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Newcastle Brown Ale's Creative Super Bowl Campaign: A Novel Crowdfunding Strategy
EXCERPTS
THE SUPER BOWL
The Super Bowl was the annual championship game of the National Football League (NFL), the highest level of professional football in the United States. Super Bowl I was played on January 15, 1967. The game was created as part of a merger agreement between the NFL and its then-rival league, the American Football League (AFL) . It was agreed that the two leagues champion teams would play in the AFL–NFL World Championship Game until the merger officially began in 1970. After the merger, each league was designated as a “conference”, and the game was then played between the conference champions. As of 2015, the National Football Conference (NFC) led the league with 26 wins to 23 wins for the American Football Conference (AFC)... |
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IF WE MADE IT.COM - A FAILED ATTEMPT
Newcastle’s advertising venture into the Super Bowl 2015 ad campaign started with pre-event videos featured on ifwemadeit.com in 2014. Newcastle’s Super Bowl campaign started in 2014 in association with Droga5. Newcastle stated in the website ifwemadeit.com that it had almost made the entry into the Super Bowl 2014 ad slot but at the last moment it fell through. They uploaded different videos with visuals showing the storyboards, graphical representation of the characters, and all the behind the scene stuff which was supposed to be the background work for the ad made for the Super Bowl 2014 ad slot. The website featured testimonies of two celebrities who were roped in to represent the brand in the commercial that was never made. Newcastle uploaded these short videos on ifwemadeit.com that linked with a channel on YouTube (a popular video sharing site)...
NEWCASTLE’S CROWDFUNDING STRATEGY
Newcastle decided to make it to the Super Bowl 2015 ad slot at any cost. “We picked the Super Bowl not because it’s a big sporting event, but because it’s a huge cultural event and because there’s so much marketing excess around it. The Super Bowl is an interesting occasion to us because it’s a huge party occasion and obviously a good occasion for beer,” said Brett Steen, Newcastle’s brand manager. The high price tag of the Super Bowl campaign made the company brainstorm new ideas. To avoid burdening the ad budget with millions, it came up with the idea of crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is a way of raising finance by asking a large number of people each for a small amount of money (Refer to Exhibit IV for a short note on crowdfunding)...
‘BAND OF BRANDS’ IMPLEMENTATION
The crowdfunding strategy adopted by Newcastle involved an invitation to brands through social media for funding a spot in the Super Bowl ad slot. Newcastle proposed to the brands that it would make a commercial named ‘Band of Brands’ in which all the participating brands would star. It roped in ‘Parks and Recreation’ star Aubrey Plaza to make a video which was published in YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rLILU3B5LY), inviting the brands to be part of this crowdfunding strategy (Refer to Exhibit V for images from the videos of Aubrey Plaza inviting brand association)...
THE FINAL VERDICT
The Newcastle campaign was a hit among brands and consumers. It boosted the sales of the beers as customers found the commercial appealing. “Three hundred and fifty brands from around the world tried to get into the ad, and so far, we’ve had over 4 million views for all of the videos to date, and over a billion PR impressions. Obviously we don’t have the numbers in yet for this year, but last year we saw a big increase in retail sales. We’re not only having fun, but we are also selling more beer,”...
THE ROAD AHEAD
Advertising had taken different shapes where creativity was concerned to reach the consumers and companies were striving to come out with effective consumer reaching advertising strategies. Analysts opined that Newcastle used ambush marketing as a means to enter the ad slot of Super Bowl 2015 and the crowdfunding strategy was used to implement the strategy...
EXHIBITS
Exhibit I Key Financials of Heineken
Exhibit II Market Share of the World’s Leading Beer Companies based on Sales -2014
Exhibit III Viewer's opinions about Super Bowl TV commercials
Exhibit IV A Short Note on Crowdfunding
Exhibit V Images from the Videos of Aubrey Plaza Inviting Brand Association
Exhibit VI Images from the ‘Band of Brands’ Campaign
Exhibit VII Images of All the Brands that Participated in ‘Band of Brands’ Campaign
