Who won the Superbowl Advertising game ?

I get newsletters and reports from various people and organisations. One of today's was from Marketing Dive, which can usually unearth one or two interesting nuggets for me.

Today's report led with a report on Superbowl 51. No, not the football game. That wasn’t important. The real game was the Advertising Competition. Who scored, and who fumbled. Who made the poor call, and who made the hard yards.

Apparently, while the football game was ok, the advertising game lacked a bit of punch. With $5 million ads being run, it was knife edge stuff, but several companies didn’t really make it happen.

111 million tuned into Fox, with 1.7 million streaming. However, It looks like the test for your ads is not how many actually watch, but how many react on social media. The Twitter tweets and Facebook posts are the real benchmarks of success and failure.

Airbnb came up with a last minute well crafted ad that seems to have scored some good points, but 84 Lumber tried to switch their message from TV to its website, which crashed under the heavy load. Good effort, but no cigar,

Tide also scored a victory with “Terry Bradshaw’s stain”, an innovative campaign that combined a story with social media.

Then it was all over, and the creatives start to work out what went right and what went wrong. Bonuses will be paid, and heads will roll.

Now it’s back to the drawing board and get ready for Superbowl 52.

From this side of the Atlantic it all seems like a lot of hot air, mucho money being thrown about for brand image and one-upmanship. But maybe I am biased. Give me the FA Cup Final at Wembley any time.

If you would like to read the full report on Superbowl (the Advertising one), you can catch it here:-

http://www.marketingdive.com/news/8-digital-market...

Best regards

Chris