Author: Donna DeClemente

Super Bowl XLIX, along with all the hype and marketing, is now history. Congratulations to the New England Patriots on their win. I’m a Buffalo Bills fan and therefore not a Patriots fan, but I was glad to see them win this championship. As they say, “may the best team win” and in my opinion they did.

The broadcast of the game on NBC broke the record for U.S. TV viewing at about 114.4 million, which does not even include all those extra fans that watched the game at sports bars and Super Bowl parties all from the same TV’s. It topped last year’s record of 112.2 million on Fox and is the seventh straight year it reached over a million viewers. The halftime show, which featured Katy Perry, Missy Elliot and Lenny Kravitz, also set a viewing record, with 118.5 million viewers. To put this in context, the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games this year only had 31.7 million viewers.

Speaking of the Olympics, when did the Super Bowl Halftime show get as big as the opening ceremony of the Olympic games? I’m not a Katy Perry fan, however I agree she does have talent. The show was pretty amazing, fireworks and dancing sharks! Yes, Missy Elliott as they say knocked it out of the park. Our Rochester winners of the Pepsi Hyped for Halftime Contest where thrilled to be right on the field watching the show. See this article which reports on how much they loved it. Next up we’ll be seeing the Katy Perry Show, the Musical, show up on Broadway!

As for the ads, Budweiser appeared to take the trophy again this year for the best ad with their “Lost Dog” Puppy sequel ad which I do love and don’t mind seeing again. I like the Snickers Brady Bunch ad which I thought was funny and very clever. One of my favorite brands, Dove, hit another home run with their Men Cares ad. I thought it had a double meaning though, poking some ridicule at the NFL for all the domestic abuse issues this year. I’m surprised that I haven’t seen anyone mention this in all the ad critiques that I’ve read. I also was moved by the Always “Like a Girl” ad, but I’ve seen the video before. So what are your favorite ads?

This year especially, it wasn’t just about the ads. It was more about how marketing campaigns integrated with digital and social media. “It used to be all about having this incredible Super Bowl commercial. [Now] you can’t have a campaign without social media.” as quoted by Linda Lagos of PepsiCo from Reuters. The campaign that really impressed me came from McDonald’s, who not only ran an ad during the game, but tied it in with a twitter campaign and sweepstakes promotion.

The McDonald’s Lovin’ Wins Sweepstakes took place during the Super Bowl broadcast, starting at the first national commercial break and ending at 2:59 am ET. The McDonald’s team was tweeting like crazy, almost every minute, about other marketer’s spots and using the word “lovin’ in each Tweet which earned them thousands of retweets. Here is a sample of some of the Tweets, even one about Jublia’s toe fungus ad.

Participants had to retweet one of the posts to be entered in the Sweepstakes for a chance to win the prize from that specific post. McDonald’s had a total of 50 different prizes, one for each tweet they posted. The smallest prize was 12 Loctite packages of 10g Control Gel Super Glue and a leather fanny pack valued at $66.63. The largest was a 2015 BMWi3 with some extra features valued at $48,980. The total prize pool value was $339,121.11. Some Twitter viewers where really “Lovin'” this promotion.

There is now quite a bit of data that marketers can take away from this year’s “Big Game”, from those that both ran a commercial and those that didn’t. At the same time, the teams of the NFL have much to review and to decide for the upcoming Road to Super Bowl 50!  That’s my wrap of up Super Bowl 49! Hope you enjoyed it. Now it’s back to business as usual.
—

Our hometown, Rochester, NY, has been selected as the hometown winner in the Pepsi Hyped for Halftime, Hype Your Hometown Contest. This national contest invited people to bring halftime to their hometown and also win tickets to this year’s Pepsi Super Bowl XLIX Halftime show featuring Katy Perry.

Haley Biemiller a 19 year old from Irondequoit (a Rochester suburb) calls herself Katy Perry’s biggest fan. She organized her family and friends to enter the contest more than 500 times. Pepsi’s judges chose Haley and 17 other grand prize winners from Rochester. They will each choose a guest for a total of 39 lucky people who will be receiving round-trip airfare to Arizona, 5 day/3 night hotel accommodations at a Scottsdale resort and passes to be on the field and to see Katy Perry during the Super Bowl Halftime show in the University of Phoenix Stadium.

The contest invited participants to submit either photos or videos that matched the Hyped for Halftime theme. Each participant was allowed up to 5 submissions a day during the contest period which ran from November 26 – December 29, 2014. So Haley set up a photo studio in her house where she took hundreds of photos of her local group that included Pepsi products and “Hyped for Halftime” posters and props. The group made sure everyone submitted the maximum of five entries per day, every day.

