- February 3, 2015
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The Super Bowl XLIX Advertising Highlights (and Lowlights)
Americans sure love their dogs, as we learned from Super Bowl XLIX advertising.
For GoDaddy, this takeaway proved to undermine its planned Big Game integrated marketing campaign, while Budweiser engendered another year of loving consumer sentiment from its soppy commercial.
GoDaddy absorbed significant backlash against its campaign, “Journey Home,” which the domain-name registrar company previewed in the days leading up to the game. The creative showed a puppy getting bounced out of a pickup and making a harrowing journey home, only for the owner to say she sold him online thanks to GoDaddy. In addition to the heated swirl, which included ring-in from the SPCA and PETA, animal-rights advocate Helena Yurcho started a petition demanding that it be pulled. Upwards of 42,000 others supported her in signing the plea. Yurcho said the ad was encouraging puppy mills and purchasing animals online. GoDaddy pulled the ad a few days before the game due to the controversy.
The lesson: Know your audience. Negative and sarcastic advertising can backfire as part of an integrated marketing plan. (Although humor can be a great tool, as we pointed out in, “B2B Companies Just Wanna Have Fun.”)
However, Budweiser won out by pulling at our heartstrings in its ad, “Lost Dog.” Taking viewers on an emotional rollercoaster, it tells a similar but very different story of a much-loved puppy, lost and separated from his best buddy, a Clydesdale. He, too, makes a long, harrowing journey home, but isn’t sold (online or otherwise) when he gets there. Budweiser knows how to get people talking, earning a top place on nearly every list ranking the game ads.
Aside from featuring canines, aspirational advertising themed several commercials and sparked conversations.
The 60-second big-game debut spot from Procter & Gamble’s Always brand challenged viewers to consider what it means to do anything “Like a Girl,” while Coca-Cola took a noble stand against cyberbullying with “Make It Happy.”
But the most memorable ad may be from No More, a coalition of anti-domestic violence groups, which gave the NFL what might be the most unusual game commercial ever aired. The powerful commercial had no actors, only a real 9-1-1 call from a terrified female domestic violence victim. No More played on the alleged domestic violence cases involving several NFL athletes over the season — a noteworthy example of how to draft stories in the news to make your message resonate with target audiences.
Clearly, ads have incredible power to inform, enlighten, drive sales and raise awareness. And although it may be true that 110 million viewers may not have their eyes on your brand, it still pays to make smart moves when mapping out integrated marketing initiatives.
According to Candice Rose from the business-development firm Marsden & Associates, business-to-business (B2B) brands of any size can learn a lot from the costly fumbles and triumphant victories of Super Bowl XLIX advertisers:
- “Good B2B marketing campaigns don’t just materialize. You’ve got to lay the ground work to reap the rewards.”
- “B2B business models don’t always lend themselves to the sort of creative genius seen in Apple’s legendary 1984, or to the pop-culture status achieved by the Budweiser frogs, but we can still set about creating content that feels fresh, is true to our brand AND strikes the right chord with our target audience.”
- “A winning marketing playbook should include thoughtful content crafted into plays designed for each channel and integrated into an unstoppable force.”
- “The effectiveness of your marketing will be a direct result of the skill, heart and determination of your team.”
For additional tips, check out another how-to post we published last year, “What You Can Learn from Super Bowl Advertisers.” And don’t forget to include social media as part of your integrated marketing plan; here’s how advertisers did it with Super Bowl XLVIII: “The Socialization of The Super Bowl.”
