By some measures, few things have changed about the Super Bowl since its first kickoff 43 years ago: It still features 22 men knocking heads, delivers a lacklustre halftime show, and concludes with at least one grown man weeping about an imminent trip to Disneyland. But the parallel Big Game tradition of tens of millions of people sitting down to enjoy and critique hugely expensive one-time-only commercials is being swept aside, a powerful illustration of how the big game of advertising is itself in upheaval.
Only a few years ago, companies kept Super Bowl ads under lock and key until game time, often not sharing their contents even with members of the press for fear of popping a carefully cultivated bubble of anticipation. But this year, more than a half-dozen marketers, realizing the cost of a 30-second spot on the broadcast also buys them guaranteed interest among online viewers, posted their spots to YouTube and elsewhere days or weeks in advance. Some rolled out entire online teaser campaigns to help increase attention for their Super Bowl broadcast ads.
All of which means the Super Bowl is now less a standalone advertising event than a maypole of marketing around which North American pop culture enjoys a lengthy dance.
And companies on both sides of the border are taking part. For the first time, Budweiser Canada will be using ads during this year's game to drive people to its Facebook page. Four 15-second spots will announce a live contest, lasting only until the final tick of the game clock, that people can enter exclusively through Facebook.
"We said, let's leverage this broadcast to build a deeper connection with consumers and beer drinkers going forward," said Kyle Norrington, national marketing manager of Budweiser at Labatt Breweries of Canada. "Beer consumers are doing more than just watching television. Lots of them have their laptops open, even during the Super Bowl, so it's a big opportunity to build that deeper connection."
Labatt has been moving more of its promotions and online content to Facebook, recognizing people prefer to visit company pages on that site rather than main corporate sites. "With this promotion, Facebook is our focus because of the simplicity, the ease of sharing within Facebook, which will allow a lot of free media to be created for Budweiser," said Matthew Ramella, senior manager of media sponsorship and digital marketing at Labatt.
Volkswagen USA is also using its Super Bowl spot to drive viewers to Facebook, where they can play Punch Dub, a virtual version of the classic smack-your-friend game Punch Buggy (also known as Slug Bug). Punching a friend over Facebook qualifies people for a giveaway contest, where the prize is a new VW.
Last week, to help build anticipation for the broadcast of its 30-second spot during the third quarter of the Super Bowl, the company unveiled a series of short faux documentary spots on YouTube featuring the character Sluggy Patterson, the reputed inventor of the slugging game. Around the same time, "Sluggy" began blogging and tweeting.
Unlike many companies jumping into social media in hopes of buffing their youth appeal, Volkswagen is using it to target older drivers. "People see Volkswagen as a two-model car company - Beetle and Jetta," said Tim Ellis, the vice-president of marketing for Volkswagen USA, noting that those models are popular among twentysomethings.
"I think there's a sense that those on YouTube are 25 and under, but that's simply not true if you look at the data," noted Mr. Ellis, "especially if you look at where growth is on social media, and brands like Facebook and YouTube, and Twitter."
Facebook is also the place that Budweiser in the United States is hosting a pre-game promotion, asking people to vote for which of three potential spots they would like to see on the broadcast. (With five minutes of commercial time to fill, the company will also air other spots during the broadcast.)
And the U.S. employment website CareerBuilder.com has caught the democratic bug, too. Last fall, it invited people to submit ideas for ads that might spur people to escape soul-crushing workplaces. Three winners had their ideas adapted into professionally produced 30-second spots, which were posted weeks ago for people to vote on; the most popular will air Sunday during the game.
"It's to build momentum," said Cynthia McIntyre, senior director of advertising for CareerBuilder.com. "Obviously, we love the Monday morning water cooler chatter. Why not extend it? Extend it pre-game, post-game, et cetera."
Doritos is also inviting people to vote on its potential broadcast spots. It will air three of six homemade videos that were winnowed from a field of thousands submitted as part of a promotion.
Jay Handelman, a marketing professor at Queen's University in Kingston, expected more companies to be connecting their Super Bowl TV spots to social media by now, but he suspects they're nervous about giving up control of the message. Some non-Super Bowl promotions involving user-generated content have gone awry when jokesters and others posted unsavoury or critical material. Doritos' current promotion is highly controlled. "This is the balance that marketers have been trying to strike," he said. "Yes, they do want to forge a dialogue, but they need to control that dialogue. They don't want criticism and parodies."
Still, more marketers are posting material online - even in venues such as YouTube, where commenters can have their way with the brand - because they've found it can help to build anticipation for the TV broadcast of the spot. The Chicago-based auto website Cars.com uses its Super Bowl presence to not just drive consumers to its home page but also, being an ad-supported site, to attract potential advertisers. "It's a rallying point for our business," said Carolyn Crafts, vice-president of marketing for Cars.com.
While posting the 60-second spot before the broadcast negates the element of surprise, there can be unexpected bonuses. "Even for folks who may see it in advance of the game, the message is only heightened after they've seen it more than one time," Ms. Crafts said.
And the conversation won't end even after the Monday-morning chatter dies down. Wired magazine is inviting people to watch the game at its San Francisco offices, where their reaction to ads will be measured by biometric devices worn during the broadcast. The data will then be parsed by the research firm Innerscope - and, no doubt, used to help plan next year's Super Bowl campaigns.
Simon Houpt