Touchdown Worthy Social Campaigns Without the Super Bowl Budget

Super Bowl Social Media MarketingSuper Bowl Social Media Marketing

Think about paying $4 million for a 30-second advert spot. Even for the Pepsis and Budweisers of the world, this type of funding isn’t chump change — it’s one of many single most necessary branding occasions of the 12 months.

Why the Tremendous Bowl? Why Social Media?

According to Venables Bell & Partners, People love Tremendous Bowl advertisements, and greater than half of them will search them out earlier than the massive day on Fb, YouTube, model websites, and different media sources. In the course of the sport, they’ll be speaking by way of textual content, Fb, and Twitter. It doesn’t cease there — 40+ million will re-watch or share advertisements after the sport.

Tremendous Bowl XLVII isn’t simply prime time for sports activities. It’s prime time for meals, occasions with associates with household, neighborhood, nice tales, and passionate vitality. So why wouldn’t you be a part of the dialog?

Don’t let the $4 million quantity scare you. Simply since you don’t have an enormous advertising and marketing price range doesn’t imply you’ll be able to’t leverage the Tremendous Bowl on your personal enterprise or shoppers:

  1. Small area of interest enterprise can construct a neighborhood across the tremendous bowl, on virtually zero price range
  2. Your services or products doesn’t need to be related to sports activities so as so that you can use it to market or interact your viewers
  3. Person-generated content material permits your prospects to talk on your model and possibly higher than you ever may

Social media is invaluable to the advertising and marketing combine. Right here’s how liked manufacturers —massive and small— are making their voices heard.

1. CopyKat: Construct a Shut-Knit Neighborhood

CopyKat Super Bowl Social Media MarketingCopyKat Super Bowl Social Media Marketing

Stephanie Manley of CopyKat Recipes has been internet hosting an annual Super Bowl recipe contest for a number of years. The concept is easy: submit your personal, unpublished unique recipe for an opportunity to win an superior home-cooking prize — on this case, it’s a programmable crock pot.

Manley’s enterprise mannequin is very contingent on the neighborhood of meals lovers that she is ready to construct — and her Tremendous Bowl meals contest may be very a lot in keeping with that goal. Fellow cooking lovers love cooking communities and the power to get artistic with new meals concepts. And the Tremendous Bowl? Nicely, it’s not such as you’re making ready on your typical night dinner — one of these get together cooking solely occurs yearly.

Amongst her neighborhood, Manley is positioning her web site as a spot the place cooking creatives can do two issues — train and be taught. She’s establishing her area of interest website as a go-to useful resource for artistic recipes. She runs a top quality management verify by choosing finalists, so you understand that the concepts you’ll see are top-notch. Final 12 months, she even recruited the assistance of her weblog’s readers to take part within the voting.

CopyKat Voting Super Bowl Social Media Marketing

Whilst a small area of interest model, Manley is ready to leverage the Tremendous Bowl to construct a powerful neighborhood the place everybody — present readers, new readers, cooking novices, skilled cooks, and contest contributors can discover worth. All for the price of a crock pot.

Key takeaways

Embrace the spirit of the Tremendous Bowl season to construct upon your online business’s present model. Get your prospects concerned and built-in. Encourage an initiative that establishes your model as a frontrunner whereas including worth to your subscribers’ lives. It doesn’t take $4 million. All you actually need is one thing so simple as a house cooked meal.

2. AMC’s ‘Strolling Useless’: Construct an Viewers Early

AMC, in true community tv trend, is already constructing suspense round their upcoming Tremendous Bowl advert for ‘Strolling Useless.’ The present is at present on a mid-season hiatus, however it’s coming again on February tenth. Seems like optimum timing for a type of costly Tremendous Bowl advertisements, proper?

AMC's 'Walking Dead' Social Super Bowl Marketing AMC's 'Walking Dead' Social Super Bowl Marketing

Clearly, AMC needs the present’s comeback to be actually massive. To do this, they will’t depend on a 30-second business spot. Suspense and vitality take time to construct, and a easy commercial is nowhere close to sufficient to create most consciousness round what the community is hinting would be the mega-moment of the season — Rick vs. Governor.

AMCs Walking Dead Social Superbowl Marketing AMCs Walking Dead Social Superbowl Marketing

So, AMC is benefiting from its multi-million greenback funding by starting early —on the peer-driven Web communities of Pinterest and Instagram. To ‘Strolling Useless’ followers, this sneak peak is absolute superior. A month is a very long time to attend on your favourite present, and AMC is aware of this. So, they’re leveraging the Tremendous Bowl to maintain their viewers engaged and .

So what do zombies need to do with the Tremendous Bowl and soccer? Nothing. Completely nothing. And AMC may have simply taken a approach completely different spin to this advertising and marketing message (assume: zombies + soccer = no thanks). As a substitute, they’re tastefully embracing the ability of dialog, audience-building, and timing.

Key takeaways

If you happen to can’t discover a football-related angle to advertising and marketing for the Tremendous Bowl, you don’t want to surrender altogether. If you happen to’re engaged on timing the launch for a brand new product, as an example, you’ll be able to make the most of your Tremendous Bowl viewers to construct momentum. Take into accout although, that you simply’ll be venturing right into a aggressive viewers house, so that you’ll must have a strong sport plan and begin approach early.

3. Pizza Hut: Anybody Can Be a Star

Pizza Hut Social Super Bowl Marketing Pizza Hut Social Super Bowl Marketing

Pizza Hut’s Tremendous Bowl marketing campaign is hands-down superior. This 12 months, they’re asking their fans to submit artistic movies of themselves in hilariously cool moments saying “Hut. Hut. Hut.” The connection to soccer all comes right down to a semantic play on phrases (however let’s not be fooled, there might be loads of pizza consumed on sport day).

Pizza Hut followers have just below per week to submit their movies — the deadline is January twentieth. The winners with the ‘greatest’ movies will turn into the celebrities of a Pizza Hut advert that runs proper earlier than Tremendous Bowl kickoff.

In keeping with Pizza Hut’s Chief Advertising Officer Kurt Kane:

“Customers like to be concerned with the growth of social media,” he stated in a quote for USA Today. “Smartphones and hand-held cameras have made it simpler to video your self. Everybody has turn into a hip-pocket artistic.”

The marketing campaign is creating social media momentum that really feeds on itself. Folks create movies to interact with the model after which share with their associates — which implies free promoting for Pizza Hut. Moreover, Pizza Hut is giving their prospects a possibility to assist in defining the model — folks powered advertising and marketing at its best.

If you wish to see entries as they’re uploaded, click here.

Key takeaways

Undecided what your model technique ought to be? Give your prospects a possibility to assist outline it by means of social media. This user-generated advertising and marketing method isn’t restricted to established massive manufacturers. In case you are a small enterprise, you’ll be able to simply as simply interact your prospects and replicate one thing comparable inside your smaller neighborhood.


There’s a lot taking place for the Tremendous Bowl this 12 months. What else ought to be on this record? What are some examples — optimistic and destructive — of campaigns that you simply’ve seen? We’d love so that you can proceed the dialog within the feedback under.

— Ritika Puri