Instead of a standalone ad, Elf Beauty and Duolingo collaborated on a commercial that tapped into the hype around Bad Bunny's performance. This allowed them to split costs, target a similar demographic, and capitalize on a massive, pre-existing cultural conversation.
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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.
Instead of simply announcing a temporary app icon change, Duolingo's social team created a multi-week narrative where their mascot died. This transformed a routine product decision into a massive, co-created story with the community, showing how social-first thinking can amplify even small product updates into major brand moments.
To counter a competitor's expensive Super Bowl launch, the Old Spice team posted their ad on YouTube and Facebook the Friday before the game. The ad went so viral over the weekend that it was included in Monday's Super Bowl ad roundups, achieving massive reach for free.
Super Bowl advertising serves two distinct strategic purposes. For new or unknown companies, the goal is to achieve massive, instant brand awareness. For established, well-known brands like Raisin Bran, the ad serves to re-engage consumers and regain top-of-mind relevance in a crowded market.
Legacy beer brand Heineken quickly launched a responsive ad campaign directly trolling the viral "Friend" billboards. This "meme-jacking" allows them to tap into a current cultural conversation, generating significant attention and signaling they are culturally aware, likely at a high ROI.
The viral 'Dead Duo' campaign originated from a product team's A/B test of new app icons. When both icons performed equally, marketing was given seven days to build a campaign around the 'dead eyes' version. This demonstrates extreme agility and opportunistic collaboration between product and marketing.
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 Super Bowl is a massive cultural moment. Even 'boring' B2B marketers can capitalize on this by incorporating relevant themes and language into their campaigns, regardless of industry. This taps into audience top-of-mind awareness and can lead to a significant lift in engagement.
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.
For products valuable only when others use them (like credit cards or social apps), Super Bowl ads are uniquely effective. The value isn't just reaching many eyeballs, but ensuring those eyeballs know *other* eyeballs are also watching, solving the chicken-and-egg adoption problem.
