Entry By Jason Brick
The Super Bowl is such a fixture of American life that it may as well be a national holiday. The event affects income streams, work schedules and traffic flow. Many bosses know to expect slightly lower productivity the following Monday.
While this has been true for decades, this year marked a new feature of America's favorite sporting weekend: social media. The NFL and the game's advertisers very consciously courted social media in the run up to the Super Bowl, and the results can inspire your own efforts and give you a sense of the power social media is amassing.
Statistics
- The event saw the most social media comments of any televised event, generating over 12.2 million comments during and immediately after the game -- nearly four times the 3.1 million comments of the previous record holder.
- Super Bowl XLVI saw an average of 10,000 game-related tweets per second over the course of the game.
- The halftime show alone saw over 800,000 comments on Facebook, Twitter and similar sites. This would make the halftime show alone the fourth-most-commented television event of all time.
- Nearly 1,000,000 social media comments were made about Super Bowl commercials alone -- making them the third-most-commented television event of all time.
The Social Media Command Center
This year, the NFL established a centralized social media effort that delivered 1.8 million impressions daily via Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and YouTube. These included simple fan messages and likes, as well as logistical help for fans ranging from parking assistance to public service announcements.
Responsiveness
Social media traffic discussing specifi c Super Bowl ads helped advertisers judge the effectiveness and popularity of their efforts -- which is good, considering the $117,000 per second price tag of game time advertising. Based on the content and volume of traffic, some clear winners appeared:
The most popular ad was the Doritos "Man's Best Friend" spot -- a spot that was selected as a contest winner. The contest itself was a vote held via social media.
H&M's ad featuring David Beckham only in briefs was the most commented-on ad spot, spurring both positive and negative reactions.
Chrysler's "It's Halftime in America" ad was the most popular among men. The Beckham commercial was the most popular among women. Parents preferred CareerBuilder's ad featuring an employee whose co-workers are all chimpanzees.
Overall, the first "Social Media Super Bowl" was a tour de force for this new way of communicating, combining efforts and assessing performance.
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