Influencers commonly focus their efforts around a seasonal theme, whether it be Thanksgiving, other year-end holidays, or major sporting events. The Super Bowl is well-known for its TV advertising potential, and in recent years, social media has begun a cross-platform strategy to elicit interest from both audience pools. According to a study by Influencer Central, social media is playing a more significant role in the game-day event, with 78% of viewers also engaging with social media while watching the game.
Of the respondents, 38% said their primary reason for using social media during the game was “sharing thoughts about commercials,” which is great news for influencer advertising. According to Marketing Charts, almost one-quarter of viewers say that Super Bowl ads are the most entertaining part of the event.
The Super Bowl is the perfect advertising crossover opportunity for savvy influencers and the brands they represent. Below are five influencer campaigns that successfully straddled both platforms and brought their influence to bear during the Super Bowl.
Amazon Echo / Alexa
In 2018, Amazon used four different celebrity influencers to promote their new smart speaker, Amazon Echo, as well as Alexa, the assistant AI that goes with it. Anthony Hopkins, Cardi B, Rebel Wilson, and Gordon Ramsey all teased their fans with hints throughout their social media accounts that pointed toward the upcoming Super Bowl.
These four celebs used hints to plague their followers with anticipation. Brief videos, like Cardi B’s Amazon unboxing of a headset, culminated in a screen showing the date of the Super Bowl to tell you where to find the rest of the story. Withholding details in this manner built up enough curiosity to drive fans to wait expectantly for the moment when, on Super Bowl Sunday, Amazon’s ads revealed what the buildup was all about.
The spots featured Amazon’s signature AI Alexa, who had lost her voice. Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, gives the go-head to enlist the help of the celebrities to fill her ethereal shoes and answer user queries on her behalf. Alexa’s substitutes let their personalities shine through when answering simple requests, which turned out to be pretty hilarious, and even absurd. Finally, the headset unboxing and all the other references made sense. Fans ate it up. The engagement rate for the campaign topped out at 5.7%, which came from just seven posts between four celebrities and garnered 1.3 million likes and over 14,500 comments.
By using social media to create pre-hype for the Super Bowl ads, Amazon effectively generated interest among people who may not otherwise have watched as closely for the Super Bowl spots to appear.
Michelob ULTRA
Also capitalizing on 2018’s Super Bowl LII, Chris Pratt appeared in an ad promoting the beer Michelob ULTRA.
The spot arc begins with the actor finding out that he’s been selected to represent Michelob, and continues into a hilarious sequence of him training for the role. He awkwardly tells every stranger that he meets how much he loves beer. He decks out his private bar in Michelob ULTRA neon signs and practices dramatically hoisting a beer to his lips, even training with a tiny dumbbell in a drinking motion to prepare for the final sip.
Then, he arrives at the studio to find out that he’s only an extra.
Pratt pulls off the ad with his signature goofy charm. Overly serious and very committed, he finds that his efforts were misdirected and all for naught. There’s also a spot montage of people from all walks of life singing about how much they like beer, with Pratt present in each scene and heartily singing along.
The actor teased the upcoming ad on his Instagram account by saying he’d be featured singing about beer and encouraging his followers to tune in and watch.
Other influencers joined to generate buzz for Michelob, including fitness Instagrammer Jera Foster-Fell.
She posed with 2 cases of Michelob ULTRA in the background and asked her followers who’d they’d be rooting for in the big game, or if they were just tuning in for the halftime show.
Bose
While the Super Bowl featured heavily in their 2018 ad campaign, their spots never actually ran during the game. Instead, Bose created a YouTube miniseries featuring a hardcore superfan of the Patriots and another who loves the Eagles. The third video featured Bose presenting both fans with tickets to Super Bowl LII.
With this campaign, Bose focused their attention on the fans, and not coveted game-night TV spots. The ads were about ordinary people who are both sports fans and music lovers, bringing both concepts together.
Bose expanded the ad’s reach by recruiting 13 players from both the Patriots and Eagles teams to share clips from the series on their Instagram accounts, all using the hashtag #FootballFeelings. Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz posted the reaction video when the selected Eagles fan (and her father) received the tickets and showed their excitement to attend the big game.
Bose doesn’t plaster their logo everywhere or announce that it’s all about promoting their products. In both videos highlighting the chosen fans, the video subtly zooms in on the Bose headphones worn by Eagles superfan and the Bose speakers and earbuds used by the Patriots superfan.
This strategy ties the brand more to the people and less to the Super Bowl event. The message focuses on bringing people closer to their dreams, through music and the chance to watch a historic football game. Bose accomplished all of this without spending a dime on game day TV spots.
Gearing Up for 2020: Cheetos and MC Hammer
For the first time since 2009, Cheetos is running an ad during the Super Bowl. Their teaser spot features the caption Oakland, 1989, which then turns to MC Hammer sitting in front of a piano. He’s humming a few bars of music while absently snacking on a bag of Cheetos. He reaches out to try the notes on the piano, only to reveal his fingers covered in signature yellow Cheetos dust. Concerned for the pristine piano, he says, “I can’t touch this.”
As the camera pans along his face, MC gasps, then the scene cuts. Cheetos is implying that they had a hand in musical history. The numbers 02.02.20, punctuated with Cheetos dust fingerprints to replace the periods, flash on the screen.
All of this takes place in 15 seconds. By using a punchy teaser for the upcoming game, Cheetos is pushing to build anticipation. What else will Cheetos tie themselves to in terms of MC Hammer’s music and the culture which accompanies it?
The Cheetos dust, arguably the secondary star of the ads, has been recently publicized as “Cheetle. This long-standing symbol of Cheetos fans everywhere had been known by that term within the company for years and was tweeted about by Cheetos in 2015 while inviting fans to share pictures of their Cheetle-covered fingers.
However, the term didn’t catch on until recently, when Cheetos announced it in relation to their new ads.
“Sorry not sorry” is the unofficial credo of dusty-fingered Cheetos snackers. This sentiment pairs well with rap culture, which is all about asserting your style. The slogan for the upcoming Cheetos campaign is “it’s a Cheetos thing.” Cheetos plans to run the campaign during the Super Bowl as well as throughout most of the year.
Will you be tuning in to find out where Cheetos and MC Hammer takes it?
