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The Super Bowl has come and gone, and everyone wants to know which brands reigned supreme. From assessing the data, the notable brands of the Super Bowl break down into three broad categories:
- Brands that surged on the day of the Super Bowl (2/11), or the day after (2/12):
- Dunkin’ Donuts
- Verizon
- Pfizer
- Michelob ULTRA
- Brands that enjoyed a strong January and early-February, but didn’t necessarily see pronounced momentum around the Super Bowl itself:
- E.L.F.
- CeraVe
- Fan Duel
- Uber Eats
- The brand that literally won the Super Bowl:
- The Kansas City Swift-Mahomeses
- The Kansas City Swift-Mahomeses
First Half
Let’s go the game tape, starting with the first set of brands:
Dunkin’ Donuts
Look: as someone who dislikes Boston (I’m a New Yorker), coffee (don’t need it), donuts (too sweet), Tom Brady (I’m a New Yorker), Good Will Hunting (maudlin, cliched), and Jennnifer Lopez (I’m not big on pop music), even I have to admit that this was a very funny commercial. Also, I swear I’m fun at parties.
Apparently America really does run on Dunkin’, because the commercial was all the rage on the internet on the day after the Super Bowl, leading to a big spike in Earned Media Value (EMV) for Dunkin’. Behold:
Dunkin' Donuts Super Bowl EMV Performance February 2023
How do you like them donuts, indeed?
On February 12, Dunkin’ Donuts collected $3.3M EMV, outpacing in a single day the $3.1M EMV that the brand pulled in from February 1 to February 11. Which means that from February 1 to February 12, Dunkin’ Donuts’ $6.3M EMV total (no, this isn’t an error, it’s just how the $3.3M and $3.1M figures end up rounding out) was on par with the brand’s $7.2M EMV total in all of January. Turns out that three superstars and Matt Damon will really get people talking.
We’ll be sure to check back at the end of February to see how Dunkin’ made out for the month as a (w)hole. In the meantime, we can all kick back and relax to the sweet sounds of The DunKings. Shout-out to Valerie Leary, our Senior Director of Segment Marketing and resident Dunkinologist—this one’s for you.
Related: Watermelon Glow and Strawberry Glaze: How Glow Recipe and Erewhon Win With Influencer Marketing
Verizon
Verizon’s commercial might not have had the humor of the DunKings, but it did have Beyoncé, whose solo star power might eclipse all the heavy-hitters Dunkin’ assembled. Plus, Tony Hale! I for one was also excited about Tony Hale.
When you follow up a commercial about Beyoncé dropping new music with Beyoncé actually dropping new music, that’s bound to spark some attention for your brand—even if, as in the commercial, it didn’t actually cause Verizon to collapse. On the contrary:
Verizon Super Bowl EMV Performance February 2023
After pulling in $4.1M EMV in January, Verizon collected $4.7M EMV from February 1 to February 12, with $2.5M EMV of that total coming the day after the Super Bowl. Did Beyoncé have something to do with that? Or was it all hype for Tony Hale? That’s for you to decide.
Pfizer
While Pfizer didn’t feature Travis Kelce in its Super Bowl commercial, as he was a little busy at the time (I assume all these commercials are filmed live?), it did have creepy semi-reanimated scientists singing Queen. So you know, pretty much the same thing.
Not a lot of people were talking about Pfizer in the days leading up to the Super Bowl, probably because Pfizer is, like, soooooo 2021. Despite its relatively small EMV total compared to other brands in this analysis, Pfizer certainly got people talking in the wake of the Super Bowl. Because who doesn’t like Freddie Mercury as channeled by Isaac Newton?
(Me. I didn’t like it. But hey, I’m not people.)
You know what I do like, because believe it or not I do like some things in this world? Aesthetically pleasing growth graphs.
Pfizer Super Bowl EMV Performance February 2023
So thank you, Pfizer, for that. Oh, and thanks for that other thing, too. Even if I am #ModernaGang.
Michelob ULTRA
Just when you thought these were all basically the same graph, we’ve got a combo-breaker for you:
Michelob ULTRA Super Bowl EMV Performance February 2023
Here we have various peaks and valleys for Michelob ULTRA, mainly due to the timing of when it announced its star-studded, Miami-centric commercial. In early February, the beer brand unveiled a team-up with Lionel Messi, arguably the world’s greatest active athlete besides Christian McCaffrey. In addition to Leo, the commercial featured fellow soccer star Alex Morgan, tennis great Serena Williams, and fictional soccer coach Jason Sudeikis. Oh, and Dan Marino was there too, not that he belongs anywhere near a Super Bowl.
Thanks to all these stars, Michelob ULTRA surged at the beginning of the month, then tapered off before a spike on the day of the Super Bowl itself, presumably because if anybody is posting during the game, it’s probably at least slightly beer-related.
Second Half
Now we come to a different sort of Super Bowl strategy—one that begins long before the game is played. The next set of brands began their activations in January, leading to significant momentum in that month, but less pronounced growth in the narrow window of time around the Super Bowl. The success that these brands enjoyed demonstrates the degree to which Super Bowl advertising is no longer a one-day affair. Instead, groundwork for campaigns is laid well in advance, often culminating well before the big game.
E.L.F.
An old favorite, E.L.F. returned to the Super Bowl following its 2023 ad with Jennifer Coolidge. This year, the brand made headlines by reuniting the cast of Suits, which was lost on me, because I never watched that show, or any TV show, really. I’m too busy having fun at parties and talking about all the stuff I like.
