This entry is part of our ‘Social By The Numbers’ series which features weekly content focused on social marketing data analysis, insight and trends that marketers and business intelligence managers can use to better engage with their social communities. Look for a new post from Fred Stuk and the Vitrue Business Intelligence team every Tuesday at 10am EST.
The Super Bowl is not just about determining which NFL team reigns supreme at the end of a long, grueling season. It’s also about which brands will achieve the highest pinnacle that could ever be afforded a television spot, an airing during the Super Bowl. Super Bowl Sunday is when advertisers pull out all the stops. The budgets for spot productions are massive, the cost of the airtime even more massive. And, in theory at least, the ads are supposed to be among the most creative in the business.
But what I wanted to know was, did the brands that ran ads during the Super Bowl experience any kind of significant bump or increase in the number Facebook fans they have? I took the list of advertisers from Ad Age and generated a data set of how many fans these brands had on 2/1/12, and how much fan growth they experienced between that date and the Monday after the Super Bowl.
All of the 40 Brands listed by Ad Age saw at least some lift, with a minimum of .5% growth. Others experienced up to 45% growth.
The biggest winner in terms of total fans added was Coca-Cola, gaining over 380,000 new fans over the weekend. Their warm and fuzzy spots focused around their popular polar bears. A site was even set up by Coca-Cola on which users could watch the polar bears watching the Super Bowl!
Although not an advertising brand, the next highest growth was experienced by the Super Bowl champions themselves, the New York Giants. The 4th place finisher (in terms of advertising brands) on the below chart, Bud Light, actually included the link to their Facebook Page in their commercials, as did many of the other advertisers…perhaps a sign of how far social media adoption/importance has come.
However, when you look at fan growth as a percentage of the size before and after the Super Bowl, we get some different winners. Act of Valor almost doubled their fan count. Not surprising at all considering how awesome the movie trailer looks, the fact that it stars real Navy Seals, and that it was a testosterone-laden movie advertised on the ultimate football game. A movie trailer loaded with that much coolness deserved a second look, and viewers went looking for it.
Met Life’s commercial featuring a video mashup of just about every major cartoon character from the 70’s 80’s and 90’s also did well. Viewers undoubtedly went to the Facebook Page to see how many of the cartoon folk they could name.
The cars.com ad? Well, we’ll just attribute a viewer attraction to creepiness for wanting to watch a second head sprouting from a car shopper’s back again and again.
Key Takeaways:
- If you’re not including your Facebook link in your traditional paid advertising, you probably should start today.
- Know your audience and target the content of your advertising to the consumer of the ads.
- Sex appeal, action, animals, humor (and for some reason this year, zip lines) are just a few of the ways to achieve the key to desired repeat viewing…coolness.
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