehicles. Since they introduced the three-point seatbelt back in 1959, they estimate over 1 million lives have been saved. To commemorate this milestone, they created a digital campaign in which they directed users to a bespoke campaign website (www.VolvoSafetySunday.com) and prompted them to design their own car and submit a unique configuration code. This ran up until kickoff of the big game. 

Volvo pledged to give away $1 million worth of cars to randomly selected entrants if a safety was to occur during the game. Unfortunately for the participants of the competition, a safety didn’t take place. Nonetheless, we thought this was a fantastic idea to get people interacting with their brand.

2. Mint Mobile

Image credit: Mint Mobile

Ryan Reynolds has certainly made a splash since taking over as owner of Mint Mobile. In the lead up to the big game, Mint took out a full-page ad in the New York Times, showcasing a big “Announcemint”. Instead of spending an extortionate amount of money on an advertising slot at the Super Bowl LIV, Ryan Reynolds decided to give away over 300,000 months of free service (usually $15 a month), saving $500,000 and getting more for his money by winning over lots of new users.

The giveaway started just before kickoff and ended at the time the big game finished. All the users needed was an unlocked phone, compatible with T-Mobile – the network used by Mint. There was no additional charge to port your number over, and no obligation to continue the contract after the 3 months has ended. This campaign certainly created a buzz amongst those on social media and made a big impact.

1. NFL

The NFL certainly came out on top with their innovative marketing campaign for the Super Bowl LIV. They teamed up with Twitter to make it rain sports tweets at the end of the big game. They asked Twitter users to tweet predictions and supportive words while using the #NFLTwitter hashtag, which created an awful lot of engagement as fans tried to get their tweets noticed. Many lucky fans and supporters had their tweets printed out and sprinkled amongst the red and yellow confetti that rained down on the players at the end of the game. 

And that concludes our favourite 5 non-televised marketing campaigns from this year’s Super Bowl. Are there any marketing campaigns you saw piggy-backing off of the big game in a bid to gain exposure to a larger audience?

Let us know if you noticed any more innovative campaigns and unsung heroes making the most of the Super Bowl weekend. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the ones we mentioned above – join in the conversation on our social media platforms: Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram.

Sunday 2nd February saw the Kansas City Chiefs crowned as champions of Super Bowl LIV. For those of you who don’t know, the Super Bowl is an American Football game played to determine the champion of the National Football League (NFL) for the season. 

The Super Bowl, also known as the ‘big game’, is among the most-watched sporting events in the world, which is why it comes as no surprise that you pay over the odds to advertise at the big game, with one 30-second commercial costing a staggering $5.6 million.

Due to the game’s popularity, a real show is put on, with famous singers and musicians performing during the world famous pre-game and half-time ceremonies. This year saw Jennifer Lopez and Shakira take centre stage at the Hard Rock Stadium, Miami Gardens, Florida – home to the Miami Dolphins NFL team.

Marketing and Creative agencies like ourselves eagerly await the Super Bowl each year for its extravagant commercials. We thought we’d share with you our 9 favourites from this year’s big game…

Pringles

First up on our top 9 list is the 30 second, fully animated ad, which sees Pringles team up with Adult Swim’s favourites, Rick and Morty. 

Taking the focus from the last two Pringles Super Bowl ads and adding a modern twist sees Morty appearing overly enthusiastic about “flavour stacking” the crisps. His grandad, Rick, notices this is completely out of character, and unmasks the “Mortybot”, thus realising they are in fact, trapped inside a Pringles advert and can’t escape. 

With Rick and Morty being the number one comedy for people aged 18-30 in America, it provided Pringles with a great opportunity to connect with a younger age group – hoping this would entice the next generation of Pringles fans.

Dashlane

First-time advertiser, Dashlane, contrasts mythic imagery with mundane irritation – something everyone experiences in their life – forgetting a password. This advert shows a man crossing into the afterlife, but to enter the afterlife, you must first give your password. Even when prompted with a multitude of security questions, he draws a blank. 

Dashlane simplifies your online life, storing all passwords, payments and personal information in one place, that only you can control, securely. 

