How the 2016 Super Bowl Leveraged Love

The 50th Anniversary is the “Gold”, and what is sweeter than winning gold?

The first Super Bowl ad I saw this year was Jim Gaffigan as Col’ Sanders for KFC and I thought, “That’s smart – I bet many of their target audience love that guy.”

The Deadpool commercial aired and my girlfriend said “How did that character get his own movie?”, I replied that, “People love Ryan Reynolds.”

A few minutes later, this commercial aired:

Subaru had an Ad with a dog driving it’s sleeping puppy around town.

Dogs being one of the most beloved animals – can you see a pattern emerging?

This year’s advertisers seemed to agree with the Beatle’s that ‘all you need is love.’

Why did Budweiser, America’s most popular beer brand, have two of the most popular comedians say “Everyone loves Paul Rudd,” then show Paul Rudd? The same reason Coca Cola used Paul Rudd to open a tiny coke to make the Hulk happy.

Of course, the goal of these advertisers is to associate something their audience loves with their brand.

It may seem obvious to use celebrities, maybe even unfair since it often requires millions of dollars, but there is a subtle and actionable takeaway here: to find out what your customers love and leverage that to spread your message.

If your brand is the Super Bowl then you need to appeal to a wide breadth of people from families to the more traditional beer-loving sports fans. Hence the most widely popular musicians performing during the half-time show. However, I don’t think the best Creative Directors in the world could have known how well their orchestrated message to the world would be such a unifying force for their advertisers to “Believe in Love.”