The Super Bowl As A Social Experiment

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I had a great time watching Super Bowl XLVI, but not so much because of who was playing.

It was a great game, don’t get me wrong… BUT what’s really exciting about events like this for marketers is watching the massive changes year over year.

The Super Bowl is a litmus test for what’s going on right now in marketing…

This game brought us some real firsts. For example, Sunday marked the very first time the Super Bowl was streamed online for free… legally.

That’s actually a huge admission, by both the NFL and NBC, that the streaming video is eating your television.

Incidentally, the Feds smacked down illegal streaming sites like Firtsrowsports.tv in the days leading up to the game. Taking down these sites was a big move, because it clears the way for a real push by the true copyright holders… It’s a little bit like taking down Napster to build iTunes.

Millions of sports fans were hitting up these sites for all the big games. Heck, even Tom Brady admitted that he was doing it. Now that these pirate sites are out of the way, the stage is set.

Another trend that jumps out at us is the BOOM in social media engagement during the game.

According to AllThingsD, multiple social monitoring firms say there were approximately 12M social media comments during Super Bowl XLVI. That’s 6X more than during last year’s game, and a new Twitter record of 12,233 tweets per second.

Next year, it could easily be up 600% again… and not just because more people are using social media during the game.

Instead, it’s what ties these two macro-trends together: Mobile.

As the Super Bowl moves online, engagement will become more automatic — simply because it will be streaming through mobile devices and computers.

This year, advertisers had some luck getting viewers to tie their commercials to a hashtag. But that’s a pretty primitive way to get it done.

Imagine how easy it will be to tweet about a bad call in real time when the game’s streaming through your iPad. Imagine how much easier it will be to get users to click-thru on a Super Bowl “commercial.”

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