There’s no single event as big as the Super Bowl when it comes to brand advertising. This year, more than 50 brands invested upwards of $4.5 million to buy a Super Bowl ad – and that doesn’t include what each advertiser spent on creative, or the digital costs of extending a campaign beyond the 30 and 60-second spots aired during the game.

For most Super Bowl advertisers, game-day is just the beginning, with many advertisers pushing out their campaigns weeks, and even months, after Super Bowl Sunday.

Hyundai, Apartments.com and Turbo Tax were three of this year’s Super Bowl 50 advertisers aiming to lift brand awareness. In addition to their official Super Bowl spots, all three brands launched integrated digital campaigns that ran beyond game day.

Curious how campaigns perform once the buzz of Super Bowl is over, we asked Hyundai, Apartments.com and Turbo Tax about their Super Bowl 50 campaign results during the six month following the game. Here’s what they had to say.

Hyundai

No stranger to the Super Bowl, Hyundai’s 2016 campaign proved the brand knew what it was doing.

With three teaser ads, three official game-day spots and one pre-game ad, Hyundai’s three primary Super Bowl commercials all made YouTube’s top ten list of most watched Super Bowl ads.

Hyundai’s “The Chase” (shown above) was the most popular Super Bowl ad on YouTube, followed by its “First Date” spot featuring actor and comedian Kevin Hart at #4, and “Ryanville,” starring actor Ryan Reynolds, at #6.

“The campaign goal was to grab a bigger awareness number in the market with our brand, and then simultaneously continue to put more love and emotion into our brand and how people feel about our brand,” says Hyundai CMO Dean Evans.

Evans says the brand’s campaign’s objectives was two fold – to win ad meter, and lift brand awareness numbers.

“The channels we really focused on were Facebook and YouTube, because they’re the biggest platforms when it comes to video,” says Evans, “We love those guys and what we both have done together. We were happy to be on those two platforms.”

Evans says Hyundai Super Bowl spots drove website traffic up 500 percent, and increased brand awareness by 40 percent, in addition to a substantial uptick on third party shopping sites. Television ad metrics platform iSpot.tv reported Hyundai claimed nearly 13 percent of earned digital activity among Super Bowl advertisers, generating 154K social actions and 4.6 million organic views with nearly 8.5 million total views.

“We were responsible for 13 percent, but we only spent about two percent of the total,” says Evans, “So we got good views and organic viewership versus the money we spent – that was another good caveat that we were really proud of.”

Evans says when you look at the ad meter, Hyundai’s Super Bowl 50 campaign was one of the most successful the brand has ever pulled off. He also shared that July 2016 was the best July in the company’s sales history.

“At a time where the industry is really flat, we were pretty proud of that,” says Evans, “Coming out the beginning of the year and giving dealers – and giving everyone internally – a big boost like winning the Super Bowl, it did drive more traffic, and it continues to drive more sales, which, in a nutshell, is why you do it obviously.”

When asked if Hyundai will be making an appearance at next year’s Super Bowl, Evans says the brand hasn’t made an announcement one way or the other yet.

Apartments.com

For it’s first ever Super Bowl ad, Apartments.com CMO Becky Carr says she was proud of how it all came together.

“It was our first ever Super Bowl campaign – not only for the company and the brand, but also for the industry. No other apartment listings site has ever done a commercial during the Super Bowl,” says Carr.

“The stakes are pretty high to get that creative right, to have fun, to drive brand awareness which was our key objective, but the real focus of the creative execution that we directed our agency RPA to come up with was less about who we are and more about celebrating apartment living.”

Apartments.com’s Super Bowl ad featured celebrities Lil Wayne and Jeff Goldblum who reprised his role as Silicon Valley maverick Brad Bellflower – a fictional character he made famous during the brand’s original launch campaign in March 2015. The commercial’s theme played out around a remake of the song “Movin on Up,” from the 1970’s sitcom “The Jeffersons.”

“We had some very talented folks come up with the ‘Movin On Up’ themes – an absolute iconic song. Music is always great for capturing attention.”

In addition to its game day spot, Apartments.com released three teaser ads and a number of other promotions building up to the commercial, including a BuzzFeed listicle “13 Small But Sure Signs That You Are Movin’ On Up In The World” published the week before the Super Bowl.

“We were very fortunate to have Lil Wayne’s 75 million Twitter and Facebook followers, and so he did a lot of promotion,” says Carr, “Social and digital were our primary channels for promoting both before and after.”

Still Got Luv 4 You George #MovinOnUp #ad

— Lil Wayne WEEZY F (@LilTunechi) February 1, 2016

By March, the brand had already launched a new brand campaign, but Carr says she was thrilled with the how the Super Bowl campaign turned out in terms of meeting its key objectives to elevate awareness and brand perception.

“Those were two of the primary goals, and we absolutely exceeded those – our brand awareness in the month of February, right after the game, was up 63 percent. Our intention was up 50 percent.”

Carr says, from an earned media perspective, the Super Bowl campaign more than passed expectations, noting the Wall Street Journal named the spot one of the top ten Super Bowl ads.

“To have Al Roker talking about the spot being his favorite in the whole Super Bowl, those are the kinds of moments you can’t plan for.”

Turbo Tax

Hyundai wasn’t the only Super Bowl brand winner this year. Turbo Tax, Inituit’s tax preparation software, ranked No. 1 in Merkle’s Digital Bowl Report analyzing paid search, SEO, social and digital results of the top Super Bowl 50 campaigns.

Enlisting Anthony Hopkins to star in its official Super Bowl ad, Turbo Tax rolled out teaser ads a week before the game to build excitement and intrigue around the iconic actor’s appearance in the spot.

“Our objective was to go out and create awareness of our absolute zero free filing product,” says Danielle Roark, who serves as the senior manager of brand advertising in the U.S. for Intuit.

Roark says the Turbo Tax Super Bowl 50 campaign was an integrated effort across all channels, including display, social media and search. The brand also set up a social media war room on game day to engage in all the conversation that was happening around its Super Bowl spot.

“We had all kinds of giveaways – we gave away props from the actual Super Bowl spot set – and created a lot of excitement and engagement on the game day,” says Roark, “And we continued to support the spot online over the next week or so to keep that momentum going throughout the duration of the offering.”

Roark says the timing of the Super Bowl works to Turbo Tax’s favor – with the first two weeks of February being the busiest for the brand in terms of volume.

“It falls really in the sweet spot of our tax season, after W2s have come out and everyone is looking to get their refund – so it really plays well into our strategy to create high awareness, and drive consideration at that critical time period.”

In addition to the official spot, Roark says the brand created social media content, and that the campaign sparked a lot of conversations on social platforms.

anthony hopkins turbo tax commercial. good good good.

— Rob Thomas (@ThisIsRobThomas) February 8, 2016

Turbo Tax reported in April that its online units were up 15 percent over last year.

“The advertising campaign, including the Super Bowl campaign, was a huge lever against that growth,” says Roark, “It was really one of the strongest tax seasons we’ve had in some time.”

Roark says the Super Bowl campaign was a huge success – driving lots of excitement around the creative, and lots of traffic to the website.

“There was a lot of great, positive sentiment surrounding the campaign, and the business really benefited from it,” says Roark.

The same as Hyundai and Apartments.com, Turbo Tax wouldn’t say if they would be among next year’s Super Bowl advertisers – only that it was something they certainly were considering.

About The Author

Amy Gesenhues

Amy Gesenhues is Third Door Media’s General Assignment Reporter, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs.com, SoftwareCEO.com, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy’s articles.