Creator Bowl: How Brands Are Partnering with Creators for the Super Bowl
Campaign teasers released prior to the game are part and parcel of Super Bowl advertising, but there are ever wider opportunities on social media when it comes to brands - whether official advertisers or not - interacting with the big game.
These days, creators can play a pivotal role in engaging certain audiences, both in the run-up to the game and during it. A lot of fans will be ‘second-screening’. Some - especially younger gen Zers - might not engage with the entire three to four hour broadcast, instead keeping up to speed via socials. Others might even be watching abroad on a different stream altogether.
So, what opportunities does our industry see for brands and creators during the Super Bowl 2024? when it comes to the use of creators around the Super Bowl? This year has already seen the TikTok star Addison Rae appear as the talent in an actual spot for sweet brand Nerds. Plus, Uber Eats’ use of the Beckhams in its big game teaser might not involve your typical ‘creator’ but is inspired with its commentary on one of social’s most viral moments of recent months.
LBB’s Addison Capper spoke with social media experts from the NFL, Droga5, Mother, Dentsu and more to get their take on how brands can grab the attention of distracted thumb scrollers this Sunday.
Ian Trombetta
SVP, social, influencer & content marketing at NFL
Our goal is to make the NFL the most community-driven sports league in the world, and creators play an integral role in helping us reach new and diverse audiences. This season, we embraced the power of creators in our NFL Creator of the Week programme. Every week, a YouTube creator was granted exclusive behind-the-scenes access to a game, unveiling unprecedented opportunities to bring a new, fresh perspective on the sport.
Creator-led content has a profound impact, and our commitment to empowering creators remains as we gear up for the Super Bowl. We will encourage the chosen Creator of the Week to craft content in their unique style, authentically connecting with the communities they’ve cultivated. It will be an experience like never before, where the excitement around the game meets the creativity of creators, forging connections with youth audiences around the globe.
Bridget Jewell
Executive creative director at Dentsu Creative
During the Super Bowl, brands are so tied specifically to TVC ads that they often overlook the very online and very active audience on social channels. I think the Uber Eats usage of crossover-celebs/creators - the Beckhams - is the start of a new trend toward a less-TV-focused ad play for the big game.
We’re also seeing the continued growth of off-platform messaging for the Super Bowl. This includes second-screening gen Zers and the growth of the game’s streaming audiences. Creators continue to play a role in driving engagement off-platform for brands, and we expect to see the scales tip and brands start to focus most of their big game efforts off the big screen. Think of creators and celebrities doing their own simulcast (like ESPN’s Manningcast), offering live engagement opportunities in the home cities of the teams playing, and growth in creative that isn’t just a push message (like nearly all Super Bowl TVC ads), but focused more on engagement and UGC.
Janni Widerholm
Creative director, earned & social media at TBWA\Chiat\Day LA
For the fourth year in a row, we’ll be tuning into the official TikTok tailgate, with Gwen Stefani as this year’s headliner. Last year, creators and dancers who turned Rihanna’s halftime show into a viral moment took over our feeds, but this year it seems that both the NFL and advertisers are banking even bigger on the second screen.
Addison Rae is starring in a Nerds ad, and it seems like the mystery dance student is revealed when the ad airs, or possibly on social media. The Pringles ad has Easter eggs that people can call out on Instagram and TikTok for a price. But the brand that stands out so far is Uber Eats with its Super Bowl ad teaser featuring David and Victoria Beckham. While the ad itself is not featuring creators, the brand has recreated a viral moment that took place on social. From the ‘my dad had a Rolls Royce’ t-shirt to the brand utilising celebrities more as creators than just faces, Uber Eats is winning by understanding how its audience consumes content and media.
My prediction and hope for future ads is that we see more brands coming up with integrated ideas with creators and social communities at the heart of the idea, not as promoters of competition or separate extensions.
Hannah Tabor
Strategy director at Mother New York
If we’re talking about building Super Bowl engagement with creators, it feels like we’re watching a masterclass unfold with the Michael Cera x Cerave saga. They’re dropping clues all around the internet with the help of creators - from Hayley Kalil (@haleyybaylee) to Bobbi Althoff and Caleb Simpson - and leaving the audience to put those clues together and make their predictions for what it all adds up to. It’s a super clever way to tap into gen Z’s love of social sleuthing, keeping them engaged and talking about the brand over multiple weeks. Try doing that with just a teaser. There’s a bigger lesson for brands in what CeraVe is doing - using social creators is about driving engagement versus simply amplifying your content. It’s what social is built for, and yet it’s something many brands often ignore.
