Super-Bowl-Promotions Archives - American Sweepstakes

Super Bowl LIII Wrap Up

Last Sunday the New England Patriots won the Super Bowl 13-3 against the Los Angeles Rams. Is anyone really surprised? It has been referred to as quite the sleeper and not much on offensive from either team. By the fourth quarter, the game was tied 3-3 thanks to field goals. The Patriots finally scored the one touchdown and that’s when I fell asleep! It turned out to be the lowest-scoring Super Bowl game in history. Tom Brady now has more Super Bowl wins than any NFL player ever, Julian Edelman, their wide receiver, was the Super Bowl MVP and Bill Belichick became the oldest coach to get a Super Bowl ring.

Besides the ads, people were talking about how great Gladys Knight sang the national anthem. However, the consensus on Maroon-5 and Pepsi’s half-time show was not positive. Why Adam Levine took off his shirt and showed us all his tattoos was quite the distraction. And of course the other big NFL controversy, other than that missed call that ended the Saints season, was all the people, celebrities and activists, who didn’t tune in and boycotted this year’s game and tweeted #ImWithKap.

So back to the ads and promotions. Which ad was your favorite? Well accordingly to USA Today’s Ad Meter, the NFL’s “The 100-Year Game” commercial was the most popular. It was the first time the NFL has taken this top spot. The ad features popular NFL players, both old and new, at a dinner event to celebrate the league’s upcoming centennial, only to see the players turn into a humorous football game after a golden football fell from the top of a cake and someone yelled “Fumble”! The NFL really needed that this year!

Amazon Alexa’s “Not Everything Makes the Cut” came in second place, Microsoft’s “We All Win” ad was next, then Hyundai’s “The Elevator” and #5 was Verizon’s “The Coach Who Wouldn’t Be Here”.

However the ad that gained the most buzz on social media during the game than any other according to Kellan Terry, who manages PR data for Brandwatch, was the Bud Light-HBO Game of Thrones ad. I didn’t even realize at first that it was the Mountain who slayed Bud Knight and it wasn’t till Daenerys Targaryen’s dragon appeared, along with the show’s theme music, that this was not just another Bud Light Dilly, Dilly ad.

One promotion that I haven’t written about yet was the Frank’s RedHot Put that Emoji on Everything Sweepstakes. The McCormick & Company-owned hot sauce dominated branded Twitter conversations during the game. Instead of spending $5 million on a Super Bowl spot, Frank’s RedHot ran this promotion on Twitter during the game that put a twist on its “I put that shit on everything” tagline by asking participants to “put that emoji on everything,” asking people to tweet the cayenne pepper emoji (for Frank’s) during ads along with the emoji that corresponded to the category of that ad for a chance to win prizes.

Participants had to use the hashtag #FranksSweepstakes in their tweet. Twitter’s #BrandBowl53 gave Frank’s RedHot the “interception award” for driving the highest percent of brand conversations during the Super Bowl without an in-game spot.

So we saw a few brands win by not having to spend $5 million on a Super Bowl spot. Bud Light and Game of Thrones combined one ad with the two brands and saved some money. T-Mobile also used their ads to promote their partnerships with both Taco Bell and Lyft. Both of those included promotions for free tacos and free Lyft rides.

So there was some creative thinking to stretch the marketing budgets. Too bad the game was not a big winner, only to those that are Patriot fans. Yes, the Brady/Belichick QB/Coach duo is going down as one of the best of all time. We’ll have to see what next season brings. Hope you enjoyed my posts.

Families are invited to submit images for a chance to appear in Kraft’s Super Bowl ad

Super Bowl Sunday is this Sunday, which will feature the New England Patriots (again) vs. the Philadelphia Eagles. Super Bowl LII will be played in Minneapolis in U.S. Bank Stadium and televised this year on NBC with kick-off at 6:30 pm ET. This year a 30 second spot aired during the game runs between $5 million to $5.2 million, and that’s not including production costs and agency fees. That does seem pretty astronomical, however, brands get millions of extra views online on YouTube, Facebook and iSpotTV. Last year’s #1 online spot from Budweiser, “Born the Hard Way”, received 8.2 million views according to iSpot.TV.

