Here Are Some Weird Super Bowl Promotions That Brands Really, Really Want You To Know About
The stream of PR emails we receive daily at The Takeout can quickly become a flood within a week of any major holiday, but the Super Bowl just hits different: It brings out the biggest, weirdest, and most obnoxious flexes in advertising, like if the Clio Awards had a Met Gala red carpet. With so many brands competing for the nation's attention this Sunday, they've thrown everything at the wall to gain coveted virality—as evidenced by the list below, a roundup of all the weirdest Super Bowl LIV promotions for you to oooh and aaah at.
Pizza Hut's Super Bowl Babies: Following the success of their baby-centric campaign last year, Pizza Hut will reward the first family to birth a set of twins following kickoff at Super Bowl LIV. The winners will get a trip for two (italics theirs) to next year's Super Bowl, two years' worth of free pizzas "to fuel them through the sleepless nights," and $22,000 toward the twins' education funds. In order to win, the proud parents need to jump through several social media hoops and deploy multiple less-than-intuitive hashtags. On the other hand, $22,000 and free pizza.
Jack In The Box Tiny Tacos: To promote the return of Tiny Tacos, Jack In The Box is giving away prizes to those who tweet #JacksTinyTacos and #giveaway during each Super Bowl commercial break. The full list of prizes you can win will be announced on February 1, but we know that Sonic the Hedgehog merch will be on it. Why on earth would this be the case? Because the Super Bowl is a time of beautiful, cross-promotional teamwork, and Paramount's Sonic The Hedgehog hits theaters February 14.
Wholly Guacamole's Avocado Hand Insurance: Okay, so this part is true: Avocado Hand is a common injury that occurs when kitchen newbies try to remove the pit from an avocado. (The knife slips over the smooth surface of the pit, zooming instead toward the soft flesh of the arm holding the avocado.) Wholly Guacamole, a company specializing in pre-made guacamole products, is offering Avocado Hand Insurance—that is, they're giving away 54 premade Wholly Guacamole during the game to those who follow the hashtag instructions listed here. Two things to note here, in case you, like me, needed the clarification: the Wholly Guacamole product is itself the Avocado Hand Insurance, and the company is giving away 54 of them because it's Super Bowl LIV.
Truly Hard Seltzer's #TrulyAndRally: According to the data provided by account executives, as many as one in ten business professionals admit they go to work hungover the day after Super Bowl Sunday, which "translates to more than $484 million in lost productivity." Whether you believe these statistics is up to you, but it is true that Truly Hard wants to capitalize on this phenomenon by having fans tweet #TrulyAndRally in celebration of actually making it to work Monday morning. Those who tweet stand to win $10,000 for their trouble. The Truly Hard Twitter account has a helpful template of how you might like to format your #TrulyAndRally tweets. Looks like a lot of copying and pasting might be involved.
Here's one last promotion that doesn't have much to do with food, but is a nice palate cleanser: WeatherTech, a company specializing in automotive accessories, has a dog mascot named Scout who starred in last year's Super Bowl commercial. In July 2019, it was discovered that Scout had a rare heart tumor and a 1 percent chance of survival—but thanks to the veterinary team at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Scout was put on a cutting-edge treatment plan and is now living his best life. So, during the second quarter of Sunday's game, WeatherTech will feature both Scout and the veterinary team in its ad spot, to encourage donations in support of the school's cancer research efforts. That's a pretty cool way to use your 15 seconds.