#SB50 Postmortem – What We Can Learn from Super Bowl Social Marketing

3. Look for Ways to Repurpose Older Content

Another noteworthy ad from Sunday’s game came from Doritos – tamer than others they’ve offered in Super Bowls previous, but no less shareable: a couple attending an ultrasound notice that their unborn child has a reaction to the Doritos the husband happens to be eating, which eventually culminates in the child’s birth when the husband takes his teasing too far and moves the bag away suddenly. A strange ad, admittedly, but again, a relatively tame one by the chip manufacturer’s standards.

What set this ad apart, however, was how quickly it lent itself to memes and graphics. Within mere minutes, Doritos had uploaded its own .gif of the surprise birth, and encouraged others to offer captions and interpretations of their own. Doritos had managed to give the television spot second life in a way that belied the spot’s mediocrity; a middling success had been made a modest triumph.

It’s an approach you would do well to consider in promoted ads on social. Tie in an older asset on, say, email marketing “musts” to an ongoing event – the current presidential primaries, say, or an upcoming holiday. Turn an eBook into a quick-and-dirty fact-sheet – a one-pager with high-level takeaways you encourage your followers to disseminate. Distill a webinar’s findings into an infographic.