My editorial calendar originally slotted a post today for the best tweets at the Super Bowl.
The fact that there wasn’t an Oreo moment didn’t surprise me. But I was surprised that culling hundreds of tweets from varied organizations produced little in the way of business storytelling gold.
Before going further, it’s important to acknowledge that improv marketing, the idea of riffing off the action as it unfolds, calls for a unique combination of nimbleness, wit and guts. It’s hard and success shouldn’t be defined as hitting an Oreo-like homerun. Simply showing a brand’s personality in a fun light advances the cause.
Unfortunately, most brands stayed stuck in sales mode during the Super Bowl, which guaranteed a lack of traction for their tweets. What you’re about to see are the “lucky” tweets that showed up in my feed. Believe me, there are plenty more where these came from.
- Dairy Queen
Huh? I have a soft spot for Dairy Queen going back to enjoying Dilly Bars in the heat of Tucson. But this tweet is what happens when you force the action.
- Baskin-Robbins
Staying with the ice-cream theme, or as we like to call it, #lametweetsgonowhere!
- Amazon
Great idea to play off last year’s power outage, I’m guessing there was better creative than this dull attempt at glory. Remember what I said about guts as a success criterion.
- HP
This is what happens when the suits insist on a product play. The dot connecting moves us from defense during a football game to defense a la computer security. In a word, “badstuff!”
- KFC
The attempt at alliteration would hurt the eyes of your high school English teacher.
- ToysRUs
What an opportunity to bring toys to life with commentary on specific plays. Instead, they go the generic creative route — designed before the game — with a stuffed animal signaling touchdown.
- Harley-Davidson
I guess Harley-Davidson thought the game would end in sunlight and a blue sky. How tough would it have been to round up a few bikers with the requisite “Harley face” holding a sign that congrats the Seahawks with the score of the game?
It turns out the business storytelling gold came from basic word tweets reacting to others.
Here’s a few examples:
- Kia Motors
After J.C. Penney sent out multiple tweets with typos, Kia came back with this zinger. Clever and gutsy which explains the 2.5K RTs. As the exchange played out, J.C. Penney had purposely set the stage for “tweeting with mittens.”
- Kohl’s
Why does Kohl’s make the list? I like bad puns.
- Sprint
Fun stuff. For those who watch football once a year, the Seattle running back Marshawn Lynch loves Skittles.
There’s no question that more brands and organizations jumped on the Twitter bandwagon to capitalize on this year’s Super Bowl. With tweet volume spiking at the Super Bowl, it stands to reason that the quality would go down.
Still, I think there’s a second variable at work. Did the newbies operate with their standard social team or bring in new talent from the creative world? The results suggest the standard social teams did the heavy lifting.
If you came across other Super Bowl tweets that grabbed your attention, by all means weigh in.
Note: The post from yesterday, “Brands in Sales Mode Won’t Win Social Media at the Super Bowl” captures a few of the better tweets that the hit the “airwaves” before the Super Bowl kickoff.