Oreo, Audi and Tide Light-Up Twitter with Zingers During Super Bowl Blackout

Oreos - Tide - Super Bowl Blackout Response

It’s not a surprise that the social media teams of major brands were on high alert during Sunday’s Super Bowl. With investments in 30 second advertising spots running in the neighbourhood of $4 million during the broadcast, it was paramount that reaction to ads be tracked (and possibly responded to) in real-time.

When a blackout affected half the stadium in the third quarter, delaying the game was delayed for 34 minutes, a few savvy social media teams jumped into the fray with some witty, well-timed tweets.

Audi poked fun at fellow German automaker Mercedes-Benz, title sponsor of the New Orleans Superdome, posting, “Sending some LEDs to the @MBUSA Superdome right now…”. Over 9,000 retweets followed.

Tide responded with, “We can’t get your #blackout, but we can get your stains out. #SuperBowl #TidePower”, linking to an image associated with their Stain Saver campaign.

Probably the best response came from Oreo, “Power out?” Oreo posted to Twitter. “No problem. You can still dunk in the dark.”, with a link to an image of an Oreo lit up in a spotlight. The tweet went on to be retweeted 10,000 times within the next hour.

While the three brands mentioned here all invested heavily in their traditional spots, these off-handed remarks captured significant attention with those of us engaged with Twitter as a second screen experience.

[via Advertising Age]

Tide Responds to Onion Article and Brings ‘Viral Video’ to Life

Tide response video to onion article

The Onion has been publishing satirical news articles on the web since 1996 (starting with a print edition in 1988). With the rise of social media, Onion stories are shared on Facebook where they are frequently mistaken for real articles. A great site called ‘literallyunbelievable.org‘ has collected hundreds of entertaining responses from people who just didn’t get the joke.

On May 29, The Onion published an article attributed to Fred Hammond, Director of Digital Video and Social Media Ad Integration at Tide Detergent. In the article titled ‘Hey, Everybody! This Cool New Tide Detergent Video Is Blowing Up All Over The Internet!‘ Fred excitedly wrote:

“I know most of you have probably watched this Tide detergent clip dozens of times already because it went viral so quickly, but if you haven’t, then trust me on this one, you have got to see it. It’s one of those super popular Internet clips that you can’t stop watching over and over and that you immediately want to forward to every one of your email contacts. That’s what I did.”

While Fred Hammond doesn’t actually exist, the folks at Tide and their agency Digitas have responded to the article by producing a real-life version of the ‘super-awesome’ viral video. The video features everything mentioned in the article; the cool indie-rock song, the cute talking animals, and while they don’t have the real ‘Bret Michaels’, they do have a similar bandanna-wearing relic of the 80s.

While Tide’s response video may not quite be “the hottest thing on the web” as Fred described, or even sell a lot of laundry detergent, it does show that the social media team is listening and has the freedom to respond in a creative way.