We think this advert is an innovative way of marketing your brand and what your brand does. 

Coca Cola

Coca-Cola’s 60-second slot was used to launch Coca-Cola Energy and featured director Martin Scorsese and actor/director Jonah Hill. 

Scorsese is seen at a costume party looking a little lost amongst the revellers – cut to Hill, sat on his sofa looking tired and not wanting to go to the party. People think Jonah Hill is going to flake out on Scorsese. Hill pops to his local corner shop, grabs a Coca-Cola Energy and instantly feels energised enough to attend the party – ending with Hill and Scorsese hugging it out at the party.

Fun fact: Martin Scorsese and Jonah Hill are actually friends in real life, which made it the perfect pairing for this ad. 

Reese’s Take 5

In Hershey’s Super Bowl 45-second debut slot, they honed in on the fact that no-one has really heard of Reese’s Take 5 bar, claiming it’s the “best bar you’ve never heard of”.

The ad shows Trish at her desk enjoying her Take 5 bar and listing the ingredients, followed by cliches her co-workers are literally living, that Trish seems to be oblivious to. 

Porsche

Porsche had a minute slot at this year’s big game. Everything about their commercial, “The Heist” we love – the story, the stunning scenery, the eye-catching cars, even the slogan “an electric car that steals you”. 

During this ad, you see the Porsche Taycan Turbo S sneaking out of the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, right under the security guards noses. When the security guards realise it is missing, they grab a variety of different Porsche models, including the Porsche 917K, and go on a high-speed car chase, filmed in some beautiful locations in Germany, before meeting head-on on a dam wall.

Google

Google first advertised at the Super Bowl back in 2010. The search giant marked the 10 year anniversary with a touching story of an older man who used Google Assistant to remember his wife, Loretta. The man used Google Assistant to recall precious memories from decades of being with Loretta, asking things like “show me photos of me and Loretta”, “play our favourite movie”. The advert walked the viewers through a life lived with love, and showed how Google has built products to help people in their daily lives, in both big and small ways.

Amazon

The big game saw the return of Amazon Alexa, featuring Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi. When leaving for an event, they ask Alexa to turn down the temperature, which in turn leads them to wonder what people did before Alexa. From this point, the commercial takes you through different eras, asking various people with very similar names to Alexa, to do small mundane chores for them – much like you would ask Alexa to do nowadays in day-to-day life. 

Ahead of the Super Bowl, Amazon encouraged people to have a bit of fun with Alexa and ask, “Alexa, what did we do before you?”. 

Rocket Mortgage

Rocket Mortgage cast Aquaman actor, Jason Momoa for their Super Bowl ad. 

The commercial shows the star driving up to his house, with paparazzi hiding in the bushes, taking photos as he pulls up. Momoa goes on to say, “what does home mean to me? It’s my sanctuary. It’s the one place I can let my guard down”, before entering his house and throwing his boots off. 

He goes on about being completely comfortable in his own skin whilst at home, before proceeding to remove (faux) layers of his arm muscles, stomach and long hair. Many viewers of the ad claimed it “won the Super Bowl”. 

MTN DEW

MTN Dew decided to showcase their newest offering, MTN Dew Zero Sugar, during their 30-second slot at the big game. The tagline for the advert is second-to-none, “as good as the original, maybe even better”, which ties in with the storyline as it is based on the famous, “Here’s Johnny” scene from the classic horror film, The Shining. Starring Bryan Cranston aka Walter White as Jack Torrance, and Tracee Ellis Ross as his wife, Wendy Torrance, the actors added comedic value to a scene that terrified audiences for decades. 

MTN Dew also brought elements of the commercial to consumers through the use of Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. 

And there we have it, our favourite adverts from Super Bowl LIV. Which Super Bowl advert was your favourite? Let us know on our social channels: Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram.

Be sure to stay tuned as we’ll be following up with another blog, showcasing some other ads that didn’t officially advertise at the big game, but sure made a lot of noise on social media in the lead up.

We can’t wait to see the adverts for next year’s Super Bowl!

