Super Bowl ads Archives - American Sweepstakes

The Road to Super Bowl LIII. The Clydesdales are back. DEVOUR offers #FoodPorn and a chance to win the Ultimate Man Cave

Last weekend we had the NFL Conference Championship games with both games going into overtime along with some very controversial calls. The pass interference, helmet to helmet call against the LA Rams that was never called led to a game-ending 57 yard field goal by the Rams against the Saints and propelled them into the Super Bowl. The NFL league office acknowledged to New Orleans Coach Sean Payton afterward that the officiating crew botched the call. Then there was talk about Roger Goodel, the NFL commissioner, having the authority to schedule a redo game that would pick up the game at that point. But that never transpired. So now the Los Angeles Rams will make their first appearance in the Super Bowl in 17 years and yes, they will play against who else but the New England Patriots. So now the Patriots are headed to the Super Bowl for the third year in a row and the ninth time with QB Tom Brady.

The game will take place on February 3 in Atlanta, GA, in Mercedes-Benz Stadium between the New England Patriots and Los Angeles Rams. According to TicketIQ, an aggregator of ticket-buying options, it appears that football fans are underwhelmed by this Super Bowl LIII match-up. TicketIQ reported Tuesday that prices for tickets to the big game have declined 17 percent since Sunday’s conference championship victories. If it had been a different outcome for both games it may have created a pent-up demand for Super Bowl tickets especially among Kansas City Chief fans since their team hasn’t been in the Super Bowl in 49 years. Plus the Saints have a very loyal fan following and New Orleans is by far the closest city to Atlanta among the four teams that made it to the conference championships. But it’s not happening.

So in the meantime the hype for Super Bowl LIII continues. Many of the game sponsors have started releasing more information on their ads that they will be running during the game. I just watched a 60-second ad that Budweiser released this week in which it’s bringing back the Budweiser Clydesdales who were absent from the brand’s ads last year. It shows a dog on top of a Budweiser wagon drawn by the horses in which they drive by a wind farm with Bob Dylan’s most famous song “Blowin’ in the Wind” playing.

This builds on the commitment they announced last year to move to using 100% renewable electricity generated by wind power for brewing the beer. Bud also announced that it will donate enough clean electricity to power the city of Atlanta during the week that it hosts the Super Bowl. In addition, through Feb. 7, Bud and Drift, a clean electricity supplier, are offering a free one-month trial to households that sign up to switch to Drift. Click on the image to watch the ad here. I just love the dog’s ears and jowls blowin’ in the wind!.

Kraft Heinz’s DEVOUR brand has released an “uncensored” 60-second ad that will presumably be tamed down a bit to a 30-second version to air in the game’s third quarter. This version has a woman relating faux-shocking details about how her husband has been acting since he became addicted to “food porn” — meaning Devour frozen meals. Watch the ad to get somewhat of an idea of what food porn is. The brand stated that they have over 184 million #foodporn tags on Instagram,

The ads are being accompanied by promotions including a “1-83-FOODPORN” hotline offering “seductive descriptions of mouthwatering frozen meals”; a partnership in which Barstool Sports personalities will drive a Devour RV “man cave on wheels” to Atlanta. They are also launching the Devour Ultimate Man Cave Sweepstakes offering a grand prize that includes the following for the ultimate “man cave”: a LED Smart TV, a TV Soundbar, a Wireless Music System, a LED Light Up Foosball Table, a Tabletop/Bartop Arcade with 412 Games, a $2,000 Wayfair gift card, a $1,500 Home Depot gift card, a Mixology Bartender 10 Piece Bar Tool and a freezer for their one year supply of DEVOUR products. They will also be awarding 15 First Prize winners the freezer and the one year supply of DEVOUR products.

Next week I’ll include a few more of the ads and promotions that will be announced before Super Bowl LIII. Now that I can’t cheer for the Saints I will be hoping that the Rams, who supposedly are the underdogs, win it. Being a Buffalo Bills fan we just want to see anyone else but the Patriots win!

Skittles and Snickers launch Super Bowl LII Rivalry Sweepstakes & Instant Win Game plus some Super Bowl teaser ads are released

Last weekend, the Minnesota Vikings pulled off a last second, amazing win against the New Orleans Saints with an unbelievable touchdown by Stefon Diggs. The Jacksonville Jaguars pulled off a big upset against the Pittsburgh Steelers, who most thought would be the team playing the New England Patriots this coming weekend after the Patriots beat the Tennessee Titans. And the Philadelphia Eagles did win against the Atlanta Falcons. So the NFL Playoffs continue and the road to the Super Bowl LII now looks like this:

Some information about this year’s Super Bowl ads are starting to come out. Pepsi is bring back Cindy Crawford in an update of their classic 1992’s spot. The new 30-second ad is named “This Is the Pepsi,” and also features Crawford’s 18-year-old son, Presley Walker Gerber. Parent company, PepsiCo, will also be running two consecutive 30-second ads for its two of it’s products, Doritos Blaze and Mtn Dew Ice, in one single 60-second slot during this year’s Super Bowl.A teaser video (below) promises a face-off between actors Peter Dinklage and Morgan Freeman, representing Doritos Blaze and Mtn Dew Ice.