Yan Wang-Benz
Head of communications strategy at Droga5 New York
Historically, big media moments like the Super Bowl have been quite restrictive—both in terms of which brands could afford to participate and what they were creatively allowed to do or say. These moments could also feel intimidating for certain audiences who may not feel catered to or included.
But creators break these constraints. They provide more creative freedom than what we see on network TV, and more importantly, they are shortcuts to many subcultures. Creators are inherently inclusive of their communities and can offer a brand a bridge to audiences they perhaps previously couldn't tap into (or didn’t think to).
My favourite example right now is Kristin Juszczyk, who just got a licensing deal with the NFL. The NFL may never have crossed many fashion fanatics’ minds as a brand synonymous with style, but Kristin just changed the game.
That's what creators do: they provide a direct relationship to groups of people with shared passions. Once you find and heat up your corner of the internet, the news reverberates and travels.
Jake Rosenblatt
Influencer partnerships director at The Martin Agency
We know creators can be a super effective way to tease a campaign. And for a brand that hasn’t previously run a spot during The Big Game, the buzz, and speculation leading up to it is a huge opportunity for them to bring in their community to celebrate together in the process. While Michael Cera himself has gotten Cerave earned media attention, the use of Haley Kalil to tease the Michael Cera-ve partnership allowed them to tap into their community and has their fans creating their own UGC to speculate if they’ll follow it up with a Super Bowl commercial. If we do see one, you can be sure to see an outsized share of support online and a big moment for their loyal fans who they’ve allowed to take part in the journey.
But whether you’re a brand that may be running your first Super Bowl ad as the Cerave fans are clamouring for, or a familiar brand that people are expecting like the return of The Clydesdales, the opportunity for brands working with creators is always to tap into your community and ensure they’re reflected and have a role in what you’re doing.
With that said, I think we’re going to see a focused shift for brands’ social media during the game from live tweeting and trying to win the timeline, to working with creators to make real-time reactive content on TikTok and show up on the FYP. As brands are making their planned move from X to TikTok, they have to show up in a way that feels endemic to the platform which means working with Creators to try to break through.
Melanie Williams
EVP, head of strategy at Quantasy + Associates
With some brands spending upwards of one third of their annual marketing budget on just 30 seconds of Super Bowl time, we can be pretty confident that we'll see a significant uptick in creator-led social experiences. Half of this shift will be driven by an insatiable hunger to reach and resonate with gen Z consumers, while the other half likely stems from the need to appease stakeholders and boardrooms with increasingly rigid definitions of ROI. From campaign teasers and leaks to unexpected cross-platform calls to action, comedic behind the scenes plus ups, and companion content; we can expect to see more brands relying on partnerships to fuel social media fires and maximise on the inevitable huge spikes in awareness. Creators will be at the heart of this, activating their carefully curated audiences and turning what used to be passive commercial viewing into truly interactive branded experiences.
Sampson Yimer
SVP sponsorship at Momentum Worldwide
The annual cultural juggernaut known as the Super Bowl is marketing’s… well, Super Bowl. Brands are scrambling to message and engage with the well over 100 million Americans who will watch the game live, and millions more who will engage, opine on commercials, and I’m guessing, discuss a certain team’s most popular fan (of course I mean noted Kansas City Chiefs fan, Paul Rudd).
A perfect way to amplify a brand campaign or messaging during the biggest annual cultural event in the US, is through leveraging creators (Forbes list of top 50 creators spans about 1.9 billion cross-platform follows). They have proven an effective mechanism for reaching younger demographics which spend an increasing amount of time on their mobile devices.
Sports is an incredibly important cultural touchstone, and its influence is even more stark, given the crossover appeal of athletes into other elements of popular culture. Sports content lends itself to commentary and parody, which makes its presence on social media as a prime topic for content creators. It makes for an ideal complementary, and in some cases, primary means of engaging with sport, depending on the level of fandom.
