Is anyone even talking about the Seattle Seahawks win
over the Denver Broncos at Sunday night’s Super Bowl XLVIII? If you’re like me,
you only tuned in to the game for two reasons: the commercials and Bruno Mars’
half-time performance. Bruno Mars didn’t disappoint, while the commercials left
me bored and in need of more entertainment. This year the excitement was on
Twitter, where brands took their public relations and marketing strategies
instead of forking out millions of dollars for a 30-second spot during the
Super Bowl.
Public relations professionals knew it was time to play
and step their game up during Super Bowl Sunday, and that is exactly what they
did. They knew precisely where the audience was that they wanted to reach for
their brands. They knew it was their job to make the brand stand out and be a
slightly controversial so people would talk about it long after the game had
ended. Public relations professionals knew the audience they needed to reach
was on Twitter, so they came up with creative ways to get their brand out to
the public on one of the biggest nights of the year. Social
media, specifically Twitter, is where the buzz was this year, so brands that
capitalized on it this year are seeing it pay off. While people have forgotten
about the score of the game, everyone is still talking about what their
favorite companies were doing on Twitter.
Let us just take a second and bow down to J.C. Penney for
their Twitter “controversy.” The popular retail company had its Twitter
followers concerned after posting two tweets that seemed odd for the brand.
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| Picture retrieved from: http://www.thewire.com/technology/2014/02/jcpenneys-drunk-super-bowl-tweets-were-really-just-mitten-selling-stunt/357652/ |
This prompted Kia Motors, Doritos and Snickers to join
in on the fun and offer J.C. Penney’s some assistance during their obvious time
of need. These companies were able to react and respond quickly to J.C.
Penney’s “drunk tweets” and take advantage of the Twitter publicity. I bet that
if Kia, Doritos and Snickers knew that the biggest buzz of the night was going
to be surrounding Twitter, they wouldn’t have paid for a commercial during the
Super Bowl. It was later revealed that J.C. Penney’s strange tweets were to
promote their Go USA mittens for the Olympics.
Some argue that the stunt wasn’t planned and the
individual on the end of the tweets was in fact drunk. For a company like J.C.
Penney’s who hasn’t been a contender on social media, this was a huge gain. No,
people probably aren’t going to go out and by a pair of mittens, but at least
J.C. Penney’s is attempting to engage with a younger demographic through
humorous Twitter ideas. #TweetingWithMittens was a
social media success for the night and a genius idea on the public relations
end of the brand.
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| Picture retrieved from: https://twitter.com/jcpenney |
- Maheshwari, S. (2014, February 2). J.C. Penney Planned Fake Drunk Super Bowl Tweets To "Create Own Narrative". In Buzzfeed Business. Retrieved February 6, 2014, from
- Garcia, T. (2014, February 3). PR Plays a Role on Super Bowl Sunday and Beyond. In PRNewser. Retrieved February 6, 2014, from
- Wiener-Bronner, D. (2014, February 3). JCPenney's 'Drunk' Super Bowl Tweets Were Really Just a Mitten-Selling Stunt. In The Wire. Retrieved February 6, 2014, from
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