An exciting football game. Several very topical and relevant commercials. Some clever tie-ins connecting those ads to digital marketing. All of that combined for a fun 2017 Hashtag Bowl — our sixth annual competition showcasing how well Super Bowl advertisers connect their TV ads with online marketing efforts.
And now that the proverbial dust has settled on both the big game and our Hashtag Bowl coverage, it’s time to announce the winners. We’ve looked at the tweets and Facebook posts, the online video ads and much more. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at the 2017 Hashtag Bowl winners!
Award: Most Mentioned Social Network
According to our monitoring of all the national TV commercials that aired during the Super Bowl, Twitter edged Facebook with five mentions. It’s the first time Twitter has been the outright winner since 2013, although it tied with Facebook a year ago.
Award: Best Overall Brand
Winner: Anheuser-Busch
Anheuser-Busch has a long history of Super Bowl advertising and has done some of the most memorable ads the game has ever seen for its Budweiser and Bud Light brands — lost puppies, Clydesdale horses and more. This year, the company ran three ads and they were a home run … er, touchdown with viewers. Consider this:
According to Unruly, Budweiser’s “Born The Hard Way” ad was the most-shared ad online.
According to YouTube, that same ad had the most online views of any Super Bowl ad. And coming in at No. 2 was Bud Light’s “Ghost Spuds” commercial featuring the return of Spuds MacKenzie.
According to Amobee, Budweiser edged out 84 Lumber to be the brand with the most digital content engagement on Super Bowl Sunday.
That’s an impressive run and most deserving of our “Best Overall Brand” award.
Award: Best Brand Tweet
Winner: Eggo
It’s become customary for brands to tweet during major live events like the Super Bowl, and this year was no exception. But, while many of the brand efforts felt forced and awkward to this observer, one tweet stood out as a winner to us.
When the Netflix series “Stranger Things” ran a commercial for its upcoming second season that opened with six seconds of an old Eggo waffles TV commercial, the social team at Eggo moved quickly on Twitter to capitalize on the free exposure:
uıɐƃɐ sn ɥʇıʍ ƃuıssǝɯ noʎ ǝɹɐ @Stranger_Things 'ʎǝɥ pic.twitter.com/uOAGlhSVgj — Eggo® (@eggo) February 6, 2017
The clever, upside-down theme fits in with the TV series, where the character Eleven is known to consider Eggo waffles her favorite food. The tweet currently has more than 9,200 retweets and almost 20,000 likes — exponentially more than the company’s tweets normally get.
Well played, Eggo, and definitely worthy of our choice for Best Brand Tweet during the Super Bowl.
On behalf of the entire Marketing Land editorial team, congratulations to Twitter, Anheuser-Busch and Eggo — our winners in the 2017 Marketing Land Hashtag Bowl!
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