{"id":24204,"date":"2021-02-08T01:51:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-08T01:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=24204"},"modified":"2021-02-09T10:59:41","modified_gmt":"2021-02-09T10:59:41","slug":"drake-and-jake-mountain-dews-millions-and-the-marvel-universe-which-ads-won-the-super-bowl-and-which-fell-flat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/drake-and-jake-mountain-dews-millions-and-the-marvel-universe-which-ads-won-the-super-bowl-and-which-fell-flat\/","title":{"rendered":"Drake and Jake, Mountain Dew’s millions and the Marvel Universe \u2013 which ads won the Super Bowl, and which fell flat"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Alexander Carter<\/a>, University of Tennessee<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Live sporting events are among the few remaining places where advertisers can ensure that no one fast forwards through their commercials which is why companies were willing to pay US$5.5 million<\/a> for just 30 seconds of air time on Super Bowl Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So who \u201cwon\u201d the Super Bowl ad war?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the last two years, I have<\/a> been using the Adam Brown Social Media Command Center<\/a> at the University of Tennessee to understand how social media like Twitter and Facebook react to major events such as presidential debates, breaking news like the GameStop craze<\/a> and sporting events like the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Engagement on Twitter is one measure companies use<\/a> to determine an advertisement\u2019s success and whether it was worth all those millions \u2013 not to mention the cost of making Super Bowl ads, which often include celebrities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s what I noticed from monitoring social media during Super Bowl LV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The performers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t monitor the game itself \u2013 in which Tom Brady led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a 31-9 victory<\/a> over the Kansas City Chiefs. But I did notice the performers, including the first poet<\/a> to ever present at a Super Bowl, received a lot of buzz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Weeknd<\/a>\u2019s halftime performance \u2013 and his closeup<\/a> \u2013 was the talk of Twitter, as Super Bowl performances usually are<\/a>. With his prime time slot and greatest hits montage<\/a>, he was the biggest hit on social media, with over 821,000 mentions during the game, most of which were quite positive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poet Amanda Gorman, who gained national recognition<\/a> at President Joe Biden\u2019s inauguration, received almost 60,000 mentions that were overwhelmingly positive after she read a poem<\/a> during the pre-game show. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-ejbSCjg2qo?wmode=transparent&start=0 Amanda Gorman recites \u2018Chorus of the Captains.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drake, Disney and Dew<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Of the dozens of companies that bought ad time during the big game, three won the Twitterverse with the most positively talked about advertisements of the evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I reached that conclusion by analyzing the volume of tweets that mentioned the company or used a hashtag introduced in the commercial, as well as by examining the sentiment score to see whether the conversation around the ads was positive or negative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the big winners was State Farm\u2019s ads starring Drake<\/a>, in which the rapper appears as a stand-in for \u201cJake,\u201d who has appeared frequently in the insurer\u2019s advertisements. Over 28,000 tweets mentioned State Farm within 40 minutes of the commercial\u2019s first airing, for a total of 44,000 during the game. \u201cDrake\u201d was a keyword in most of them. Sentiment was very positive for most of the night as people found \u201cDrake from State Farm\u201d funny, until some users brought up the \u201cDrake curse\u201d that is supposedly bad luck for sports teams<\/a>. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lvpq2OjmJvg?wmode=transparent&start=0 \u2018Drake from State Farm.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disney\u2019s trailer<\/a> for its upcoming series \u201cThe Falcon and The Winter Soldier\u201d performed even better, spurring over 100,000 tweets that specifically mentioned the show. Sentiment was also overwhelmingly positive for the show which stars two characters from the Marvel universe, with a score of over 90% throughout the evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mountain Dew\u2019s ad featuring pro wrestler John Cena driving through a \u201csurreal watermelon-themed amusement park<\/a>\u201d won the evening on social media. It received over 300,000 mentions, likely driven by the $1 million offered to the first person who tweeted out the correct number of \u201cmajor melon\u201d bottles that appeared in the ad. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/sjMalUSxBvs?wmode=transparent&start=0 Mountain Dew\u2019s million-dollar giveaway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few duds<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Super Bowl mainstay Budweiser had a pretty bad night. At first it said it would not buy advertising this year<\/a> and instead donate the money to coronavirus vaccination awareness efforts. But apparently it changed its mind and ran several ads for Bud Light<\/a> and Bud Light Seltzer<\/a>. Mentions of the two beers were under 10,000 and sentiment turned negative after the ads began running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shift4Shop, an e-commerce platform, advertised its partnership<\/a> with the Inspiration4 civilian mission to space. The ad did not appear to leave much of an impact on Twitter users, however, with fewer than 2,000 tweets during the game \u2013 not much of an effect for the price tag. It reminded me of Quibi\u2019s Super Bowl ad last year<\/a> which was meant to be the TV streaming app\u2019s debut to the world. It was not well-received<\/a>, and the company called it quits<\/a> in December.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another big loser were advertisements that were \u201cheavy\u201d \u2013 ad jargon for commercials that are overly emotive, such as those referencing weighty events like the pandemic or the Capitol riots. Most Super Bowl advertisers avoided these themes \u2013 opting instead for escapism and nostalgia<\/a>. And the ones that did go heavy didn\u2019t do well, such as Bass Pro Shops and Cabela\u2019s<\/a> ad, during which the narrator intoned that \u201cin these trying times we need nature more than ever.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jeep\u2019s ad starring Bruce Springsteen<\/a> garnered a lot of attention \u2013 20,000 tweets within minutes of its airing after half time \u2013 but most of it negative. Over two minutes, the Boss implores Americans to \u201cmeet in the middle\u201d in a call for unity that some Twitter users described<\/a> as \u201ctone deaf.\u201d https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/D2XYH-IEvhI?wmode=transparent&start=0 Too political?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honorable mention<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

While it didn\u2019t break the internet, vegan food company Oatly\u2019s love-it-or-hate-it ad<\/a> got a fair amount of attention given how minimilistic it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It featured the company\u2019s CEO playing piano in a field and singing about Oatly\u2019s products. People seemed evenly split on whether the ad was good or absolutely horrible<\/a> \u2013 but it did generate over 16,000 tweets. The negative reaction may have been the company\u2019s plan all along as it immediately began selling T-shirts saying, \u201cI totally hated that Oatly commercial<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The shirts sold out in five minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[You\u2019re too busy to read everything. We get it. That\u2019s why we\u2019ve got a weekly newsletter.<\/em> Sign up for good Sunday reading.<\/a> ]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alexander Carter<\/a>, Phd Student in Advertising, University of Tennessee<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alexander Carter, University of Tennessee Live sporting events are among the few remaining places where advertisers can ensure that no one fast forwards through their commercials which is why companies were willing to pay US$5.5 million for just 30 seconds of air time on Super Bowl Sunday. So who \u201cwon\u201d the Super Bowl ad war? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":24205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,277],"tags":[6084,9437,9434,635,7689,4694,9436,9435,3183,463,9429,9438],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24204"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24206,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24204\/revisions\/24206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}