Sunday saw the playing of the 46th NFL Super Bowl between the New York Giants and New England Patriots (won by the former). As usual, the spectacle saw the usual mix of "hail mary" commercials with advertisers shelling out about $3.5m for a 30 second slot. Given the near record audience of 111 million viewers, that works out to about 3 cents per viewer. During the course of Feb, I will be reviewing the better examples but for now would like to take a look at the most interest piece of work we've seen during the Super Bowl in years.
The work was Coke's and featured the two Polar Bear Mascots which are much loved and ubiquitous these days.
Real time advertising is not new anymore. In 2010, Old Spice hit paydirt with its multiple real time executions of "the man your man could smell like". For some insight into how this worked, view this video case study here. What set Coke's Super Bowl work apart from Old Spice however was the fact that it took real time a step further, integrating a mulitiplicity of executions with the game's 3 hour viewing experience.
According to AdWeek, "the whole concept is about enhancing the overall game experience by adding a little topical entertainment value". The work features the two bears relaxing in front of the game. Each wears a different scarf, depicting his team of choice. The bears are introduced to the broader viewership in a first quarter introductory 30 second ad after which their antics are captured in a range of imaginative executions on the so called "second screen" of digital media (cokepolarbowl.com, ESPN.com etc). Both Facebook and Twitter streams were also brought into play - handed over to the bears to maintain a brand centric yet lively commentary on the ebb and flow of the game (hashtag #gamedaybears).
Just how the endearing animated content was produced so rapidly by agency Wieden and Kennedy and it's technical partners will probably be kept as secret as the brand's secret formula. Yet the team succeeded not just in producing reactions to highlights (and lowlights) of play - but reactions to other Super Bowl ads too. For example, they left the room when the Pepsi ad aired and stood, hands on chest, to support a particularly patriotic Chrysler ad featuring Clint Eastwood.
Here are a few of the executions:
For a touchdown...
For a touchdown celebration...
Coke even integrated fan pics - sent in on Twitter - into one of the executions
....and for the end of the game:
The interest in Coke's real time "sideshow" exceeded every anticipation with the technical team having to activate 9 reserve servers to cope with the huge surge in traffic. There is no question that Coke now leads the way as one of the foremost practitioners of real time, dynamic storytelling.
None of this is by accident however. At Cannes 2011, the company went on record saying it would rely less and less (and in fact gradually phase out) traditional advertising. Instead, it said, it would begin to scale its so called "liquid and linked" approach to the dynamic communication of its core idea: "Happiness". In a nutshell this means that the brand will increasingly use any and all channels it can (particularly digital ones) to allow for the free transmission of brand stories and ideas between the brand and consumers (and even vice versa). The strategy is well summed up in these two Cannes workshop presentations. Part 1 and Part 2.
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