Super Bowl 2020: Which Commercials Scored the Touchdown on Social Media?

As the Kansas City Chiefs triumphed over the San Francisco 49ers in Miami for Super Bowl 2020, brands geared up off the field to battle for customers' attention. YouScan monitored social media, tracking every mention and hashtag of each Super Bowl commercial, listening to people’s online conversations about the game and of course ads.  

“Overall, from Jan. 27 to Feb. 7, Super Bowl 54 was mentioned 4.9 million times by 2.7 million unique authors on social media.”

Trending topics discuss the rivaling teams, San Francisco 49s and Kansas City Chiefs, U.S. President Donald Trump, Shakira, and Jennifer Lopez's halftime performance, and, of course, the much-anticipated ads. Here's a rundown of what we found...

TOP 5 brands’ social media success

Tapping into the audience's emotions is one of the oldest tricks in a brand's book. Google, Olay, Secret, Budweiser, and the NFL had viewers reaching for tissues.

Google's storytelling ad, Loretta, got many viewers weeping during ad breaks. The ad received over 5 million views on the original tweet from the technology giant, with an additional 31 million views and 85,000 engagements on YouTube. Mentions with "Google Loretta" had a spike on social media, with mainly positive sentiment.

Another social media winners, Olay and Secret, tapped into female empowerment with their ads and inspiring hashtags. Olay's #MakeSpaceForWomen hashtag, we found on YouScan, is a campaign which encourages users to share the hashtag to raise money for Girls Who Code, a nonprofit helping girls develop computer science skills. The brand's official account tweeted over 150 times on game day and was among the few trending alongside the official Super Bowl keywords and tags on Twitter.

Secret Deodorant also promoted female empowerment with their #KickInequality Super Bowl ad and associated hashtag campaign. The ad got 18 million views on YouTube.

And some beer! Budweiser tapped into its signature Americana-centric theme with its Super Bowl ad, Typical American, receiving 15 million views on YouTube and 19 million views on Twitter. Additionally, the brand ran a sweepstakes to give away special Super Bowl-themed merchandise on Twitter, resulting in over 400 new followers.

• Celebrities in Ads
• YouScan also tracked which Celebrities were featured in brands’ ads, we found:

Actor Bill Murray re-lived his beloved role of weatherman Phil Connors from the 1993 film, Groundhog Day, for a Jeep advertisement.

Lil Nas X of Old Town Road fame and actor Sam Elliott earned Doritos over 11 million views and more than 30,000 engagements on YouTube with their Western-inspired ad for the new Cool Ranch flavor. Their viral #CoolRanchDance, featured in the ad, has become a hit on TikTok, GetSway and Instagram, with social media users everywhere emulating the moves.

Bud Light's spot #PostyStore, advertising its new seltzer product, featured rapper Post Malone and his internal dialogue.

Amazon's commercial featured TV personality Ellen DeGeneres in the company's ongoing campaign, #BeforeAlexa. On game day, DeGeneres tweeted a GIF from the spot, which garnered a lot of social media attention.

5G was given a chance to showcase itself

T-Mobile ran a giveaway of Samsung Galaxy smartphones during the entire game. The rules required users to follow the brand on Twitter, and tweet hashtags #5GThatWorks and #Contest during the game. As a result, they had a spike in mentions for these hashtags together throughout the game.

Verizon took a different approach, although their promotion of the 5G network has a similar hashtag to the other telecomm, #5GBuiltRight. Verizon's commercial encourages people to donate to first responders and volunteer in their community under the slogan of "One More Sunday."

The most talked about ads and hashtags

YouScan also monitored the most talked-about Super Bowl ads and hashtags, here's what we found:

It was Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign! Trump's presidential campaign ad aired in the first ad break, causing quite a stir on social media, namely Twitter.

YouScan has also tracked another trending hashtag: Puppy Bowl. On Feb. 2, #PuppyBowlXVI was trending in North America along with the Super Bowl-related topics, reaching 10,000 mentions.

• Summary

Smart social media monitoring demonstrates that you don't always have to spend millions of dollars on a Super Bowl ad spots in order to have the highest social media reach.

As we see in the results of our Super Bowl monitoring topic in YouScan, brands that earned the most followers, retweets, and a spot in social media platform trends were very strategic in their social media campaigns. Many brands complemented their Super Bowl commercial time with a giveaway or a fundraising hashtag campaign to bring their brand name into more people's feeds. Others used celebrity clout to reach audiences beyond sports fans.

Read the full article here.

‍