Super Bowl XLVI Ads Go Social

Guest Author Feb 6, 2012 Tweet

With the cost of a Super Bowl XLVI being about $3.5M, advertisers pulled out all the stops this year with a combination of ads that not only entertained viewers, but also made use of mobility and social media to influence preference for the brand, just as we suggested prior to the big game.  So what were the hot Super Bowl ads this year?

• Anheuser-Busch introduced the new triple filtered premium brew “Bud Light Platinum” and got the conversation started using the popular hashtag #MAKEITPLATINUM on Twitter.
• Jerry Seinfeld introduced the new (and very cool looking) Acura NSX in a commercial called “Transitions”, which has already received nearly 15 million views on YouTube.
• “GoDaddy.com: The Cloud” made use of a QR Code to increase engagement with mobile users and quickly became one of the most popular videos on the 2012 USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter.
• Samsung showed us just how connected we can be with mobility during the commercial “I Believe in a Thing Called Love,” which is one of the top videos on the Hulu AdZone site.
• Honda had some fun by playing parity on the original movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and quickly received thousands of “Likes” on Facebook.

Considering the ongoing growth with mobility and social mobility, the level of engagement with consumers during Super Bowl Ads should only to continue to grow.  This means potentially millions more video views, Facebook “Likes,” tweets, and other forms of interactions during the Super Bowl.  We have certainly come a long way since some of my early experiments with mobility and Super Bowl Ads during grad school a few years ago.

Guest writer Glenn Allison is a technology professional in the Midwest with over 15 years’ experience building and managing global communications infrastructure.  He is a recent MBA grad from the University of Chicago, and occasionally writes about technology and business.  You can learn more by following him on Twitter @GlennAllison.