It's official: Super Bowl 50 has come and gone. The Denver Broncos and Peyton Manning took home the Lombardi Trophy for the third time and the Carolina Panthers returned home empty-handed.
However, the two teams weren't the only winners and losers. There was another competition happening between the brands' advertising and their commercials.
Top brands pay top dollar to get a chunk of air time during the big game. This year, CBS charged marketers $5 million for a 30 second spot, which is a 67% increase from only five years ago. With that kind of investment, marketers are expecting huge ROI for their brand. iQ turned to our ad hoc research tool within our media intelligence platform to determine which brands are getting their share of earned media from 2016 Super Bowl commercials.
Introducing the Categories
Puppies, babies, puppymonkeybaby, and a slew of celebrities were hits during this year's broadcast. We grouped the ads into four categories based on popular themes: Snacks, Sodas, Beer, and Cars, and then performed a quick competitive analysis to see which brand came out on top of their respective category (and which category wins overall!).
Snacks
Let's start with Snacks. Here's the breakdown of how Doritos, Snickers, Avocados from Mexico, Skittles, and Butterfinger fared in the week leading up to the Super Bowl and the day after (all searches in this post are from February 1st through the morning of February 9th):
Longtime Super Bowl favorite Doritos is dominating coverage with just over 9,000 mentions over the course of that week, peaking the day after the Super Bowl with around 3,500 mentions. Snickers and Skittles are next in line, with surprising fan favorite Avocados from Mexico and Butterfinger trailing behind.
Interesting to note here that Doritos mentions have dropped sharply since yesterday, but it looks like the coverage is still carrying over since airing Sunday night as opposed to the other snack brands which have mostly flat lined since Sunday.
Soda
Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Mountain Dew are compared in this soft drink smackdown. Surprisingly, Pepsi is winning the share of coverage even though Mountain Dew's incredibly bizarre (but memorable nonetheless) "Puppymonkeybaby" ad seemed to get people talking.
This could be due to the fact that the name of the ad (and the slightly terrifying creature featured in the ad) would be getting more coverage than the brand itself. To find out, we did a quick search on that term alone and found that "puppymonkeybaby" (in purple below) wins the share of coverage with almost 8,400 hits. This goes to show that the power of an attention-grabbing ad with a catchy name can go a long way in earned media.
Beers
Everyone knows that football and beer go hand in hand, which is why our next commercial category is, you guessed it, Beer. In this comparison, we're looking at Budweiser, Bud Light, Shock Top, and Michelob Ultra. The Anheuser-Busch brand cast four of its products in prime time during the game, but classic Budweiser wins this round and hasn't quite dropped off in mentions yet.
Keep in mind, though, that Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning stated that he was going to "drink a Budweiser" after winning the game, leaving many wondering if the brand paid him to mention them, and is likely the cause of the continued coverage for Budweiser.
Cars
Last but certainly not least, our final category is another big one for Super Bowl commercials: Cars. Our search compares Kia, Hyundai, Audi, Acura, and Toyota. In this analysis, Hyundai clearly wins for number of mentions as seen by the orange bar in the graph below. The automaker ran two ads this year, one called "First Date" featuring Kevin Hart as an overbearing dad, and the other entitled "Ryanville" with an omnipresent Ryan Reynolds. Perhaps the inclusion of these two celebrities made them popular in the media.
Audi comes in second with their "Commander" space shuttle launch-themed ad with a well-timed David Bowie track in the background. Even though Hyundai takes the cake for most overall coverage, Audi did have slightly more coverage the day after the ads aired.
If we take out the share of coverage that "puppymonkeybaby" received in the Sodas sector, the winning category is Beer with 24,328 mentions over Super Bowl week and Cars following at a close second with 22,113 mentions.
Even though perennial commercial favorite Budweiser might have won for share of coverage from a brand perspective, we can probably say that "puppymonkeybaby" is the true winner (or loser, depending on how you felt about the ad) of Super Bowl 50.
Winner - Super Bowl 50 Ad Grabbing the Most Earned Media
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