Gary Vaynerchuk observes that brands are now treating major events like the Super Bowl as efficient production opportunities. Instead of just hosting parties, they leverage influencers and on-site activations to generate a high volume of social content, maximizing ROI on expensive experiential marketing.
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The Super Bowl captures mass attention, making it a powerful marketing opportunity for all brands, not just consumer ones. By incorporating relevant themes, even "boring" B2B companies can significantly boost engagement because the topic is top-of-mind for their audience.
Gary Vaynerchuk predicts a shift from top-down creative development to a bottom-up approach. Brands will identify their highest-performing organic social media posts throughout the year, and that winning content will become the brief—and perhaps the literal ad—for their Super Bowl spot.
A Super Bowl spot is not a standalone event. Vaynerchuk's team succeeded by executing a 10-day "surround sound" strategy before the game. This included seeding anonymous photos to the press and a heavy media tour to build buzz and ensure the ad landed with maximum impact.
The success of an experiential event depends on how its story travels online. Every element—from signage to security guards—must be art-directed like a film shoot to produce compelling, self-explanatory images for the much larger secondary audience who weren't there.
In an AI-driven world, "scaling the unscalable" creates a competitive edge. Host intimate, in-person events like local dinners or meetups. The primary ROI is not direct sales but filming the interactions to create a powerful engine for authentic, high-performing social media content that can be distributed globally.
Ramp's Super Bowl activation succeeded because it was a multi-touchpoint campaign, not a single ad. They combined the TV spot with on-the-ground events like a tailgate party, media outreach to Adweek, and viral social media stunts with celebrity lookalikes, creating multiple opportunities for engagement and impact.
An effective Super Bowl presence isn't just about the TV ad. Ramp's successful activation included on-the-ground events, PR placements in outlets like Adweek, influencer collaborations, and social media engagement. This holistic approach creates multiple flywheels that amplify the initial ad buy, ensuring the investment generates buzz and impact far beyond the 30-second spot.
The massive cost of a Super Bowl ad is only justified if it generates significant pre-game buzz and goes viral on platforms like YouTube. The ad spot itself is merely "permission to be evaluated." The real return comes from the earned media and social chatter leading up to the event.
An event isn't over when attendees leave. A critical, often-neglected phase is the post-event plan. This includes distributing recordings, sending sponsor recaps, and following up with leads. This "long tail" of the event requires its own dedicated strategy to maximize content reuse and ROI.
A low-cost physical activation, like a single billboard or street posters, can be amplified 10x by documenting it and sharing the story online. The real value isn't the physical impression but the digital content it generates for a broader audience.
