The Sunday is Super Bowl Sunday. For the forty-eighth time,
football fanatics across America will be piled around enormous flat screens,
downing pounds of hot wings and beer, while rooting for their desired team to
take the trophy. The Super Bowl is an annual game looked forward to by millions
of Americans; therefore it’s hard for even a small mistake to go unnoticed.
Last year, it
wasn’t all that difficult to point out the biggest fail of the event. Shortly
after Beyoncé and Destiny’s Child’s halftime performance, the power went out at
the Superdome in New Orleans. Fans in stadium as well as at home watched as
half of the field went dark during the beginning of the third quarter. While
electricians worked to fix the problem, journalists took to Twitter to live
tweet the blackout, and in less than five minutes, the #SuperBowlblackout was
the number one topic trending worldwide.
Journalists and
reporters weren’t the only people to bank on the unfortunate electrical
shortage. Many other brands thought quickly and took their ideas to Twitter.
Oreo created an advertisement with the slogan “You can still dunk in the dark,”
while Tide quickly followed suit by tweeting “We can’t get your blackouts, but
we can get your stains out.” Other brands like Walgreen, Audi and PBS tweeted
out creative puns and slogans pertaining to the blackout.
Though that
particular Super Bowl presented a unique opportunity for brands to bank on,
most have to shell out thousands and even millions of dollars in order to grab
a spot during one of the highly coveted commercial blocks. Super Bowl
commercials have become such a big part of the event over the past couple of
years. Some viewers only watch in order to see this years most talked about
commercials. Probably the most watched commercial was Dodge’s “God Made a
Farmer” commercial. The brand spiked 1722 percent on Yahoo during the game.
Other commercials received positive feedback and increases in views such as
Mercedes and Budweiser. On the other hand, though some brands got an increased
viewership, it wasn’t for the right reason. Go Daddy was the third most talked
about brand after Super Bowl 2013, but it wasn’t because of the fuzzy feelings
it left in our hearts but more of a disturbing image scared in our brains. Other
brands like Skittles and Doritos also received harsh criticism for their
unsettling commercials.
I’ve personally
seen both Go Daddy’s and Skittle’s commercials that they decided to play during
the Super Bowl and I just don’t understand how so many people thought they
would end up going over well with fans. Neither is appropriate for children
under 13 and I even found them rather uncomfortable to watch, so I can’t
imagine how parents who were trying to enjoy the game with their kids reacted.
As far as I’ve read, neither brand is being featured during a commercial break
during this year’s Super Bowl game, while other brands like Dodge and Ford have
spots again. The marketing and PR teams for both brands have a lot of image
reconstruction to go through before we could hope to see them during a Super
Bowl again.
No comments:
Post a Comment