Brands That Brought It During The Super Bowl Blackout

Feb. 4, 2013— -- intro: The New Orleans Superdome's Super Bowl blackout may have sent stadium workers and network people scrambling to figure out how to get things back to normal and meet all their commmitments (not to mention send Twitter users into a frenzy over who could make the same exact Bane/The Dark Night Rises joke the fastest), but a few brands actually benefitted from the snafu. If there are winners out of Super Bowl 2013, it's Beyonce and these brand's community managers and ad agencies.

quicklist: 1title: Oreo Knows It's All the Same in the Darktext: Oreo took advantage of the moment to (as The Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy mag put it) "culture-jack" the Super Bowl by quickly posting an online ad that was reshared more than 14,500 times on Twitter. "Power Out?" the Twitter message asked. "No Problem." Clicking on the link provided led Twitter users to an image of a single Oreo cookie against a shadowy white background. "You can still dunk in the dark," it read. And how!

Sarah Hofstetter, president of 360i, the agency responsible for the Oreo ad, told Speakeasy that, "Because Oreo was a Super Bowl advertiser, we had set up a team of folks at our offices with people from Oreo as well to both listen to and optimize the chatter on the Internet." When the blackout occured, she explained, their first instinct was to brainstorm how Oreo could factor in and become a part of the online conversation.

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quicklist: 2 title: Walgreens Has What You Needtext: Another brand that deftly handled the blackout was Walgreens, which quickly offered up a cute, concise Tweet as a way of weighing in on the chatter. "We do carry candles. #SuperBowl" they wrote, later adding that "... we also sell lights. #SuperBowl." The move offered a fast, clever, and unintrusive way of inserting their brand and voice into a memorable moment.

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quicklist: 3title: PBS Takes It Downtontext: PBS, meanwhile, took the opportunity to promote their programming to a wider audience. "This might be a good time think about alternative programming. [sic] #SuperBowlBlackOut #WeHaveDowntonPBS," they Tweeted.

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quicklist: 4title: ONE Directiontext: The ONE campaign offered a sobering take on the event, Tweeting that "half a billion people in Africa NEVER have power. Learn more at one.org/us/2012/11/13/... #superbowl."

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quicklist: 5title: Audi Brings Ittext: Audi, another brand that had its traditional TV ad featured during the big game, jumped in by offering a subtle jab at their competitor, Merdeces-Benz, which happens to have its name on the Superdome. "Sending some LEDs to the @MBUSA Superdome right now..." they Tweeted, making sure to call out Mercedes-Benz USA by its Twitter handle.

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