Super Bowl: On Any Given Sunday Content Rules. For many football fans, there are two seasons – football season and waiting for football season. Brands know that this is a cultural moment steeped in tradition and look to invest heavily in its halo. The Super Bowl is quintessentially the most expensive night for brands looking to showcase their goods (with prices steadily climbing every year). In fact, the rate for a 30-second spot has dramatically increased 75% over the past decade, with brands investing over $4.2 million for their 30 seconds under the halide lights. Some brands even spend more than 10% of their annual marketing budgets on the game – that’s one big bet – Hello Vegas odds makers.

Understandably, there’s nothing quite like being part of a spectacle of this grandeur and capitalizing on the 160+ million viewers who tune in each year (38 million outside of the US). But with so much money spent and the stakes so high, what are brands doing to extend their reach beyond just their 30 seconds of fame? The best marketers are experimenting and testing content and social strategies to extend audience reach and engagement way beyond the screen… and to turn broader awareness into interest for the year ahead.

On any given Sunday, the Super Bowl is surely one of the world’s best storytelling platforms. Yet as many a marketer will attest, telling effectual brand stories just can’t be done in one sitting. For that reason, not all brands score as many points as they could with a pricey Super Bowl spot. Pure triumph comes for brands that think of the opportunity as a moment in their content plan, as opposed to the whole enchilada. Brands that are nailing Super Bowl marketing look to engage consumers over the course of the entire season (plus the waiting season). Utilizing storytelling methodologies by introducing new characters, concepts and information along the way, brands can treat the actual Super Bowl as an episode of a longer-lived series of content – leveraging their big moment to solidify and drive engagement, so it has legs and lifespan. According to Google, brands that publish full versions of their television spots online before Super Bowl Sunday receive 2.2 times more views and 3.1 times more social shares by the following Monday morning, than those brands that waited for the game to release their ad.

Digital engagement surrounding the Super Bowl has erupted over the last few years. According to TechCrunch, entranced Super Bowl fans shared 265 million Facebook posts in 2015, 28.4 million tweets, and watched a staggering 4 million hours of game-day ads on YouTube.

The most progressive marketers are focusing on continuous engagement and long-term brand loyalty with consumers. An always-on content strategy – tied to big events like the Super Bowl – enables marketers to maximize the reach, longevity, and impact of their precious dollars. So think about what you truly have to offer while your fans are gripping their smartphone with their giant foam finger and juggling a saucy chicken wing in the other…

Michael Chase, CMO

St. Joseph Communications

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES – TAKEN FROM A VARIETY OF SOURCES, INCLUDING NEWSCRED, GOOGLE, TECH CRUNCH 2016