After reading Tamara Gaffney’s blog “Marketers Score Touchdowns on Social Media” it shows how much exposure companies can get during the Superbowl. The increase in social media attention was substantial for the companies that chose to advertise, but is it worth the extremely high cost of 4 million dollars for the 30 seconds of advertising time?
I began to wonder how social media translates into sales? The saying “any publicity is good publicity” is one thing, but, is spending 4 million dollars on a short ad that increases social media attention and traffic for the brand going to translate into increased sales?
The graph below shows that social media traffic can indeed have an impact on sales, referrals, increased profit margins and more!
A Superbowl advertisement mixed with social media attention actually worked on me this Superbowl (keep in mind I am a cheap consumer who normally is not overly persuaded by ads).
The advertisement campaign that worked on me was from the company SodaStream. The Superbowl commercial originally released by SodaStream had a mention of both Coke and Pepsi, which caused the advertisement to be banned from television. This forced the company to make a revised commercial. The ban boosted the exposure and traffic across social media outlets. Then, the revised ad lured me in because there was a recognizable famous person in it (and attractive one at that in Scarlett Johansson) while the banning had already caught my attention on Twitter. Both of these factors combined was enough for me to Google the company and visit their website to see what the product was all about. Luckily for SodaStream I happen to love soda water so immediately when I visited the company’s site the product appealed to me (was this lucky? or did SodaStream figure the demographics of the individuals watching the Superbowl would likely enjoy carbonated beverages?).
Since the Superbowl I have already placed an online order for this product. I have justified to myself that it will save me money in the long run, as I am a frequent club soda purchaser. Yes, I was a victim to this advertisement campaign but it was not only the TV ad, it was a combination of the ad and the social media traffic from the ban. These two streams which simultaneously caught my attention were the key factors in me purchasing the product – without both of them I would not be receiving a SodaStream in the mail in 5-10 business days.