Last Super Bowl was the first year that Doritos hadn’t advertised during the Super Bowl. They ended their 10-year run of their “Crash the Super Bowl” contest that invited consumers to create ads. I started writing about this promotion back in 2009 with this post. Mountain Dew’s last Super Bowl ad was 2016’s “Puppymonkeybaby” — a spot that ranked high in performance of the game’s ads.

Skittles is also back this year, but in a different way. They won’t be running a commercial during the Super Bowl, but instead they are creating a “real, multimillion-dollar Super Bowl ad,” featuring a celebrity that they haven’t revealed yet. However, this ad will be viewed by just one Skittles fan, Marcos Menendez, a 17 year old from Canoga Park, Calif., who, according to the brand, was chosen because he’s a real Skittles fan. Facebook viewers will get to see Menendez’s reaction as he views the 60-second ad for the first time which will be livestreamed on Skittles’ Facebook channel on Super Bowl Sunday.

They have also partnered up with the Snickers brand in running the Super Bowl LII Rivalry 2018 Sweepstakes and Instant Win Game Promotion. This promotion started in December and runs till February 28. People can enter by texting the word “SNICKERS” or “SKITTLES” to 87654 to receive one entry into the Grand Prize Sweepstakes Drawing, and have one opportunity to win an Instant Win prize that is based on their time of entry. People can also enter online at www.teamskittles.com or www.teamsnickers.com . Two grand prize winners will each win 2018 season tickets to an NFL team of their choice valued at $5,000 each. The Instant Win prizes consists of 100 Electronic Arts/Madden NFL Game, 250 Team SNICKERS® and Team SKITTLES® Tailgating Kits, which include a Knit Hat and a Coffee Tumble, and 25,000 coupons good for a free pack of Skittles and a free Snickers bar. Total value of these instant win prizes comes to $100,000!

Stay tuned next week for more coverage as the road to Super Bowl LII continues.

What do you think will be this year’s best Super Bowl ad?

This Sunday the Carolina Panthers and the Denver Broncos will compete in Super Bowl 50 to be held in Santa Clara in Levi’s Stadium. I am eagerly awaiting the game which I’ll be watching from our living room couch. Check out this Panthers vs. Broncos Super Bowl trailer that the NFL recently posted.

The battle over this year’s Super Bowl ads has been heating up, in fact there was even a “Super Bowl’s Greatest Commercials” show that was broadcasted on CBS on Tuesday evening. CBS invited people to vote for their favorite, all-time Super Bowl ad. The winner was Budweiser with their ‘Clydesdales Brotherhood’ ad that aired in 2013 as the Ravens beat out the 49ers. The ad also included Stevie Nicks singing Landslide. So that helped to really strike an emotional chord with many of us viewers

Budweiser has already stated that they won’t be airing any puppy ads this year, which was last year’s favorite ad, but that the Clydesdales will definitely be back. The brand’s sister, Bud Light, has been named as this year’s winner so far when it comes to digital chatter ever since they released a Super Bowl teaser ad featuring comedians Amy Schumer and Seth Rogan. The two are getting ready for their Bud Light Party, and just in time for the Iowa Caucuses, “party” apparently is a play on political parties.

Budweiser gets serious in this ad which teams up with Helen Mirren to promote the #GiveADamn movement against drunk driving. Mirren says “People who still drive drunk are, simply put, a utterly useless, oxygen wasting, human form of pollution….so stop it”. She ends with taking a sip of her bottle of bud with her burger and fries.

Avocados From Mexico decided to advertise during the game for the first time last year and they’re back for a second year. “A lot of the stress around ‘Is the Super Bowl right for us?’ That’s gone,” said Jay Russell, chief creative officer of GSD&M, the ad agency behind both commercials for Avocados From Mexico. But, he added, “In a weird way, it’s more stressful because you have to come back.” The brand recently released this year’s ad which is called AVOS in Space and featured here.

eMarketer released some stats this week that shows that viewers still like Super Bowl ads. They stated that according to the National Retail Federation, last year, 77.1% of consumers surveyed considered Super Bowl ads a form of entertainment. A tiny portion, just 4.5%, said the ads bothered them. Even though people are generally not annoyed by these commercials that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily giving them 100% of their attention either. According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2015 survey, 11.2% of respondents said they always use a mobile device while watching TV in general. And 23.7% said they sometimes do so.

Some of this time that people are spending on their phones during the Super Bowl will be spent engaging with social media which they often share comments about the game and the commercials.“The Super Bowl drives an incredible amount of social media commentary and interaction,” says eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson. “Advertisers want to be where their audience is, and that’s in social media. Last year, 65 million people worldwide used Facebook to talk about the game while it was happening, according to the company.”

So are you ready for some football? Between watching these two great teams, with two great quarterbacks, along with the Coldplay and guests halftime show, it should be pretty entertaining. Plus just announced today, Lady Gaga will help kick of the excitement by singing the national anthem. Oh and don’t forget about the ads. I’ll be back next week with a recap to end my annual Super Bowl coverage.

Super Bowl Wrap Up: McDonald’s was Lovin’ all the ads

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.
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