Marketing trends are changing and evolving each day. It is our responsibility as a marketing agency, to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to these latest advancements to ensure we continue to drive profitable business for our clients.

You may recall that we published an article on the 6 business marketing trends to exploit in 2019. You can read this here. These trends are still relevant now as many businesses and agencies still aren’t capitalising on them. However, throughout 2019 and early into 2020 several new tactics and channels have shown exceptional growth and simply must be taken advantage of now.

10. Podcasts

The rise in smart speakers such as the Amazon Echo and Google Home has again meant that voice searches have soared throughout last year – fuelling the ever-increasing popularity of podcasts around the world. 

In the UK alone, there are 7.1 million regular listeners to podcasts – that’s 1 in 8 people. A staggering 24% increase year on year, and we are expecting this number to rise considerably throughout 2020. Due to this explosion, we are predicting a large rise in podcast advertising this year and a surge in the number of new podcast launches. Research shows that podcasts generate around four times better brand recall than scroll, pop-up and static ads and that podcast advertising spend is set to effectively double to $1.6bn by 2022.

9. TikTok

Global Social phenomenon TikTok is currently smashing it with Generation Z, who make up the majority of its audience base. As one of the fastest growing social media platforms in the world, TikTok allows users to quickly and easily produce and share short videos with music, filters and effects. If your target customer falls within the Gen Z’ers age bracket then TikTok could be the perfect platform to engage with them.

Videos can be found by hashtag, and the platform recently updated its user interface to include a ‘discover’ feature similar to Instagram’s ‘explore’ page. This hosts a wide variety of topics – we will certainly be keeping an eye on as we believe this feature will attract a wider audience to the app. TikTok’s new self-serve ad platform is currently in development, but some businesses have access to this in beta so watch this space.

8. AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) marketing is a data-driven approach that has taken the digital world by storm and will continue to do so throughout 2020 and beyond. AI marketing relies on concepts like machine learning to anticipate the audiences next move, enabling brands to produce highly personalised consumer experiences and improve the customer journey. 

Through the use of AI, you can gain a deeper understanding of what your customers are thinking, saying, and feeling about your brand, all in real-time. This allows you to build out detailed consumer profiles, which in turn gives you the intelligence to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time – and to quickly modify that message to maximise effectiveness.

7. Augmented Reality

Unlike Virtual Reality (VR) which effectively shuts out the physical world and allows a fully immersive experience, Augmented Reality (AR) adds digital elements to a live view often by using the camera on a smartphone (a good example being the fun filters built into social apps such as Snapchat and Instagram).

The opportunities for marketers are endless. For now, the novelty and entertainment factor alone means that brands can use AR to attract and engage their audiences in new and exciting ways creating differentiation and stand-out from the competition. Equally exciting are the possibilities AR presents to e-commerce brands, by allowing the user to virtually try out and compare products and access all the information they need to help them make a purchase decision. For example, Vans have recently integrated AR into their website. When customising your own Vans trainers, you can now virtually try them on before committing to purchasing, using your iPhone or Android camera. 

Whilst AR is not yet a mainstream, its presence is accelerating fast. The global AR market is currently worth around $27bn. Statistica predicts this will grow to $209bn by 2022. To put this in perspective, the global smartphone market is worth around $431bn.

6. Programmatic Advertising

If you want to target your audience on a granular level and use ad budget smarter, programmatic advertising could be the way forward for your automotive brand. 

Programmatic advertising is an automated process of buying and selling ad space online. With the use of cookies and AI, you can target users based on their geographical area, demographics, interests and how they’ve previously interacted with your website (retargeting). Programmatic uses machine learning to understand the goals you set over time and the performance of your campaigns to automatically optimise them for optimal performance.

5. Conversational Marketing

Conversational marketing is a feedback-orientated approach used to increase engagement with your brand, develop customer loyalty and grow your customer base, thus driving revenue for your business. Real-time messaging should be designed specifically around the needs of your customers, allowing them to pick up where they left off, at a time that suits them. 

