Budweiser got the most mentions on the day with just under 95k mention on Super Bowl Sunday and the early hours of Monday, although not all the attention was positive. The hashtag #BoycottBudweiser used over 8k times over the same period. Coca-Cola received over 44k mentions with another politically relevant ad focused on the theme of acceptance, which was a repeat of its 2014 Super Bowl ad. T-Mobile raked third (43k+) with their celebrity focused ad featuring Justin Bieber. (Check out their 4 ads here.)
Talkwalker, a New York based social data intelligence company, provided the data and charts.
“Aside from the general prevalence of politically themed ads, it was also interesting to note that there seemed to be a little less activity around hashtags compared to last year,” explained Todd Grossman, CEO of Talkwalker, one of the world’s leading social data intelligence companies. “Whereas last year saw success from more humorous campaigns on social (think #puppymonkeybaby), this year, the most successful messages were more serious.
“Although hashtags were included in most campaigns, the focus seemed to be more on ideas of equality and diversity rather than the slogans brands had made to fit alongside their ads,” he added. “That said, celeb power wasn’t completely absent with T-Mobile’s humorous spot with Justin Bieber also getting a lot of traction.”
Another trend that Talkwalker noticed was a reoccurring theme of politics.
84 Lumber, a company that addressed the border wall on Mexico was mentioned over 30,000 times on the night of the Super Bowl. The combined views of 84 Lumber’s video on Youtube hit close to 3 million with 1 million views on their Facebook page. 84 Lumber’s website crashed due to the increased traffic but the video was still available on social media.
Read the story behind 84 Lumber’s ad here.
“Think the most surprising thing was how successful brands were with politically themed ads,” Grossman explained. “5 of the top 10 by online mentions took up the topic of immigration, diversity and equality in one form or another and all came out with a high degree of positive sentiment. This was also somewhat surprising given the polarizing nature of the topic.”
In addition to politics, diversity was also a reoccurring theme in the ads.
“It’s probably fair to say that diversity was one of the key themes with Coca-Cola and Airbnb’s in particular focused on that element,” Grossman added. “Along with equality and immigration, it was the topic that brands had the most success with in terms of generating discussion online and on social media.”
Talkwater data also concluded that the top brand logos visible in social posts about the Super Bowl were in this order: Pepsi, Google, Coca-Cola. Brazil, Mexico, Spain, UK, Canada (in that order) also topped the charts in other countries discussing the Super Bowl on social media.
