• by Jason Marks , January 31, 2014

$4 million? That’s a big budget -- a bigger budget than some of your clients will have for the year. But the Super Bowl is the advertising mecca, a worshipful paean to marketing, where the audience looks forward to engaging with corporate America. And you don’t want to stand on the sidelines. The good news is the media waves created by the game itself can be surfed around the edges. So pocket that $4 mil and check out a few ways to ride the buzz.

1. Get into the stream

Oreo? Really? That was the winner last year? Sure, reacting to shared events in the social stream is a brilliant way to turn Super Bowl hysteria into brand equity. But if the bar for success is simply a JPG with a headline, then we’re doing it wrong. Content creation based on reactions to the game should move, they should be interactive, they should spark more conversation and they should still be shareable the next day.

Make an online ad for each quarter and one for half-time. Five real-time, reactive ads that speak to the energy and events that surround the game. It can be video, a live-streaming broadcast, a game, quiz or infographic. Assemble the right team with a wide range of skills and treat it like a four-hour hack-a-thon. React, create, publish, converse.

2. Pirate the audio

No one really likes the announcers. At a Super Bowl party, it’s often too loud to hear what they’re saying. So replace it with something better, funnier, something more like a party. Create an audio stream online so users can play it over the broadcast. Hire a celebrity that is quick on their feet, and used to a talk show format: Colbert, Fallon, Ferrell. Then turn them loose on the game and the commercials, and respond to fans through Twitter.

Let them have a running commentary that incorporates product messaging in that sly, deprecating way Colbert and Ferrell have mastered. The game and commercials play without disruption, but the audio is all yours. All you have to do is ask users for local cable information to synchronize the audio with game action.

3. Buy the playoffs

The Super Bowl is crowded, on-screen and off. For $4 million, you don’t want your message to get lost, or just be missed in its single slot. If you really want that big, marquee TV commercial for brand awareness or a new product launch, the thing to do is buy the playoffs. It’s three straight weekends, eight hours a day of high-end, mass audience football.

The ads that play during the playoffs are repeated endlessly, and by the second weekend, any football fan knows them by heart. You’ll have a much better chance of really nailing your message with the same audience who after three weeks will be close to the same size as the Super Bowl’s.