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A Super Bowl Repeat of 4 years ago? Not For Social Media

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The last time the New York Giants met the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl was four years ago, back in 2008. That was when Facebook had less than 100 million users, LinkedIn had fewer than 30 million members, Google+ was non-existent and for the first three months of that year only 100 million tweets were posted on Twitter.

Come February 5, 2012 Facebook will have over 800 million users, Twitter over 300 million (over 300 million tweets a day), LinkedIn over 135 million and Google+ over 50 million.

And, oh, did we forget to mention YouTube. The latest stats are mind-blowing. Every minute 60 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube, with 4 billion videos being streamed daily.

So if you think that the advertisers for this year’s Super Bowl aren’t playing for increased interaction through YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere, you’re not paying attention.

Super Bowl Ads As Campaigns

We wrote in our last blog post how Doritos encouraged people to make ads, with the winning one getting the glory of Super Bowl exposure.  They are not the only ones using the lure of the Super Bowl to go to the public for creative.

Chevy has just announced the winner of its Super Bowl Ad Contest.  That’s a contest that had over 400 entries and 40 finalists. Those finalists’ ads were viewed by 32 million people on the Internet over a three week period.  And here’s the kicker – the winning ad is already airing. So much for the idea of world premieres at the Super Bowl. It’s the social buzz that counts.

And Chevy isn’t stopping there. They have an app – Chevy Game Time – that if you download onto your mobile phone, gives you a chance to win a Chevrolet. Chevy is giving away 20 new cars, as well as other gifts and discounts. When you register your app, you can do so through your Facebook or Twitter account, thus alerting all your friends about the contest. To win, all you have to do is stay glued to the commercials during the Super Bowl to see if your unique license plate appears in the commercial.

Teasers and Previews

Many of the advertisers have introduced teasers or previews of their Super Bowl commercials.

Volkswagen got a lot of buzz from their Darth Vader commercial last Super Bowl. To capitalize on last year’s success and to create anticipation for this year’s commercial, the company has released this teaser called The Bark Side. By the Super Bowl over 9 million people will have seen it. And in proud YouTube tradition, there are already videos showing dogs’ reactions to the teaser.

Kia is taking Super Bowl advertising to the movies. Several days before the Super Bowl, the company will show a teaser ad in movie theaters across the country, and the company hopes that “Consumers at the movies will start tweeting about the ad, and that should help us build momentum and awareness."

Other’s getting into the preview/teaser game are Bridgestone, GoDaddy, Priceline, Skechers, and Cars.com.

Predicting the Winners

Super Bowl commercials are becoming more and more like the game itself. Prior to the game everyone predicts who will win, and when it’s over, the winner gets the glory. (By the way, if you are wondering which team the bookies in Vegas hope wins, it’s the N.E. Patriots. That’s because a number of sports books in Nevada took significant bets on the Giants to win the Super Bowl at long odds earlier this season — some as high as 80 to 1. But we digress) 

Some sites have put together lists of most anticipated commercials.

But for us, the winners will be judged on how much social media activity they generate. And this year, we’re going to go out on a limb and give predictions, of which company will benefit most from post-game social media interaction as a result of their Super Bowl commercial.

We plan on releasing our predictions the Friday before the Super Bowl, and our predictions will be backed by stats.

Then when we publish the 2012 Super Bowl Social Brand Scoreboard Report the following week, we’ll see how good we are at predicting outcomes.

What company do you think will gain the most social media interaction? We’d love to know.