This Super Bowl's
going social big time
Advertisers are integrating social media into their game plans
By Louisa Ada Seltzer
Feb 2, 2012
The Super Bowl has always been a social occasion, a time to party and hang out with friends.
But this year's Super Bowl will be social on an entirely different level.
Social media will play a huge role in this year's Super Bowl, which will be the most wired in history. Not only is the game streaming online for the first time but a number of advertisers have fashioned their ads with social media in mind.
The reason, of course, is that viewers are increasingly engaged with other media while they watch television. A Nielsen report found that 45 percent of tablet and smartphone owners use their devices while watching television.
So it makes sense that advertisers want to connect with those viewers during the game.
This year's social media approach goes beyond the usual tweeting or Facebook updates that have become expected during such big media events.
Advertisers instead are adding elements that allow them to interact with viewers to their campaigns.
Chevrolet, for example, is offering the first advertiser-sponsored Super Bowl app. Viewers will look for clues to a Chevy-themed game while watching the company's ad and the game and will have a chance to win prizes, including one of 20 cars, for getting the answers right.
GoDaddy, known for its raunchy ads that often end by directing viewers online to see a steamier version, is including a quick response code, or QR code, in its commercial, another Super Bowl first.
Viewers with a QR code reader app on their phones can scan the code on their TV screen to be sent directly to GoDaddy's web site.
Smartphone owners can also use TV audio listening apps like Shazam and IntoNow during the game, which listen to the ads to decipher the name of the advertiser and link the user to information, social media feeds and even extended versions of their commercials. About a third of this year's ads will be compatible with the apps.
Advertisers have also come up with creative new ways to use traditional social networks.
Coca-Cola has created a Facebook page for the polar bears that will star in its Super Bowl ad. The bears have been divided into two groups, one cheering for the New York Giants and one for the New England Patriots, and footage of them cheering in real time will be posted to the page.
And Toyota, which is returning to the Super Bowl after a long absence to advertise what it calls its "reinvented" Camry, is encouraging fans to tweet using the hashtag #reinvented and suggesting other products they'd like to see be reinvented.
Toyota will then tweet back illustrations of the reinvented product a few minutes later.
Even the New York Giants got into the social media groove before the game. Tonight they're hosting a live Twitter and Google+ chat with fans featuring a handful of players.
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