Month: February 2023

“Gaming isn’t just a hobby for a group of nerds anymore. It’s a big part of popular culture, and for hundreds of millions of gamers, a meaningful part of their identity,” Kolcheff said. “Smart brands like Chunky get that, and they’re engaging gamers in new ways.”

While Campbell’s did not intend the activation to replace the Super Bowl, the brand consciously placed the tournament within the playoff season to better reach both gamers and sports fans. Kolcheff’s stream on February 8 maintained an average concurrent viewership of over 20,000 and a peak of nearly 30,000, according to Streams Charts. (For comparison, Stream Charts says that Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, the current most-followed Twitch streamer, reached an average concurrent viewership on the platform of just under 10,000 during his most recent livestream.)

“The finale timing right before the Super Bowl allowed us to capitalize upon the excitement leading into the Super Bowl when football buzz is high, but also gave football fans an exciting event to watch when no NFL games are being played,” said a representative of Campbell’s Chunky’s marketing team, who declined to be identified by name.

Chunky’s partnership with Kolcheff, one of Twitch’s most popular streamers, is smart indeed. Although Kolcheff is a member of the prominent esports organization FaZe Clan, the brand chose to activate directly with him, rather than partnering with the broader org. As brands like BMW divest from esports orgs, marketers are beginning to realize that they can get better returns — and better value — from individual streamer partnerships instead.

“We like to keep our lens wide and keep evaluating, so we’re constantly looking at consumer behavior, and constantly talking to different outlets so that we have a good view of what’s going on in the marketplace,” said Marci Raible, vp of integrated marketing for Campbell’s Meals & Beverages. “There’s no one reason [Campbell’s doesn’t partner with esports orgs] — I think it’s more about prioritization.”

One stated reason for Chunky’s decision to partner with Kolcheff over his esports org was due to the tournament’s status as an individual competition, rather than a team event, according to the Campbell’s Chunky marketing rep. But as brands grow more skeptical of the ROI of esports org partnerships, the decision might just be the result of good business sense. 

In addition to having less red tape than org-wide sponsorships, partnering with individual influencers allows brands to reach their fans more directly, in ways that line up with their specific fan bases, rather than by attempting to satisfy the disparate audiences of an org’s influencer roster.

And there are potential brand safety upsides, too: while FaZe Clan has been mired in its fair share of controversies over the past few years, Kolcheff himself has largely remained above the fray during his time with the org.

“If you think about the marketing they’ve done in the past, Chunky, as a brand, seems really comfortable with putting a specific face behind their brand. They’ve always had specific sportspeople showcasing Chunky soup,” said Amy Gilbert, head of social for the social media moderation agency The Social Element. “So it feels really comfortable to be having a specific person, versus a bigger organization, because that fits within their kind of marketing.”

Marketers don’t have the same enthusiasm to spend big on ads around the game like they have done in the past. Some like those from Toyota, BMW and Nissan are sitting it out entirely. They’d rather not blow a sizable portion of their annual ad budget on the event given the automotive category — and many others for that matter — are still dogged by the economy and supply issues. 

There will be those that think otherwise, of course. Pepsi, AB InBev, General Motors, Netflix and DraftKings to name a few. But there are many others that can’t afford to go big or go home around the event. Instead, they’re having to be smarter about how they advertise around the game.

State Farm appears to have taken this to heart. They’re skipping its usual Super Bowl ad this year in favor of a TikTok campaign with social media personality Khaby Lame alongside brand spokesperson Jake. A hashtag challenge like the one at the heart of this campaign costs around $150,000 for six days. On the flipside, a TV ad during the game would’ve set the same marketers back around $7 million.

“The conversations we’re having with our brand partners makes me feel like spending on social media is growing around this year’s Super Bowl in spite of the economy,” said Mike Heller, co-founder of sports marketing agency Talent Resources Sports. “Now, that could be down to the fact that we’re a boutique agency, not one of the big holding companies, so marketers are coming to us more so now than in previous years when they were doing these big ad campaigns.”

No wonder marketers are on edge. 

They can’t afford to go for broke on brand awareness alone. The ads have to work harder. For instance, a lot of the campaigns digital marketing agency Influential is working on for the game have a component that can be measured; so something like a way to measure in-store sales or foot traffic into a QSR or online sales. Clearly, the stakes are higher for a lot of marketers this year. 

“Advertising on the Super Bowl won’t be what it should be or could be this weekend — at least when compared to previous years,” said Ryan Detert, CEO of Influential.

What he means is the ads might not feel as big as they have previously. That’s not to say that advertising during the Super Bowl has slowed down by any means, it’s that the opportunity for distribution across social channels continues to grow.

