As the players geared up to take the field at Super Bowl XL, some of the audience members were gearing up to go online. This year, several Super Bowl spots had Internet tie-ins to draw the masses toward branded messages.
During the pre-game show, “Dream Delivery Piggy” and “Dream Delivery Jessica” through BBDO New York lured audience members in with a remix of Jessica Simpson’s version of the song “These Boots Are Made for Walking.” The new lyrics are, “These bites were made for popping” and the spots featured the stars separately touting the Cheesy Bites Pizza and included a link to PizzaHut.com/cheesybites. The pizza’s crust is broken up into 28 pieces of bread with cheese inside and creatives at Atmosphere BBDO, New York, used the product for the interface on the site.
In addition to raising brand awareness, the site allows people to order pizza online–an important element since the client wants to increase the number of people who place their orders on the Internet.
The product was well suited to an online initiative since it is actually interactive, Atmosphere BBDO creative director Patrick Clarke explained. The structure of the pizza has people pulling the crust apart.
On the site, each cheesy bite popper represents a sound like “hip-hop,” reggae” or “sitar” and after choosing several elements, the song about the pizza is played according to the users specifications. “Instead of having a DJ remix tool, we used the pizza as the interface so that people get used to the idea of playing with their pizza,” Clarke said.
AFTER THE COIN TOSS
Several other spots drove fans to Web sites that went up the day of the game. The Here’s to Beer initiative from Anheuser-Busch launched HerestoBeer.com, and Hummer, CareerBuilder.com, Diet Pepsi, and Burger King all put up new content to mark The Big Game.
The Hummer spot, “Monster” out of Modernista!, Boston, directed viewers to
JenniferLovesTheRobot.com. The site is Jennifer the monster’s home page and documents her life including how she fell in love with the robot from the TV spot. The “Our Little Monster” link has information about the fruit of their love, the H3.
“There are a lot of fun things to do that keep people attached to our time as opposed to someone else’s time,” co-founder and executive creative director Gary Koepke said of the site. “… It’s fun, and the H2 was a serious, big off-road vehicle, so one of the pillars that we used in our marketing campaign [for the H3] was that it’s fun. It’s more accessible and has better gas mileage so — we’re having fun with this and if you think of a monster and a robot breeding a truck, it would be an H3.”
In the spot “Brown & Bubbly,” through DDB, New York, starring Diddy and Jay Mohr, Diet Pepsi drove people to BrownAndBubbly.com. The spot had Diddy working to sign Diet Pepsi to his record label and D. Pepsi soon climbs the charts. The Web site takes people behind the scenes and presents the acts that didn’t make the cut. All of the musical acts perform their versions of the song “Brown & Bubbly,” which D. Pepsi made into a hit. By uploading a photo, the site’s visitors can star in a video of their own. Tribal DDB, Dallas, created the Web site.
CareerBuilder.com also had an Internet component to its Super Bowl push though the URL Monk-e-mail.com didn’t appear in the spots from the “Working with Monkeys” campaign–“Celebration” and “I Understand”–through Cramer-Krasselt, Chicago. When people logged onto CareerBuilder.com, they can see a link to the other site.
Monk-e-mail ties into the theme of being frustrated at work because you feel like you work with useless people who may as well be monkeys. On the site, visitors can create a viral video message featuring a chimpanzee that makes fun of bosses and co-workers.
On why the spots didn’t reference the Web site Monk-e-mail, which launched three days before the big game, Cramer-Krasselt chief creative officer Marshall Ross said, “We wanted the focus to be on the brand message and we didn’t believe we could do justice to both; that we could promote Monk-e-mail successfully and promote the brand message successfully.” The brand message being that a better job awaits and that CareerBuilder.com is the number one site for job seekers.
“The timing of site is tied to the Super Bowl since the purpose of Monk-e-mail was to kind of manage the energy around the brand during the Super Bowl,” Ross said.
President and CEO Peter Krivkovich agreed, “[the Internet component] gives us legs, it allows the campaign, instead of being a thirty second idea, to be an idea that goes on and on. And that’s the beauty of it in this case–it’s a truth that everyone can glob onto and pass on.”
The spot “Slainte” (a Gaelic word which means “Cheers”) for the Here’s to Beer campaign drove traffic to HerestoBeer.com. Anheuser-Busch developed the initiative to promote the image of the frothy beverage. The site specifically has information about the history of beer, styles of beer and recommended pairings with food. DDB Chicago created the spot while Cannonball, St. Louis, created the site.
For Burger King, who returned to the Super Bowl after an 11-year absence, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Miami, created Whopperettes.com. The spot “America’s Favorite” drove people to the site where they could watch The Whopperettes, a troupe of dancing girls dressed as Whopper ingredients. On the site, you can design your own Whopper–have it your way–and the Whopperettes bring it to life.
GOOD PLAY
BBDO, New York, drove people to the Web with “Wand” for Sierra Mist. The site Mist-Takes.com through Tribal DDB, Dallas, had been up, but surely received more traffic after comedian Kathy Griffin confiscated an airline passenger’s can of soda during a routine security screening at an airport in the Super Bowl spot. The site features “episodic” spots featuring improvisational comedians like Michael Ian Black from VH1’s Best Week Ever, who is in “Wand” with Griffin.
In the regional Denver market, Frontier Airlines wrapped up its FlipToMexico.com initiative with the Super Bowl festivities. Prior to the game, Grey Worldwide, New York, released several spots that featured news reports about Flip the dolphin, one of the airline’s animal mascots, demanding a trip to Mexico. The two Super Bowl spots “Waiting Decision” and “Big Decision” revealed the breaking news of Flip’s triumph in his travel quest. Though the site FlipToMexico.com had been up before the game, it was updated with news and a sweepstakes promotion. The campaign promotes the airline’s increased service to Mexico and was meant to put the company in a prominent position since competitor Southwest Airlines is entering the Denver marketplace.
“The people embraced it so much that we were getting calls from reporters in Denver who requested interviews on the radio talk shows with the animal. We did all of that stuff, but that was stuff we didn’t plan,” co-creative director/copywriter Shawn Couzens said of the campaign. “It was just so popular throughout the month that you’d be watching the news and they’d be talking about the company’s earnings with the CEO of Frontier and the reporter would say, ‘Enough about the earnings, tell us what we really want to know about. ‘What’s up with Flip?'”