Some of this year’s new ads have appeared online this week. Here’s the full M&M’s ad featuring Danny Divito and here’s the Pizza Hut Pre-Game ad featuring Terrell Owens. I wrote about both these campaigns in last week’s blog post.

This week Kraft announced their Super Bowl plans along with a teaser ad that they are running now and leading up to the game. They are attempting to run a promotion that will award the winners by featuring them and their families in the Kraft game day ad which will run during the second half. This is by no means an easy thing to pull off. Here’s how it will work.

The promotion opens for submissions early Sunday morning at 6:30 am ET. Kraft is asking families to share on Instagram and Twitter how they’re celebrating the big game using the hashtags #FamilyGreatly and #KraftEntry. People can submit either a photograph or a video, no longer than 15 minutes. Kraft and its creative agency Leo Burnett Chicago will be reviewing the submissions as they come in to begin putting the 30-second spot together. A separate ad will air just before kickoff to remind viewers that they still have time to submit. The window for submissions will close at 8:30pm ET. The full official rules are posted here.

“Throughout the course of the day, we’ll be looking at all the activity that’s occurring with those hashtags and really having an eye to family-generated content that showcases different types of families and types of activities,” said Anne Field, director of brand building for Kraft. “We’ve thought through some of the executional elements like the music, but we’ll really be making the ad in real time on that day.”

People can pre-register here for the Kraft #FamilyGreatly promotion here where they can authorize their Twitter and/or Instagram accounts so that if their image is selected, they can be contacted quickly. People need to check their email and social media accounts throughout game day. If they are contacted they need to provide their full name, email address, city, state, and ZIP code. They also need to provide first name(s) and a valid email address for each person (or parent/legal guardian) included in the photograph/video. Plus they must agree to provide the Sponsor with all the rights to use the content submitted and to let the Sponsor incorporate it into other works, in any form, for promotional or marketing purposes worldwide.

This promotion is an extension of Kraft’s ‘Family Greatly’ campaign, which launched last month with this video that featured real parents discussing the impossible standards they set for themselves when it comes to parenting. The aim of the campaign is to encourage parents to stop putting so much pressure on themselves to be perfect. Rather than being product-specific, the ‘Family Greatly’ effort promotes all products that fall under the Kraft brand name, including its macaroni and cheese, mayonnaise, line of salad dressings, shredded cheese and barbecue sauces. By uniting its portfolio of offerings under one overarching tagline, the company is hoping to strengthen what the Kraft brand stands for.

I’ll be watching the game and waiting to see how this ad turns out. I’m sure they will be getting thousands of submissions, so they must have a huge team of people on hand to review them all. Maybe I’ll submit a photo and then keep checking my Instagram account throughout the day. Check back here next week for a Super Bowl recap.

Doritos Crash the Super Bowl Video Contest Final Edition

We had a bit of NFL history in last weekend’s wild-card round. For the first time all four road teams won in the same playoff weekend. All those hometown fans in Washington D.C., Minneapolis, Cincinnati and Houston were disappointed to see their team’s season end. The fans of the Cincinnati Bengals and the Minnesota Vikings thought they had the game in the bag, but fans of both teams had a heartbreaking loss and Vikings fans sat through a bitter cold, minus degrees, game.

So this weekend the Road to Super Bowl 50 continues with 8 teams moving on. Saturday we have the Chiefs at the Patriots first and then the Packers at the Cardinals. On Sunday we get to watch the Seahawks at the Panthers and then the Steelers at the Broncos. So I highly doubt we’ll see a repeat of all road teams winning in the same weekend.

PepsiCo, the parent company of Doritos, is back again for their Annual Crash the Super Bowl Video Contest which is their 10th season. They announced that this will be the last edition of the contest and now my last time writing about it on this blog which I’ve done since 2008.

