The 49ers or Ravens? My money is on social video marketing: the true winner of the Super Bowl.

(Source: NFL)

The Super Bowl has become a national holiday.  It continues to get bigger and bigger.  The game itself seems to play second fiddle to everything else surrounding the 60 minutes of football.  The game also brings hundreds of amazing facts and statistics.

(Source: NFL)

What is your favorite Super Bowl stat?  Is it that Americans will eat 1.23 billion chicken wings on the big day? Or is it that one third of every U.S. Adult will place a bet on the game? Super Bowl Sunday is much more than just a game.  111 million people will turn out to watch spectacle this year.  Of those 111 million, 39% come out just for the commercials. (Source: Beltrone)  Whether it’s for the game or the commercials, the Super Bowl has become a mecca for advertisers.   “Of the 45 most-watched network TV broadcasts of all time, 21 are Super Bowls.”(Source: Allott)  Even with the current 3.8-4.0 million dollar price tag per 30-second commercial, companies are running at the chance to have millions eyeballs on their brand.  According, to Leslie Moonves, CEO of CBS, this year’s commercial slots sold out weeks before the game. (Source: NYT)

 

With the high price for a 30-second commercial, companies are discovering the best ways to maximize their ROI.  Most have learned to integrate their traditional TV commercial advertising with their social media campaigns.  In addition, they’ve learned ways expand the reach of their commercials beyond the 30 seconds through viral social videos.  Social video marketing is the marriage between social media and Internet videos.  Its intent is to proliferate buzz, awareness, and engagement around a company’s brand.  This year's Super Bowl is not just about the names Colin Kaepernick, Ray Lewis, and other NFL stars, but it’s about the name Social Video.  

Here are recent some trends with social videos and the Super Bowl:

User-Generated Content

 

Several companies have learned to engage their customers by offering prizes for advertising concepts.  Doritos is already well known for their yearly Facebook contests through which they offer $1 million to the fan that receives the most votes for the video that they personally create, direct, and film.  The winning video is selected for Doritos' 30-second spot during the Super Bowl.  This helps create conversations about Doritos well before Super Bowl Sunday as fans view videos among the hundreds entered into the contest.  KSL did a spot this week about a Utah man that has been a finalist the last three years which only creates more buzz for Doritos.  You may remember the winning commercial from last year:
 

 

Second Screen

Two-thirds of Super Bowl viewers watch the big game with a second screen.  (Source: Stupakevick)  These second screens include tablets, smart phones, and laptops.  Commercials take advantage of these second screens by directing viewers to their site for more information, content, and to-be-continued stories.  The real winners of second screens are social media sites.  Through Facebook pages, Twitter handles, and hashtags, companies can immediately engage with their customers.  In addition, millions of viewers can react to commercials through the use of hashtags.  These conversations and reactions can be very beneficial to companies to know the success of their ads and to monitor what’s being said.  Brandwatch.com creates an interactive tool every Super Bowl that helps track what online buzz is created from certain ads and whether those millions of dollars are well spent.  Last year Volkswagen's estimated ad budget was $7 million and with these analytical tools, they could quickly see effectiveness and buzz created by their money.  

Brandwatch.com

Teasers

More and more companies are releasing teaser campaigns before Super Bowl Sunday.  This increases buzz and creates anticipation several weeks before the 30-second spot actual airs.   Unruly, the experts in social video distribution, state that 75% of the top 20 shared Super Bowl commercials last year launched a teaser before the big day. (Source: Unruly)  This strategy allows for even more viewers to see the ad campaign. Sometimes the teasers can become a bigger hit then the commercial itself.  This was the case last year with Volkswagen's teaser that beat out the game day spot.  

With only a few days before the 2013 game, dozens of companies have again adopted this strategy.   Taco Bell's "Grandpa Goes Wild" has already received over 45,000 shares while Cars.com's "Dramatized Focus Group" only has 165.  You can watch all the other teasers here. 

 

Website Visitors

While Facebook likes and Twitter mentions and follows are a nice part of a company’s social media campaign, actual visits to their site is what they really want.  Social videos that help generate visits to the website are typically the most successful ones.  “Getting consumers’ email addresses can be infinitely more valuable than a Facebook like.” (Source: Heine)  Last year, GoDaddy.com saw a 25% increase in domain name sales the day after the Superbowl.  This is largely due to their videos that drove users to their sites.  

The Final Drive

 While all these trends in social videos seem like great brand marketing ideas, the secret is to use web analytics to understand the meaning of all those visitors and viewers.  It's important to integrate the information gathered from traditional KPIs with the information about your brand obtained by  data crawlers.  Having a successful video go viral and be shared millions won't do any good unless the web analytics of the brand are simultaneously studied.  Web analytics will be more informational as they are coupled with web monitoring services like Brandwatch and Unruly.  Combined, the whole picture of who is viewing your videos and whether they are a paying customer comes together.

So after you've mixed the guacamole and made your bets, make sure  do your part and start sharing those videos.   

Go Niners!

Here are some other great facts about social videos and the Super Bowl. 

References

Allott, Daniel. (2011). http://spectator.org/archives/2011/12/14/the-cult-of-watching-sports

Beltrone, Gabriel. (2013). http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/ads-trump-football-super-bowl-survey-146776

Heine, Christopher. (2013). http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/social-play-second-string-game-day-146669