The Super Bowl is an important outlet for businesses to showcase the ads that they have spent millions of dollars on. Being one of the most watched events on television, if not the most, the Super Bowl is an opportune event to release the creative ads that companies have taken so long to create. This is the one television event people don't turn the channel during commercials. Brands can therefore get a lot of exposure through showing their ads during these four hours of Sunday night football.
       Coca Cola is a brand you can always expect to see an ad from during the Super Bowl. When looking up articles about upcoming ads to be shown during this years game, one that I found was about Coke and was entitled "Coca-Cola to Run Its Own Game During the Super Bowl." The main point of Coke's cross-media campaign was to tell a story in order to engage consumers with the brand. As I have been learning, content is one of the most important aspects of media campaigns. Coke understands that for people to interact with your brand you must engage them. Last year Coke took the same approach during the Super Bowl with a cross-media campaign involving the famous Coca-Cola polar bears and a live feed of them watching the game. According to Coke, nine million people engaged with this campaign across various platforms.
       This years campaign allowed viewers to vote on which of three teams would make it first to the giant Coke bottle. An ad was shown with the three teams having fifty miles to go and then told viewers to go online and vote for their favorite team as well as giving them the opportunity to set up obstacles for the other teams. Viewers had the opportunity to reply to Coke with a hashtag of their favorite team. This campaign allowed consumers to interact with the brand and other consumers, creating a friendly competition. Brand engagement is important and consumers like to be involved. Having read this article before watching the game, I was still very impressed with the ad. It was interesting and caught my attention, which some other ads failed to do.
       I also noticed during the Super Bowl that numerous other commercials included hashtags at the bottom of the screen. This further emphasizes the greater impact social media is having on marketing/advertising efforts. Brands are trying to engage consumers more and more. However, I believe Coke was most successful. They were able to come up with an interesting story that caught people's attention and got them to interact with the brand, a step above simply having them view your ads. I am interested to see if other companies and brands will eventually do the same in the future and encourage consumers to interact.

~Katie