For example, there’s a lot of thought going into how to mememify memorable, quirky, fun moments around the game. That’s the view of the six marketers who flagged to Digiday that this would be a key task for those ad execs in social media war rooms for the event. It’s not a new tactic by any means. The whole point of war rooms was to essentially create memes, or those cultural items capable of spreading across the internet quickly. This year, however, that content won’t necessarily prioritize text as much. Not now that Twitter isn’t as central to Super Bowl plans as it once was. Rather, they’re going to focus more on images, short clips and livestreaming. 

“For us, Twitter has been deprioritized in the overall scope of the Downy campaign this year, but it’s still important to be present as people use Twitter to search, react and connect in real time,” said Jennifer Brotman, group account director at Saatchi & Saatchi.

Brands are showing up for the Super Bowl on platforms, but via organic content instead of paid advertising, which it will use to nudge audiences back to that organic content.

Look at how many advertisers are partnering with creators around the event: The NFL is working with Emmanuel Duverneau (known as the dancing chef on TikTok, to cook players’ favorite meals. Doritos is working with TikTok personality Tay Bloomer for a dance contest. 

“When you stack up creators vs. Super Bowl commercial ad costs the numbers speak for themselves,” said Krishna Subramanian, CEO of influencer marketing platform Captiv8. “Creators deliver higher engagement and viewership, at a significantly lower cost making one thing evident: Creators are the most valuable advertising channel for brands.”

To be clear, there will be those that buck this trend. Take Pepsi. It set aside more than $3 million for Twitter takeover ads on the day of the Super Bowl, per The Information. Others, however, either don’t have that sort of cash to spend or if they do, are having to put it to work in more places. In fairness, this decentralization of online marketing, especially social media, was already happening. But the downturn has made it all the more acute.

“There was a time when the trending hashtag on a social media platform was the creme de la creme for marketers who wanted a big Super Bowl moment they could own,” said Detert. “Clearly that’s still important. But more marketers also want more user-generated content created this year. That’s why there’s more interest in TikTok this year.”

Time will tell whether this “less could be more” approach to Super Bowl advertising works out. Nevertheless, what little evidence there is from the campaigns around last year’s game suggests that working with creators and user-generated content specifically could pay off, if done correctly.

“We knew we needed a creative team who could do it all,” said Vicki McRae, svp of brand, creative and communications at Rakuten, adding that when she joined the platform three years ago the plan was to grow an in-house team to not only figure out the tone of voice, look and feel of the brand but make sure it was a team with “big ambitions.”

McRae added: “We needed people who had a vision to set foundational elements who could deliver things like the Super Bowl. With that in mind, to get the top talent you need to bring in-house to do all those things, you have to make sure they are [given the opportunity] to touch all those things.” 

Rakuten is not alone in using its in-house team to manage its Super Bowl advertising. Other brands like Squarespace and Best Buy, among others, are using in-house teams for various Super Bowl efforts. As previously reported by Digiday, as marketers continue to build out in-house capabilities, using those in-house teams to manage tentpole events like Super Bowl will continue. 

The “always-on nature of the work over the last decade” has made Squarespace’s 60-person in-house agency all the more important for the brand, according to Ben Hughes, vp of creative at Squarespace. The website maker will have a 30-second spot during the Big Game featuring Adam Driver that was created in-house and inspired by the brand’s lore, something the in-house team was “uniquely qualified” to do, noted Hughes.

Marketers pointed to speed and agility when asked why they are using in-house teams to manage Super Bowl campaigns. While Best Buy won’t have an ad running during the Big Game, the brand did tap its 100-person in-house agency to manage a campaign leading up to the Super Bowl. 

“We believe that no one can more authentically tap into the humanity of our brand and connect with our customers in a more meaningful way than the people who live and breathe it every day,” said Molly Kinsella, vp of creative, content and operations, in an email. 

Marketers said cost savings wasn’t so much a driving factor in the decision, as much as speed, agility, efficiencies and the ability to recruit top talent for the in-house team with opportunities like Super Bowl.

That a company would tap its in-house team for Super Bowl work isn’t surprise, especially when the work is more integrated. “When [a campaign is] more deeply integrated [with] social or other activities, it’s more complicated to execute, oftentimes it’s taken in-house because lots of folks in the organization need to get involved,” Allen Adamson, brand consultant and co-founder of Metaforce, previously told Digiday.

“It’s more about ownership,” said McRae. “Living and breathing the brand every day, knowing what we want to do from a business perspective. True ownership is something you can achieve in a much clearer way when you do the work in-house.”