With spots costing $7 million for 30-seconds of airtime, the only way to get a significant return on a Super Bowl spot investment is to generate enough buzz that the commercials dominate consumers’ conversations well after the game has ended.
According to Engagement Labs, only a few brands managed to generate significant online buzz and offline conversation with their Super Bowl ads. The company’s research indicates both metrics together drive about 19% of purchases, while those that only generate online buzz drive less than half of purchases.
By those measurements, E-Trade was the game’s biggest winner. The brand’s commercial featuring talking babies at a wedding resulted in a 350% lift in both in-person conversations and through social media. Pepsi Zero Sugar’s commercials featuring Ben Stiller and Steve Martin also scored well, particularly online, where online conversation increased 3,000% and offline conversation jumped 300%. Heineken had the third-highest combined lift with an Ant-Man tie-in commercial for its 0.0 non-alcoholic product increase 300% online and offline.
Other brands that scored well on both metrics were Avocados from Mexico, Coors Light, Intuit’s Turbo Tax, Michelob Ultra, the NFL, Planters and Tubi.
“There are levers marketers can pull to improve performance across both channels,” noted a blog post on the finding on Engagement Labs’ website. “These include ensuring the advertising is strongly branded and includes a ‘buzzworthy’ message that is easy to remember and talk about and has a call to action.”
Meanwhile, several other brands – Crown Royal, Bud Light, Doritos, Rakuten, T-Mobile, Dunkin’ and Weathertech – generated online buzz, but did not fuel offline conversations. Ultimately, this was a missed opportunity. “For these Super Bowl advertisers, there is an opportunity to evaluate marketing to give the brand a better chance at earning additional offline conversation,” according to the company. Watch all the Super Bowl ads here.
