Alexa Which Was The Most Impactful Super Bowl Advert Again?

Football for many has become a religion more than a sport and Super Bowl is this faith’s celebratory day.

But what did you look forward to this year’s Super Bowl?

Are you an actual football enthusiast? Or a J-Lo and Shakira fan (before heading forward someone please tell me how is J-Lo even 50?)? Or a marketer like me who is obsessed with seeing how every brand tries too hard to sell their story and yet only some succeed (*sigh*)?

Fun Fact: Marketers spent an estimate of $435 million on this year’s in-game commercials, making it the largest Super Bowl so far, according to Kantar Media firm.

Irrespective, the one advert that stuck out of the rest for me was the Amazon’s Alexa advert featuring the power couple Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi. If you haven’t seen it yet, please see it before reading the following blog:

The advert includes snippets from history to ponder on life before voice activated assistants, creating an imitation on human’s current dependency on Alexa. Inventing a word play on names sounding similar to that of Alexa, the commercial depicts clips from various eras with people asking for tasks comparable to what they would ask Alexa.

Amazon claims to have sold 100 million Alexa enabled devices indicating the rapidly increasing dependency on digital voice assistants. My home being one of the post-Alexa households, I can see everyone, from my grandmother to my 5-year-old brother being hooked to Alexa. Every single time it leaves me wondering if this addiction is healthy?

Earned, paid and owned media

However, this addiction seems to be working perfectly for Amazon.

• The teasers created quite a buzz amongst people by generating the maximum reactions on social media as compared to others, as per a ranking by iSpot.tv. As of press time, the first teaser itself generated an estimate of 373,000 online views, 16.7% digital share of voice and more than 178,000 social actions.
• The advert was first released on Ellen’s TV show, with her saying — “But because I have a television show and I have the power, I am going to show it to you right now, first.” (Damn straight you have the power girl!) This gave Amazon alongside Ellen, earned media for the advert because of the show’s massive fan following.

• The commercial is said to be the most-watched advert in terms of its viewership on YouTube on game day as of 10PM and has 39,000 plus mentions and shares online. It currently has 60 Million views on YouTube.
• The #beforeAlexa is trending on Instagram and Twitter with people sharing the original commercial and their views, and also their own Before Alexa stories.

If the brand doesn’t tell their story, no one else will

Amazon’s commercial hit a mark. Without a call-to-action, I believe they sold their product with a story that pulled us in. The commercial was also consistent with the brand’s ideology to make every household addicted to Alexa. Kudos to Amazon for making the commercial seem more on a fun and entertaining note, rather than an oppressive one (because we all know how soon brands can become overpowering).

Controversies follow good content

Are you aware of any good content that has existed without a tad bit of controversy?

…. Because I don’t

The Advert in a humorous way touches on the political Watergate scandal, where the Nixon tapes were also ‘supposedly’ not erased. This is depicted wittily by the last snippet where Alicia, the President’s assistant says, “I ain’t deleting the tapes”. It also was related to the privacy concerns surrounding Alexa being able to record people inside their homes.

Irrespective the motive is clear: Alexa has indeed become an integral part of human life and the same is well illustrated in the advert.