Anyway, most of those headlines were made in January, as can be seen by this nifty graph:
E.L.F. EMV Performance November 2023 - January 2024
Related: Why Naturium’s $355M Acquisition By E.l.f. Beauty Is a Perfect Match
Thanks to holiday activations and Super Bowl pre-hype, E.L.F. rose steadily from November to January. While the brand continued to see solid numbers in February, collecting $11.7M EMV from February 1 through February 12, this proved pretty much on par with the brand’s trajectory through December and January.
Kudos to E.L.F. for another creative campaign, and another strong big-game performance. Excited to see what the brand comes up with in 2025!
CeraVe
Now we begin to encounter a new kind of same old graph:
CeraVe EMV Performance November 2023 - January 2024
Apart from Dunkin’ Donuts, CeraVe might have had the most talked-about Super Bowl ad of the bunch. In my grinchy, easily dissatisfied opinion, it was also one of the funniest. That’s all thanks to a fortuitous crossover with actor and early-2000s icon Michael Cera, who stepped in as the brand’s spokesperson.
However, he stepped in during January, greatly contributing to the brand’s surge in that month. Posts tagged #MichaelCeraVe powered $1.2M EMV, almost 15% of CeraVe’s total, while #MichaelCera chipped in $882.8k EMV. Both hashtags ranked among CeraVe’s top EMV-drivers in January.
Related: How CeraVe Became a Skincare Staple for Gen Z Influencers
For both its Michael Cera campaign and other initiatives, CeraVe activated a team of partners who hadn’t previously posted about the brand. These newcomers—creators who hadn’t mentioned CeraVe in December—fueled $6.0M EMV in January, over two-thirds of the brand’s $8.8M EMV total.
Poor Tony Hale—not only was he overshadowed by Beyoncé, but he’s not even the Arrested Development actor getting the most clout for his Super Bowl commercial.
FanDuel
We’re switching up the graphs, folks—same idea, slightly different scale. Because FanDuel has been putting in work for quite some time:
FanDuel EMV Performance July 2023 - January 2024
This is like those pictures of domino set-ups that start with a regular-sized domino and end with a barn door. Who knows how high FanDuel can climb?
It’s pretty rare to see a brand increase its EMV for six consecutive months, but the kickoff of the NFL season and the tipoff of the NBA season and the, uh, puck-drop of the NHL season will do that. Through all that, FanDuel conducted another round of its ‘Kick of Destiny’ campaign featuring former NFL star Rob Gronkowski.
With fans laying bets on whether Gronk would make the field goal live during the Super Bowl (spoiler: he didn’t), most of the hype came in January, rather than during the week of the Super Bowl. Because if fans wanted to see a missed field goal in the playoffs, they’d just watch the Buffalo Bills.
Uber Eats
Does it come as a surprise to you that I was never a fan of Friends, either? Well, good news for the folks at Uber Eats: I am not their target demo.
Disclaimer: as a 20-something (for a few more months, just let me have this) man living in a major American city, I am 100% Uber Eats’ target demo.
Regardless of my apparent need to dislike everything popular (in my defense, I like the NFL, and that’s popular), Uber Eats has boasted consistent success in recent months, with the announcement of its mini-Friends reunion leading to a surge in January:
FanDuel EMV Performance July 2023 - January 2024
What’s more, the hype continued into February, even if it was fairly diffuse throughout the month, rather than concentrated about the Super Bowl. From February 1 through February 12, Uber Eats collected $4.3M EMV, marginally outpacing its November total, and setting the brand up nicely to exceed its $5.4M EMV and $5.6M EMV hauls in December and January.
Who knew that actors from one of the most beloved shows in television history would help drive online buzz? Maybe Uber Eats should keep this theme rolling. What’s Matt LeBlanc up to these days? He can’t possibly cost as much as Jennifer Aniston.
Overtime
We’ve looked at the brands that ‘won’ the Super Bowl—now, let’s take a look at the brand that won the Super Bowl. Just like the game’s actual overtime, the Chiefs weren’t messing around.
The data tells a funny story, though: like some of the other brands in this analysis, the Chiefs might have been playing their best ball in January.
Kansas City Chiefs EMV Performance January 2023 - 2024
In an earlier edition of this newsletter, I noted that despite the Taylor Swift hype that hit the Chiefs in October, the team had still garnered significantly more EMV in February 2023, when they won the Super Bowl. While that’s still true, it turns out that a team making a Super Bowl run while Taylor Swift is dating one of their star players will garner significantly significantly more EMV. In fact, the Chiefs’ $107.0M EMV in January is our highest monthly total for an NFL team on record.
But this momentum wasn’t just confined to the Chiefs: the NFL was up across the board in January. The San Francisco 49ers and the Detroit Lions collected a respective $93.1M EMV and $73.3M EMV that month, on par with what the Chiefs netted in February 2023. The lesson? Whatever the NFL is doing to reach digital content creators—and the league is doing a lot—it’s working.
As for the Chiefs’ February performance, the team collected $48.6M EMV from February 1 to February 12: on track to break its January record, though not by a wide margin. Granted, the Chiefs are likely to see more media coverage throughout the month, but this wasn’t as lopsided as I was expecting.
One potential reason for this is that January content about the Chiefs was more Swiftian. In that month, posts mentioning the pop superstar powered 34% of the team’s EMV, compared to just 27% of the Chiefs’ EMV from February 1 to February 12. Is Taylor Swift the key to the team’s success after all?
The data says: maybe. We’ll see how the rest of February plays out. But one thing is for certain: if the graph above is any indication, as the NFL heads for the offseason and content creation dries up, the Chiefs are in for another…cruel summer.
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