The Future of Superbowl Commercials and How To Capitalize on The Big Game Without Spending Big

We all remember the blackout during the Superbowl last year.  How many of the commercials from last years Superbowl do you remember?

Thinking back, I can only remember one or two commercials from the last decade of Superbowl ads. This is pretty astonishing considering how much money and effort goes into making Superbowl commercial successful.

I do however remember a tweet from last Superbowl.

In fact, you probably do too. It was from Oreo’s. During the third quarter last year, there was a black out during the game. During those few precious moments, Oreos managed to design, caption and approve a tweet that capitalized on the moment and went viral like crazy.

Power out? No problem. pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC

— Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013

This picture ad, and accompanied tweet was more memorable, yet cost significantly less than any other Superbowl ads.

More importantly, this ad validated a massive change in how consumers view and interact with media.

Television is a passive form of media, you sit back and relax. However, most people today use multiple screens while watching TV. They have their tablet or their smart phone in front of them, and many are interacting with their friends, and strangers through social channels while watching the big screen. We live in a multi screen marketing world where we can engage across multiple channels at the same time.

We have long known that the more relevant an ad is the more it resonates. How much more relevant can you get than Real Time?

Oreos was really smart, and last year did something that I recommend you consider doing this year. They created a War Room. A room filled with all the people needed to react in real time to an event at the game and take advantage of it. By having a designer, a copywriter, the brand executives and legal team all in the same room watching the game together, they were able to capitalize on a memorable moment of the Big Game, with a BIG WIN!

This year, you can be sure many of the Superbowl advertisers will be watching the game in their own war rooms, hoping for a wardrobe glitch or a power outage to jump on the opportunity and cash in.

Here’s the thing though, You don’t need a Superbowl commercial and millions of dollars to do this exact same thing. All you need is some creativity, and the team in place to execute in near real time and you can go crazy viral too.

There is a fellow on Reddit who very well might be the most viral person on the site, racking up well over 1,000,000 Karma points, simply by jumping on opportunities in real time. https://www.reddit.com/user/AWildSketchAppeared . He simply finds a funny picture or comment on reddit and sketches it, and shares the sketch in the comment, and goes crazy viral. He grabs your attention when you are thinking about that very thing and uses a visually appealing medium to entertain you. This is the secret formula that anyone can do.

This year’s Superbowl should prove to be the most engaging multi device, ad circus ever. How often do you have the opportunity to engage hundreds of millions of people, all watching the same event, without spending a fortune on ads?

You can be relevant to Hundreds of Millions of people with a simple tweet!

So, Get your team together, order some beer and wings, and get ready to engage the millions of people who are splitting their attention between the Broncos winning the Superbowl and their smartphones or tablets. (All you have to do is be more entertaining than Candy Crush, which you already have a leg up on because you didn’t make people hate chocolate!)