Super Bowl advertising is enticing for its ability to reach a large audience, but famously expensive. So some advertisers have looked for creative ways to advertise during the big game, without the price tag of a national ad buy (it cost around $7 million for a 30-second national spot in the 2024 Super Bowl).
At MediaPost’s TV + Video Insider Summit earlier this month, Athena Nestoras explained “How United Airlines Hacked the Super Bowl.”
The airline's senior manager of global advertising and social media strategy said the campaign started with the recognition that the brand needed to take a local approach, acknowledging that most viewers’ favorite teams weren’t playing in the Super Bowl. That insight led to the concept that “Believing Changes Everything” and a “wait until next year” spirit.
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Nestoras noted that the campaign did have a national lens for its PR and social media components, but stressed that “local really was the focus” across local broadcast advertising (along with their streaming extensions), as well as social media and YouTube activations.
United Airlines focused its campaign around nine markets chosen for their importance to the airlines business: Baltimore, Colorado Springs and Denver, Chicago, Cincinnati and Cleveland, Houston, Kansas City and Orlando.
“Some of these might be a hub, some might be a spoke. We operate really well in these markets,” Nestoras explained. “We’re not going to choose a market like Atlanta, where some of our competitors dominate -- we just don’t have a great product there…so it’s not going to make sense for us.”
Cost was another big factor, as prices vary significantly based on the individual market. In the case of Baltimore, she noted, the location was both an important spoke for the brand, and the hometown Baltimore Ravens had narrowly missed the big game. Since United Airlines was already a sponsor for many NFL teams, the company already had the rights to use teams’ IP and likenesses to craft content connecting with local fans.
"These teams were wiling to share [our content] on their social channels as well, because we’re speaking directly to their fanbase,” she added.
The approach also allowed the brand to buy prime ad slots long since unavailable for national broadcast, including those leading into the halttime Show. “We know that is where [there are] the most viewers. People are sometimes just [tuning in] for the halftime show,” Nestoras said. “A lot of our spots ran there, and then as the game was heating up towards the third quarter.”
United Airlines’ local play proved a winner for the brand. “The strategy really paid off in brand consideration,” Nestoras said, pointing to the approach leading to 89% positive online sentiment.
The good will translated to a 10% increase in United’s website traffic for the two days after the Super Bowl, easily clearing brand benchmarks with a performance Nestoras characterized as “two times more efficient than anything we’ve seen before.” While the goal of the campaign was brand awareness, United also saw an overall year-over-year sales increase of 8% for the two weeks following the Super Bowl, and an increase in bookings of up to 9% in some of the markets targeted. And all that from a media investment of “less than 20%” of a national ad buy, Nestoras said.
Asked during a Q&A session if the airline would continue the approach for the next Super Bowl, Nestoras said, “We’re looking at creative concepts for that local play, yeah,” also noting that the brand was looking into expanding the approach to more markets if given the budget for it.