Yes, I watched Super Bowl 50 last night. No, I didn’t pay that much attention to the football. I think one of the teams won. I confess I really like the commercials. Rather than just watch the commercials, I thought I would do a bit of analysis. As we all know, marketing is about building awareness. Many businesses are getting very good at this. For example, many now release their commercials before the big game to start building buzz. I am sure you have already seen the dachshunds leaping towards the ketchup and the Amazon Echo ad several times already (and many others).
I decided to keep track of all the commercials which aired during the Super Bowl and track certain characteristics. For what it is worth, I only tracked those commercials which aired between kickoff and end of game. I may well do some additional analysis. In the interim, here are some interesting observations.
If you are curious, there were 115 commercials which aired during the game itself. Yep, 115. That was a lot more than I expected. I also tracked which commercials displayed a web page address, which used a social media hashtag and which were actual dot com companies. Here is my quick (and not so scientific analysis).
- Of the 115 commercials, 25 used a social media hashtag (22%).
- Of the 115 commercials, 53 displayed a web page address (URL) (46%).
- Of the 115 commercials, 9 mentioned a mobile app (8%).
- Of the 115 commercials, 11 were actual dot com companies (10%).
- Of the 115 commercials, 15 were from companies in the Peoria area (13%).
- Of the 15 commercials from companies in the Peoria area, 14 displayed a web page address (93%).
- Of the 15 commercials from companies in the Peoria area, 0 displayed a social media hashtag (0%).
Frankly, I wish I had been doing this for several years. Here are some insights I have based on the above numbers. Perhaps I am wrong on all these points, but they do make for a good conversation starter. I will try to do this next year as well and see what trends start to emerge.
First – many national companies likely no longer need to promote their web page URL. For example, everyone just knows that Coke is at Coke.com and Pepsi is a Pepsi.com and Jeep is at… You get the idea. However, for the companies in the Peoria area, mentioning their web page address is a must (as they are not nationally known). Curiously, I only saw one company use a Facebook page as their URL/ web page address.
Next – it would appear that many missed out on social media buzz as part of the event. Only 22% actually included a social media hashtag. Of course, those were the big names (Doritos, Amazon and so forth). They are working hard to engage their customers in other channels and seem to understand the power and reach of social media. Although I did not track the specific hashtags, it would appear many were created just for this single event. It would also appear that no companies in the Peoria area have considered social media (or used generic commercials for this event).
Lastly, I find it interesting that 10% of all ads were for dot com companies. These ranged from PayPal to DeathWishCoffee,com. Yeah, I never heard of them either. Of these, the most memorable was Wix.com as they partnered with the upcoming Kung Fu Panda movie. I found that an interesting juxtaposition.
I do plan to conduct a more thorough analysis on this data; I just wanted to share my initial observations. If you are interested in the spreadsheet I assembled of this data, please contact me.
What insights do you gain from the above data? As always, I look forward to your comments.
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Wow Mark. That was a lot of work to do. Very interesting statistics.
And the underdog, Denver, won. 🙂