The super bowl is pegged as the advertising event of the year. I often find most of the adverts to be average and slightly arbitrary. The Super bowl 2017 was a phenomenal exercise in average advertising. For me all the expensive commercials blended together into a morass. Each following a formula: CELEBRITY + KNOCK YOUR COMPETITION + LOTS OF COMPUTER GRAPHICS = SUCCESSFUL ADVERT. The only brand that did anything of note was Hyundai. They live streamed the game to a purpose built 360 degree room at a military base in Poland. Four soldiers got to experience the game live. The twist, their families were sitting in the audience with them. Hyundai delivered a digital family reunion. What interested me is that they managed to film, edit and air the advert all during the game. A superhuman feat of production, planning and technology.
I can’t help but feel that all these companies missed the mark. One company from 2016 is still occupying space in my head, Quickbooks. They did a very bold thing. Quickbooks chose to give their advert slot to one of the companies that use their service. Death Wish Coffee “The worlds strongest coffee” who along with 15000 other small companies entered a competition to have their advert aired at the big game. The result an ad with a ship full of Vikings falling into the mouth of a man drinking coffee as apt metaphor for the fierce strength of their Coffee. The only airtime Quickbooks claimed in the advert was the last 4 seconds where they simply say “Quickbooks is proud to put a small business on todays game”.
This simple execution does four things.
- It puts their customers first
- It did it at scale
- It speaks to their strategy of helping small business’ to succeed
- It breaks from the clutter of the Super Bowl adverts by doing something unique
This is a great example of strategy come to life in communication. Watch the advert below:
A small shout out goes to the the people at Cards Against Humanity for their Super Bowl advert that “While we succeeded creatively, the advertisement showed a disappointing return on investment ($0), and we are now going out of business,” you can read about their advert here.
