The Underdog of the Super Bowl

The Super Bowl is so much more than just football. For some, the commercials are the reason to tune in each year. And these spots are  among the most expensive advertisements.

Due to the pandemic, many brands opted not to spend advertising dollars on this year’s Super Bowl. Some, like Miller Lite, used social media to get the word out by tweeting, “no commercial from us this year, after 2020 no one’s forgotten that beer exists.” The company instead directed $40,000 to beer fans to purchase their own 6-pack for the game.

A rather unusual advertiser came on board this year, after scoring headlines these past few weeks for its role in upending the stock market. Reddit, which is widely thought of as the underdog of social networking, had a simple five-second commercial during the broadcast. Savvy viewers, wanting to see what the brief message was all about, paused the live TV broadcast to read the message, which paid tribute to, what else? Underdogs.

Extending their “5-minutes of fame,” Reddit took full advantage of the worldwide appeal of the Super Bowl to get its message across. Time will tell how it will translate to new users. I suspect it will.