Chatbots are a great way of being able to provide 24/7 support to your customers and prospects, providing answers to frequently asked questions based on the data you collect. Living in a world where life is fast-paced and people need to know answers now, the implementation of chatbots and conversational marketing is an absolute must for all brands.

4. Social Messaging

Using Social messaging effectively for networking and generating leads is still greatly underutilised. WhatsApp, for example, has 1.5 billion users worldwide. Through WhatsApp Business you can connect with your audience in a simple, reliable way – engaging and building frictionless conversational experiences that not only enhance customer experience and loyalty but also generates new business.

Instagram has also hit the ground running this year by revealing they have started developing and testing DM’s for the desktop version of their platform. This feature will be a welcome tool for businesses. Last year, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, said future plans include users from Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram being able to message each other regardless of which platform they are using.

3. Social Media Stories

As marketing trends go, stories are actually nothing new, in fact, Instagram released its story function back in 2016, and today over 500 million people use the feature daily. Whilst initially certain parts of the user demographic may have felt a little reluctant to roll their sleeves up, get creative and put their content up in lights at the top of the feed, stories are now very commonplace, in fact some users now only really engage with them, over ‘regular’ page content. 

We’ve put stories at number 3 as it’s amazing how underutilised they are by businesses within their social campaigns. Stories provide a fast and effective way for brands to deliver authentic ‘here and now’ content from wherever they are in the world – and are great for live coverage of events and shows, for example. Stories are also super easy to customise with filters, stickers and interactive elements that will keep your audience engaged for longer. Even better, when your following is greater than 10,000 on Instagram, you can add a CTA to your stories, urging your followers to find out more, subscribe or make a purchase with a simple swipe up.

2. Influencer Marketing & User Generated Content

The social media influencer market is set to be worth more than $10 billion by 2020, and it’s not difficult to see why, as influencer marketing is like word of mouth on steroids. We all follow influencers as we want to see their content, and because influencers build up very loyal, trustworthy fanbases, their reach and ability to engage their audience has great value as a platform for advertisers. 

Yes, we all now know that occasionally our favourite social star is marketing to us, but we still consume the content, and if the marketed brands have got their targeting right, there’s still a good chance you will take notice and potentially want to find out more. If nothing else, the brand awareness, positioning and alignment with the personal brand the influencer represents has got huge value in itself.

Whilst working with an influencer can boost the overall credibility of your brand, improve customer retention and grow your bottom line; you don’t need to spend millions to benefit. In recent years the influencer market has segmented into mega-influencers, macro-influencers, micro-influencers and nano-influencers. A lot of the influencer work we do today focuses around the micro-influencer – someone who has between 1,000 to 100,000 followers. These individuals are both affordable, and highly targeted as they typically focus on a specific niche and are generally regarded as industry experts.

User-Generated Content, on the other hand, is where we encourage your customers to share their feedback on your product or service across social media. It’s real. It invites engagement and inspires action. UGC can be leveraged through a campaign or by simply asking customers to use a specific hashtag with their thoughts and feedback which you can then share and feature on your feed.

1. SERP Position Zero

Well it sounds cool enough to make number 1, right? Position Zero (P0) is the first Google search result you see and appears above organic SEO listings. P0 is also referred to as a ‘featured snippet’, and it directly answers a searchers’ question – without them needing to click to see the result. 

Gaining position zero is a tough task but it’s not impossible. Crafting a compelling piece of content that directly answers a question (or a long-tail query you want to feature for) is the starting point. Content pieces like ‘how to’ guides, definitions, top 10 lists and FAQs are often found in this most sought after position. The new summit of the constantly changing Google mountain.

The P0 result is used for voice search results which as we know, is growing increasingly popular. If you gain P0 on Google, you will occupy more SERP territory, increasing brand awareness, trust and clicks.

Want To Stay On Trend?

Do you want to implement any of these key marketing trends this year? Our dedicated team of marketing specialists are here to help. 

Make 2020 a more successful year for your business by utilising some of these marketing trends. If you’d like to find out what we can do to help your business, get in touch today by calling 01332 372728 or by emailing anna@marketing.dev-wda.com.