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No Ordinary Super Bowl Spot

By: Kaitlin T. Gallucci

The 2011 Marketer of the Year has started off the new year with a bang. Coca-Cola flexed its engagement muscles in with its live-streaming Polar Bowl campaign, coinciding with this past weekend's Super Bowl.

A commercial featuring Coca-Cola's iconic polar bears would likely do well, but this was no ordinary commercial. The two polar bears were there for the entire game — half-time, commercial breaks, and all — reacting in real-time with its viewing audience... talk about "fresh and relevant."

Response was unprecedented. Prior to kick-off, the Coca-Cola Twitter handle received a 12.5% increase in U.S. followers, and the Facebook even received 15 times the expected RSVPs. Come pre-game, Coke already had to add six servers to handle the number of live stream viewers. As the game continued, nine more servers were added to accommodate the growing traffic. Eventually, Coke had to add Major League Baseball's Advanced Media servers to the mix to continue the show for nearly a million viewers.

The Polar Bowl was produced in collaboration with Wieden & Kennedy, Framestore, and Animal Logic. Pio Schunker, Coca-Cola's SVP of Integrated Marketing, commented, "It went very well. We have a few thoughts in mind as to what we want to do [next year], but it's too soon to decide what we're going to pursue."

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About the Author

Kaitlin T. Gallucci is a marketing strategist, copywriter, and blogger located in New York. Get in touch by visiting her website or following her Twitter.

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