As always, Super Bowl Sunday is a huge opportunity for brands, who can’t wait to leave a lasting impression amongst a global audience. With over 113 million viewers world-wide, which companies managed to do this, and how did the event dominate online conversation?

Some of the top brands to advertise at the event stole the show with their emotive video campaigns. Our favourite from the night had to be Budweiser’s, whose ad, “Born The Hard Way”, featured the brand’s founder, Adolphus Busch, moving to the US in order to become a beer brewer. Shortly after arriving, he is sadly told to leave and return home, which sees him escaping from a burning ship, battling the elements, and enduring other ordeals. The resolution of the ad is positive though, as Adolphus manages to find a bar where the other patrons welcome him with open arms. Clearly, Budweiser were eager to draw upon the political mood of the moment with this theme, and generated a staggering reception as a result- the ad received 79 million TV impressions and 32 million views online.

Audi’s campaign was also highly topical in its theme, and gave an insight into some of the brand’s values. The ad, entitled “Drive Progress”, featured a group of children competing in a go-karting race. In this, one of the boys tries to bully a girl racer off the road, but despite this, she ends up winning the race. The ad ends with the slogan, “Progress for everyone”, with the brand informing the viewer; “Audi of America is committed to equal pay for equal work.” Created by Venable Bell & Partners, spend on this was a reported $10.5 million, while it received 75 million TV ad impressions.

In terms of online conversation, social media showed a record amount of engagement. Facebook for instance, reported 64 million users posting 240 million posts to the platform during the game, up from 60 million and 200 million posts last year. And of these, over 90% of the conversation happened on mobile. Twitter also reported impressive figures, with 27.6 million tweets about the event observed during, before and after. The number one brand dominating the social conversation was Pepsi, who used the Super Bowl to debut their new product, LIFEWTR, a bottled mineral water. The brand unveiled this during the event’s half-time show, in a 30 second ad entitled “Inspiration Drops.” This was beautifully executed, featuring rain drops transforming into artwork as they hit the ground, set to John Legend’s rendition of “Love me now”.

Coming in second and third place respectively were Avocados from Mexico, (the organisational body in charge of the country’s avocado industry, and Netflix. Avocados of Mexico cleverly capitalised on guacamole and related avocado recipes surrounding the game, and used paid search to ensure discovery. The company also updated its site to draw users, with new site links showcasing keywords such as, “Hard Hitting Guacamole”, “Big Game Dip”, and “Avo Footballs”. Netflix also garnered a lot of attention for their Stranger Things 2 teaser, which emphasised the show’s future release. In fact, the brand achieved the most social media buzz out of all other advertisers during their commercial’s broadcast, with a reported 554,000 social actions tracked during this time.

Did you participate in the online conversation surrounding Sunday night’s game? And which were your favourite campaigns from the event? We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please tweet to us @PracticeDigital and share your comments on our Facebook page.