Newcastle Band of Brands

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Insight 

The Super Bowl is the Holy Grail of ad space in the US. The world stage and the opportunity for humour are an advertiser’s dream. But that kind of presence does not come cheap at $4.5m for a 30-second spot! Leveraging the concept of brand-paid crowd funding, Newcastle Brown Ale realised there were a host of other brands that could benefit from the Newcastle name and help pay for its very expensive Super Bowl ad.  

Strategy 

There was nothing subtle about Starcom MediaVest Group's approach. If the sharing economy has taught anything, it’s that you should never pay for anything other people will buy for you. It put the call out to little local and major national brands in a matter of fact way: we don’t have the money but trust us, you will want to be in our ad. “Your brand could help our brand help your brand” was the motto. And the siren’s call of having a Super Bowl ad was more than enough to bring in brands that wanted in on the party. This fight was called the Newcastle Band of Brands.  

Everyone knows that the build up to the Super Bowl is just as important as the game itself. Band of Brands would display a two-pronged approach, first targeting other brands through online and social media and then the game day commercial for fans waiting to see how many brands it could fit in a 30-second spot. Newcastle Brown Ale didn’t just want to own the Super Bowl, it wanted to own the entire marketing conversation leading up to it.  

Execution 

The agency released a call for entries online asking brands to chip in for the ad in exchange for a placement in it and received nearly 400 interested parties. SMG seeded hype via social media (Twitter and Facebook) and gained additional value from the TV and print coverage of the call out. With an oversupply of brands wanting to participate, it encouraged them to jostle for best position – via their owned social media channels of course. It had other brands with hosts of followers tweeting about Newcastle!  

On game day the agency released the most brand-packed, fiscally responsible ad featuring 38 brands in 60 seconds.  

Results 

The campaign owned the internet for the weeks prior to release, garnering over two billion media impressions, 400 articles, over 33 million views and $20 million in earned media. 

And for the second year in a row, Newcastle was featured in nearly every big game ad list, a massive feat for a brand that can’t legitimately afford to be anywhere near the big game. 

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Brand:
Newcastle Brown Ale
Brand Owner:
Heineken
Category:
Drinks (alcoholic)
Region:
United States
date:
January - February 2015
Agency:
Starcom Mediavest
Media Channel:
Online,Print,TV
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