All approved submissions are still displayed in the contest’s photo gallery on the website. Lindsay Balzano, one of the winners also from Irondequoit was quoted as saying “When we looked at the site, we made up a good majority of all the collective photos,” she said. “We had 86 pages of just Rochester people of 126 total pages.” Lindsay received the phone call notifying her that she was a winner while out to dinner with Hailey and another friend. “I got so excited and I couldn’t hear because I was so happy about it,” she said. “Haley’s face got bright red and she started crying. It was indescribable.”
The submissions were judged by an independent panel based on originality and creativity; embodiment of the “Hyped for Halftime” campaign; total hometown participation; and public voting. Rochester submitted a total 509 entries, which was selected as the Hometown Prize winner.

So now Pepsi is bringing the hype to Rochester. This Sunday, Jan. 18, they will be hosting a free concert in downtown Rochester featuring pop/hip-hop duo Nico & Vinz. The duo is best known for their single, “Am I Wrong”. According to this Democrat & Chronicle article in our local newspaper, Pepsi will also be delivering some extra hype with surprises popping up around Rochester leading up to the event including a mobile Hype Squad and vending machines that will offer a chance to win VIP passes or meet and greets.

During last week’s playoff game on Saturday between the Patriots and the Ravens, Katy Perry announced that she invited Lenny Kravitz to be one of her special guests joining her during the Super Bowl Halftime show. She hinted that there may be others to announce soon. More than 115 million viewers in the U.S. watched last year’s show.

This weekend we have two more great football games between four teams to watch. In my last Super Bowl post I mentioned that I was routing for the Green Bay Packers who are now moving on in the Road to the Super Bowl. Unfortunately the season ended for the Cowboys, Bronco’s, Panthers and the Ravens. However, the excitement for next season for the Buffalo Bills has risen tremendously here with the announcement that Rex Ryan is the new head coach! Can’t wait.

Yes, we are based in Rochester, NY and our company had nothing to do with this contest.

The Seattle Seahawks managed to get back in the game this past Sunday and beat the Green Bay Packers in overtime — after being behind for much of the entire game. So that means they’re again headed to the Super Bowl. They play against the New England Patriots, who beat the Indianapolis Colts in a no game in the rain, 45-7. However there is an issue whether the game balls were intentionally deflated. Not that the NFL needed one more problem to add to their worries this season. The League is investigating whether the Patriots actually deflated balls to make them easier to grip in the heavy rain. But the game will go on in Arizona on February 1 as planned!

My home town of Rochester, NY won the Hyped for Halftime Contest and instead of watching the Patriots hammer the Colts, many people here enjoyed a free connect downtown sponsored by Pepsi. The concert featured hip-hop duo Nico & Vinz known for their hit “Am I Wrong”. It also included a special appearance from the Buffalo Bills brand new head coach, Rex Ryan, and their rookie of the year wide receiver, Sammy Watkins. There was also small, private meet-and-greet sessions with these celebrities that people could win through radio giveaways or select cans of Pepsi that were being dispensed from the free vending machines. See this huge Pepsi display in the entrance of our East Ave. Wegmans store. I tried to get a free can from this one, but it was empty!

YouTube’s AdBlitz is back for another year, allowing people to view and choose their favorite campaigns from Super Bowl ads. This year the site will live stream their own halftime show. So instead of watching Katy Perry’s Halftime Show from the stadium, viewers can turn to YouTube where they will feature more than 20 YouTube creators and musicians including Harley Morenstein from Epic Meal Time, Freddie Wong, Rhett & Link, and Toby Turner, among others.

At the conclusion of the Super Bowl game, viewers are invited to cast their vote on the site for their favorite Super Bowl commercials. Voting will last a week, ending on Feb. 9, and then the winners will be revealed. The site also will have a post-game content gallery where advertisers can continue the conversation with their viewers by providing behind-the-scenes footage of their Super Bowl spot.

Last year Budweiser was considered to have “won” the TV ad game with its “Puppy Love” spot, despite the fact that it didn’t air until the last minutes of a blowout game. But Budweiser had posted the ad on YouTube a week in advance and it spread. So Budweiser plans to do the same this year with three ads, including a sequel to “Puppy Love.” Can’t wait for that.

The spot generated over 54 million online views and over 2.6 million social interactions. To compare, that’s twice the number of online views and five times the social interaction rate of the second-ranking spot, the Jaguar “Rendezvous” campaign — which also had significant pre-game buildup.

We now continue down the Road to the Super Bowl and have a week and a half to get further hyped for the game. Honestly I don’t really care who wins this Super Bowl game, but I will be watching nonetheless.