D&I

Super Bowl Commercials Had Black Talent—But Was it Enough?

After last summer’s Black Lives Matter reckoning and the murders of George Floyd and other Black people, many marketers became more conscious about equal representation in their creative. Super Bowl LV was no exception—plenty of commercials starred Black actors or actresses, from “Hamilton” star Daveed Diggs to Drake from State Farm. 

But the numbers tell a story of stasis, not progress. The Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing (AIMM) found Super Bowl LV’s ads “nearly identical in terms of representation to 2020’s, with significantly lower representation of Hispanic [and] LGBTQ+…people.”

• And AIMM’s Cultural Insight Impact Measure found that 2021’s ads were “perceived as less culturally relevant across the board than last year, and significantly less authentic than non-Super Bowl ads,” per Ad Age.

Ask an expert 

I asked multicultural marketing consultant Nathan Young—who helped kick off the marketing industry's 2020 DE&I reckoning by founding 600 & Rising—what his take was.

On representation: “In terms of on-screen talent, I didn’t see much of an uptick in representation versus last year. It felt roughly the same, despite diverse casting being a mandate on every Super Bowl brief I’ve seen.”

Halfway there: “The good news is that brands and agencies are paying attention to the importance of diversity. The bad news is this attention has been mostly focused on casting decisions and less on the people and companies who make the ads.”

Pulling back the curtain: “Only 7% of the directors for Super Bowl spots this year were people of color. Only 5% of the directors were women. It’s clear we have a ways to go in ensuring diverse representation across agencies and production companies.”

My takeaway: It takes more than just hiring Black celebs to make an authentic advertisement. Many of the other BIPOC marketers I spoke with agreed that actually acknowledging the Black Lives Matter movement and hiring a diverse team behind the screen would have improved the ads’ authenticity scores. 

SOCIAL MEDIA

Super Bowl, Super Social Lift

By now, you’ve probably read all the stories about the brands that saved cash without sacrificing results by channeling their Super Bowl LV marketing efforts into digital. 

• For instance, instead of buying a TV spot for the Big Game, Budweiser debuted a digital short film that was more effective than any Super Bowl ad of the past five years—at least according to one study. 

Social lift without a $5.5 million TV spot?

Mediaocean numbers say Budweiser’s story = exception, not norm: Brands booked for the Super Bowl saw a combined TV social lift of 74%, versus 67% for brands without TV spots.

• “Some were able to make noise on social, but nowhere near the level of brands that were in the Big Game,” Mediaocean CMO Aaron Goldman told Marketing Brew.
• Goldman also compared that Budweiser campaign to Big Game advertiser Bud Light, saying that when Mediaocean “compared social engagement for the two brands on Super Bowl Sunday to the week before the game, Bud Light did better.”

Bottom line: You can try to replicate Super Bowl magic on social all you want, but touchdowns are rare without an in-game spot to center them. 

SPONSORED BY STACKADAPT

Got Some Qs About CTV Advertising?

CTV (aka Connected TV, aka the thing you watch content on through an internet connection) is one of the fastest-growing areas within the digital video advertising space.

But like a trivia game show, it comes with a whole host of questions marketers are guessing the answers to.

To help cut through the static, StackAdapt put together this guide that breaks down everything you need to know about CTV.

For example, did you know media buyers can either work directly with publishers, content aggregators, and device manufacturers, or they can access inventory through a demand-side platform (DSP)?

And did you know that because CTV is programmatically transacted, it makes it super easy to launch and access real-time data?

Look at us trying to give you all the answers. You’re better off getting them from the people who know CTV front to back—that’s StackAdapt.

Discover how you can leverage the marketing power of CTV. Read the full guide right here.

INFLUENCERS

And the Celebrity-est Celebrity is…

As much as I hate on celebrity influencers, I have to admit—they perform well in Super Bowl commercials. If you’re curious which celeb performed the most well this year, we have answers. 

TV insights and analytics company EDO, Inc. shared data with Marketing Brew on the 10 celebrity appearances that prompted the most searches for the brand online. EDO scored every Super Bowl LV ad, ranking them based on the number of online searches they drove in the minutes after the ad ran. 

So, who prompted the most searches? In order from most to least…  

1. Gwen Stefani in “Finding the Right One” for T-Mobile
2. Blake Shelton in “Finding the Right One” for T-Mobile
3. Ashton Kutcher in “It Wasn’t Me” for Cheetos 
4. Mila Kunis in “It Wasn’t Me” for Cheetos 
5. John Travolta in “Keep Growing” for Scotts Miracle-Gro
6. Bruce Springsteen in “The Middle” for Jeep
7. Shaggy in “It Wasn’t Me” for Cheetos 
8. Nick Jonas in “The Future That's Available Now” for Dexcom
9. Jason Alexander in “The Jason Alexander Hoodie” for Tide 
10. Cardi B in “Shameless Manipulation” for Uber Eats

My takeaway: What’d I tell you on Monday about celebrity couples being more relatable than the average celeb ? 

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Pearl Milling Company is the brand formerly known as Aunt Jemima’s official new name.
• The Washington Football Team is also working on the naming thing, enlisting agency Code and Theory for help.
• Virginia could soon pass a privacy law similar to California’s.
• Pinterest is planning yet another virtual ad conference (its first).

SPONSORED BY ADOBE

Don’t miss the metrics that make marketing matter. Want to answer performance Qs from the C-suite confidently? Adobe’s 8 essential reports tell you exactly what metrics to track and when to track them over time. From top-funnel lead analysis to complex opp influence, read what you didn’t know you should know as a marketer. 

ADWEEK OR ADWEAK?

Which headlines are real marketing news, and which one is satirical à la Twitter account ADWEAK?

1. Instagram Will Now Limit the Reach of Re-posts from TikTok Within its Reels Clone
2. Super Bowl Viewership Falls to Lowest Levels in Years
3. That Robinhood Ad Was the Best Spot of the Whole Game
4. Reddit Claps Back with New Hour-Long Infomercial Post-Five Second Super Bowl Spot

Keep scrolling for the answer.

FRENCH PRESS

Marketing tips to make you fancy

DTC: Here’s what seven direct-to-consumer brands can teach you about social media marketing.

Content: This article breaks down the myth of evergreen content, explaining what to do after you realize it isn’t “Set it and forget it.”

Sosh meeds: The team at Socialinsider recently analyzed more than 22 million business posts on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, from brands spanning 35 different industries, for a new social media industry benchmark study that now lives inside this handy infographic.

Productivity: Why has getting work done gotten so dang hard? For instance, 87% of knowledge workers are working late now that they're WFH. Discover all the stats in Asana’s Anatomy of Work Index report.*

*This is sponsored advertising content

ADWEEK OR ADWEAK? ANSWER

This was a tricky one...the Robinhood ad article is technically real news, considering I wrote it on Monday, although it was a joke. The Reddit infomercial, on the other hand, isn’t even a little bit real.

ICYMI

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Celebrity couples were the Super Bowl LV ad theme we didn’t see coming
• How Jeep and Fiverr could predict the future of politics in ads
• The most overlooked and overhyped marketing trends of 2020