Super Bowl ads are the equivalent of the coolest guy getting all the girls. They’re a big deal (or at least they believe they’re a big deal), and they attract people to them. Some of the best Super Bowl ad campaigns this year were a bit surprising with GoDaddy, Volkswagen and Doritos. They’ve gone beyond the call of duty, and in some cases, beyond the call of the necessary.

A New Metric

GoDaddy’s success in the social media campaign came in at 95%, but many believe the reason for this is because there was a new metric added to the measurement of success. Even so, they still did a great job at getting the attention of the nation, and if you don’t know why – you soon will.

GoDaddy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-1oixpSShs

The day after the Super Bowl, these guys had the highest sales numbers in the company’s whole history, but to be fair, the other advertisers had not released their numbers at the same time GoDaddy did. That’s not to say they didn’t earn their top place in the Super Bowl. They used three major methods to gain that top spot: creativity, content teasing and calls to action. Their ad did a great job of eliciting an emotional response from people, even if it wasn’t a positive one. They received 290,000 tweets about the ad, but most of them were a little offended by the kiss. Did you turn the sound up on that commercial? You can really hear the ‘smack’ in those lips, so turn it down if sloppy, wet kisses offend you.

Doritos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9lYt6GcAxc

This chip giant used social media to get their fans involved. Doritos called out to all amateur film-makers, imploring them to submit their commercials which will be crowned by social media users. A Facebook application was created to streamline this process, allowing people to vote, watch interviews with the directors of the commercials and witness Michael Bay phoning up the finalists (which may be slightly more entertaining than his movies). This campaign was an outright success, and it’s all social media’s fault.

Volkswagen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H0xPWAtaa8

Even though some of the opinions on this Volkswagen commercial ranged from ‘insensitive’ to ‘racist’, it got a great response from most people. Overall, the ad was well received and did a fantastic job of spreading the happiness that our Minnesotan-Jamaican actor was trying to spread. It even got itself a parody commercial in YouTube.

It takes some good effort to make it in the Super Bowl when the competition is some of the best in the world for business. But these guys have earned their rights to gloat and their rights to sales.