This year just three finalists videos were chosen which are now posted on the contest website. The public is invited to vote once per day, per device up till Jan. 28.

This year’s contestants have the chance to win $1 million and the opportunity to work with Zack Snyder, director of 300 and Man of Steel, whose latest film, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, will be released next March. The winner will work with Snyder as well as Warner Brothers and DC Comics on an undisclosed future project.

“We’re giving consumers one last shot to make their mark and see their homemade ads air during the Super Bowl broadcast,” Jeff Klein, vice president of marketing at Frito-Lay, said in a statement. “This is truly last call for all of those who not only want a shot at $1 million—but want a chance to jump-start their career in Hollywood.” The winning ad will air during CBS’ Super Bowl 50 telecast on Feb. 7. One Grand Prize winner and the two First Prize winners will all receive a trip to attend Super Bowl 50 and view the game from the Doritos suite.

May the best ad win. I’m always a sucker for any video with dogs. Here on the contest website you can view all the fan ads that have won and aired during the Super Bowl.

Sweepstakes offer chances to win tickets to Super Bowl 50

I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays and Happy New Year. Now that we are into January, as my blogging tradition conditions, I’m going to focus on the football playoff season and the Super Bowl. I will be covering some of the ads and promotional campaigns associated with Super Bowl 50. This year Super Bowl 50 will be hosted on February 7, in the City of Santa Clara at the state-of-the-art Levi’s Stadium, which the bay area hosts claim is the greenest and most technologically advanced professional football stadium in the United States.

Here’s what this year’s playoff picture looks like this year:

If you have been a reader of this blog, you would know that I’m a Buffalo Bills fan and writing about another playoff season that they didn’t make. It was the first year with Rex Ryan as the coach, who promised that we’d make it and then had to eat his words. But on the bright side, it appears we have found a quarterback in Tyrod Taylor and he and Sammy Watkins really connected in the last game of the season in which they ended the Jets playoff hopes.

The Super Bowl has been one of the most watched sporting events and continues to have an enormous amount of marketing associated with it. NBC’s broadcast of last year’s Super Bowl was the most watched program in American television history, surpassing the previous year’s game. So we’ll see if we break that record again.

Last year most of the advertisers followed the trend of the previous year and released their TV spots prior to the actual broadcast of the game. So we expect to see more of that this year. For now here are a few of promotions that are currently still offering a chance to win ticket packages to the game.

SiriusXM’s Super Bowl 50 Sweepstakes is giving their current subscribers a chance to win an opportunity to go to Super Bowl 50. One Grand prize winner will receive round-trip airfare for two to San Francisco, CA, three nights hotel stay and two tickets to Super Bowl 50. This sweepstakes ends on January 25.

Campbell’s Chunky Super Bowl 50 Instant Win Game is giving away ten Grand Prizes that include a 3 night trip for each winner and guest to Super Bowl 50, round trip air transportation, hotel accommodations, a travel stipend for ground transportation, 2 tickets to the game, 2 Super Bowl 50 Gift Bags and $250 spending money. Participants are invited to purchase specialty-marked cans of Campbell’s Chunky soups and look under the lid to see if they are a winner. A no purchase entry is also included on the promotional website.

We are assisting a client with The Shocase Special Teams Sweepstakes which is offering participants a chance to win 2 tickets to Super Bowl 50 along with hotel accommodations. We again are using the Shortstack platform to host the promotional entry form. Shocase’s objective is to create awareness of their professional network for marketers and gain new members.

So what teams will make it to this year’s Super Bowl? Will we see the return of the New England Patriots, or will it be the Denver Broncos who will battle it out with Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers? Or will one of the wild card teams, such as Seattle or Pittsburgh, continue their recent hot streaks and win a division title. We’ll know more after this weekend. Stay tuned for more coverage as the road to the Super Bowl continues.

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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