Whether or not it’s Druski’s appearance in Google Pixel ads during NBA programming or father and son duo Joe and Frank Mele for Gillette, the convergence of social media stardom on traditional media platforms is likely to continue, as these creators become celebrities in their own right. This is an impactful mechanism to ensure consistent brand messaging travels across platforms, and more importantly, across demographics.
The emergence of multi-casts of televised sporting events has underscored the desire for personalised experiences. Creators can help brands to connect with consumers that might be interested in a particular player, or just enjoy the communal experience of the Super Bowl, or want to debate their favourite Usher song in the lead-up to the halftime show. Given the flexibility that these partnerships allow, it’s clear that we’ve only seen the beginning of the creator takeover.
Brandon Solis
Executive director head of strategy at ANNEX88
Brands who are not official NFL Super Bowl partners struggle to break through the noisy day of conversations. However, in recent years, social media and influencers have provided an avenue. By creating surround sound starting at the lead-up, during game day weekend, and the Monday post-hype, content creators collaborate with brands now by discussing friend gatherings, viewing party excitement, and halftime pop culture. It's less contrived and feels more authentic to their audiences while also avoiding the need to navigate trademark limitations, allowing them to seamlessly integrate with the Super Bowl moment without any flags being thrown on infringement.
Examples at this year’s Big Game include:
- Zeb Powell doing DraftKings, but the content is him skateboarding...then playing with a football...then the app which will be popular during the Super Bowl.
- Cooking4Wifey does a lot of content making food for his family, but naturally integrates Doritos into one of his recipe videos to make a dip for the big game.
- TikeyYounger is a chef and author that does at-home kitchen content, this time for Walmart to show the delivery function as woven into her story to get ingredients to make her big game snack.
Juliana Constantino
Executive creative director at Pereira O’Dell
One of social media’s greatest superpowers is the ability to take a massive event like the Super Bowl and extend its life cycle even longer — in both directions. Social media helps create anticipation before the game and it keeps the conversation going long after it’s over.
Beyond simply extending the moment, creators also have the ability to bring the big game conversation to different screens. Creators not only play a pivotal role in engaging certain niche audiences, they also have the ability to build perception around it.
And yet, ads are an essential part of the Super Bowl experience. It is probably the only time in the year that we have more people interested in the spots than those who work in advertising. I predict that brands will keep mixing Hollywood influencers with some TikTok stars – because they have to talk to parents and kids, simultaneously.
If I were a brand, I would bet on creating a story that could reverberate on social media. To get the influencers engaged. Reaction rules!
Alex Osorio
EVP at M&C Saatchi FABRIC
While it's true that consumers will be tuning into the big game across a wide array of platforms, the single biggest truth is that – regardless of platform or streaming service – they're all locked in and ready to participate in the dialogue. This means that brands should partner with creators for real-time cultural conversation on their behalf. Less scripted, insert product here – more about building a tribe that will authentically contribute to the fun. To do this successfully, brands need (1) the right, trusted creators (brand and audience), (2) allowing for creative freedom (let them do what they do best), and (3) explore high-travel formats that make sense for the moment (don’t forget the memes).
Also, we’re already seeing but with almost half of consumers expected to watch the game at home with friends and family, we expect a lot of occasion-based storytelling with creators in the lead-up. This is a natural and authentic way to keep brands top-of-mind as shopping lists are finalised and good memories are created on the day.
Tyler Sweeney
Associate director, social ＆ digital strategy at RPA
For the Super Bowl, we should expect brands to dip into the macro / large-scale influencer talent space more than they usually do. It's a big moment for many, which warrants the need for that mass scale and reach. What better way to capitalise on this than leveraging some of the more iconic and well-known creators.
I also expect to see another year of recognisable influencer faces making the jump from small screen (social media) to the big screen (ads in the game). It's a strong nod that ‘your brand gets it’ by leveraging top creator talent versus standard celebrities in commercials.
Victoria Bachan
President of Whalar’s Global Talent Division
I would hope that for the big game brands would look to take their large TV investment and expand it across social, which will take the living breathing content alllllllll across the internet to viewers who are not even tuning into the game!
Watching the real time reactions is one of the most interactive parts of the commercial process of the Super Bowl and to also see that with creators turns up the fun!
