SUPER BOWL ANALYSIS: BUD LIGHT + GAME OF THRONES
By ICX Media - February 11, 2019
Using social video data to evaluate brand partnerships
The Super Bowl is consistently the biggest advertising event of the year. Every brand that advertises during the big game makes a significant investment with the hopes of creating a lasting impact with their audience.
The emphasis that advertisers place on this event lead some to take a surprising new approach at this year’s Super Bowl. Many brands chose to promote their spot in Super Bowl LIII with a partner advertiser. Investing in a Super Bowl campaign is no small order. Pairing that investment with a creative collaboration with another advertiser adds to the magnitude and importance of the ad’s success. This makes it critical to know about the audience you’re targeting and how the message you’re collaboratively building will resonate with that audience. Simply said, you need data to inform and evaluate the campaign and potential partners.
To better understand how data can help inform and evaluate advertising partnerships, we used our AI and machine learning capabilities to analyze the audience data surrounding the YouTube channels of one of the biggest partnerships, Bud Light and Game of Thrones. By looking at the social video data of both of these brands and the videos they share, we can understand the success of this partnership and help you build your own successful partnerships.
Our Methodology:
We analyzed social video data on YouTube. Both Bud Light and Game of Thrones shared the commercial on their own channels, and the thousands of interactions on these videos is rich with metadata to quantify for our analysis.
In analyzing the interactions on these videos, we can measure deep psychographic and behavioral trends of the audiences of both of these brands.
Our analysis included comprehensive dive into:
Keywords
Interests
Demographics
Engagement
Earned Media Value
Sentiment
Location
Income-level
We analyzed this data a week after the Super Bowl to ensure enough of an arch of time was present and enough of the impressions were shared for a thorough analysis.
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Why they built this partnership
Bud Light and Game of Thrones partnering on the Super Bowl ad was a smart decision for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there is clear creative alignment between the setting of Bud Light’s “Land of Dilly Dilly” and the medieval fantasy world of Game of Thrones. As Andy Goeler, Bud Light VP of Marketing, said, “the ‘Dilly Dilly’ universe takes inspiration from Game of Thrones, so it made perfect sense to join forces for this unforgettable Super Bowl moment.” The second aspect is both brands have loyal predominantly male audiences with Game of Thrones skewing slightly younger (67% between 18-34 years old) while Bud Light’s audience is somewhat older (41% over 55 years old). These demographics provide a favorable scenario of providing enough audience overlap for alignment while still reaching new audiences for both brands.
Why the partnership worked
This partnership was beneficial for both Bud Light and Game of Thrones. Bud Light, the primary sponsor behind the ad, gained a new audience from Game of Thrones while Game of Thrones also saw an increase in Earned Media Value from the ad.
Interest graphs of an audience can act as unique identifiers for that audience, similar to fingerprints. No two audiences are the same, and in quantifying the interests of an audience, you can isolate the unique attributes that set them apart. Using interactions on the YouTube videos from both Bud Light and Game of Throne’s channels, we quantified the audiences of each to measure the growth for each channel. The audiences for Bud Light and Game of Thrones have their own specific interest attributes. Re-measuring these attributes in the week following the ad shows us growth in Bud Light’s channel amongst an audience with interests mirroring Game of Thrones’ channel. We’re seeing Bud Light’s “audience fingerprint” morphing to Game of Thrones’.
This gain for Bud Light is further supported by the number of comments on Game of Thrones channel featuring Bud Light related keywords (17%).
For Game of Thrones, one of the benefits that came from this partnership was an Earned Media Value of $158,844 across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This ranks second highest in EMV among Super Bowl advertisers, trailing only the NFL itself.
Analyzing social video data shows why this partnership was smart for both brands. In planning their own initiatives, marketers need to apply these AI-powered insights to inform and evaluate their own partners.
How to use social video data
Whether you’re evaluating a partnership with an influencer or a brand, there can be a huge promotional lift for your campaign if you find the right alignment. Social video data can show you more about your audience to help inform your campaigns and partnerships. By leveraging AI and machine learning to analyze that data, you can unearth deep insights and understand where your audiences mesh.
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