This post will be my attempt to give my reactions to the major commercials and related social media that stood out to me. I won't be talking about Coke or Pepsi here, when I started to I found out that I had more of a rant than I expected, so I'll do that in a different post. Here will be a brief overview on some of the bigger commercials.
Doritos had not one, but two commercials resulting from their push for fan-made commercials. Men getting pretty and screaming goats. Silly commercials, but they stick in the tried and true Doritos plan for people doing strange things for the finger-staining chip they know and love.
Audi's commercial was great!... if you are a high school student. They may be going after a younger demographic, but I don't think it was overly relevant to most people looking to purchase a vehicle.
Mercedes' commercial, on the other hand, I found to be very effective! The commercial seemed to be run of the mill, sell our soul for this car and get your wildest dreams: the girl, popularity, fame, influence, etc. But then the shocker! A sticker price under $30k! Hey! I can afford that, I can get a Mercedes! This ad did a great job of showing how all the benefits of owning a Mercedes are now within anyone's grasp. Web traffic for the CLA increased 1500% after the ad aired according to one article.
In another set of car commercials, Hyundai had two spots that highlighted two of their newer features: a 7 seater Santa Fe and a turbo charged engines. I found the latter commercial to be the more informative, showing how the typically weaker Hyundai engines are now the pass-ers going down the highway, not the pass-ees they have been. The former commercial, showing increased seating capacity was great for two reasons: First it was funny, a boy going around getting all his deceivingly strong friends into a car to go play football against the bullies. Second, it was able to parallel the children to the car: having more inside than you'd thing: more space, more power.Web traffic increased over 700% for Hyundai's as a result of these ads.
I'm going to talk about the Jeep and Dodge commercials together. I loved both of these commercials for the same reasons, thought I don't know how effective they will be. Americans love their military and love their farmers. GM honed in on these themes beautifully. Social media bloomed in response to the ads, particularly the "So God Made a Farmer Ad." Were these commercials aimed to increase web traffic and interest in their vehicles, then they not succeed. However, if they were aimed at increasing brand equity and emotive responses, they may have been very successful. Emotional and value associations are critical in brand choice. Consumers often make their purchase decisions based on emotional responses, rather than on cold rational thinking. It is a powerful tool to be able to have your brand elicit a positive emotional response. GM did this same thing last year with their "It's Halftime in America" ad with Clint Eastwood or their "Imported from Detroit" ads the year prior. Pride in America, pride in American made cars. It's a simple leap, and GM is smart to harp on that message year to year.
Lincoln is in the process of rebranding itself as the Lincoln Motor Company, trying to visibly separate from its parent company, Ford. Personally, I love Linconl's and I would very much like them to succeed. I was skeptical when I heard they were hiring Jimmy Fallon and using crowd-sourced tweets to write their commercial. Using social media is an art-in development and requires a lot of finesse. However, Jimmy Fallon has previously shown himself to have wielded Twitter effectively, and this task was no exception. Both of the Lincoln commercials were good, but I wouldn't say that either crossed the threshold of amazing.
Volks Wagon's "Get in. Get Happy." commercial mildly did just that, made us happy. Little was done to tell me why I should be happy, but the message was clear: VW makes you happy. Even if you're a crotchety old man. It was no Darth Vader kid, but it wasn't a misfire either.
Mars played it safe with another ad showing people doing deliciously horrible things to our favorite hard-shelled chocolates. It won't do anything to build equity, but like VW, it won't hurt their position either. The one thing I will note about this commercial, was the variety of things people were doing with Red. Giving consumers an idea or reminder of new things they can do with a product is one way to increase frequency of consumption. Whether the ad was able to communicate that effectively, I'm not overly confident that it did.
Tide's commercial about the Joe Montana stain was a sure-fire win. Sure, it may be another stain-related commercial from Tide, but it communicated Tide's stain-fighting power in a crowd-pleasing way. Laundry detergent is not a very exciting topic, but Tide relied on their tried-and-true methods for another great ad. They additionally, along with Oreo, jumped on the blackout as an opportunity to engage in social media in a clever and relevant way.
Oreo's "Whisper Fight" was one of my favorite commercials. Not because I thought it was a great ad, but I thought it was funny to watch overly physical whisper fight. The ad itself brought up the age-old question: Cream or cookie? No high level emotions or feelings were communicated, but it was still well received. Beyond their commercial, Oreo- like Tide- did a great job capitalizing on the blackout by Tweeting this image minutes after the blackout occurred. Being a part of, and commenting on the buzz in a humorous way was a slam dunk (get the Oreo pun there?).
Taco Bell's commercial played to its demographic perfectly. Teens and twenty-somethings love to hang out and do stupid things. Watching old people do what they do and do relax with Taco Bell will resonate with them and their keen sense of "having fun". Even the Spanish version of the song by Fun. was an almost heavy handed way of saying "Eat Taco Bell, have fun." This ad represented another effective communication of personal values and emotions through a brand. Well done.
There were many more commercials that I could talk about, and maybe I will at another time, but for now I think this is good. Overall I think this was a good Super Bowl for commercials, not many misfires, and quite a few hits. Social media is a bit less risky than it was last year, but isn't as shiny or new either. This year was another example of the struggle to balance information and entertainment while staying interesting to the viewer.
