After last year's massive social media win by Oreo, all eyes were on this year's big game to see which brands would have a break out social media performance.

While the real-time marketing magic of last year's game was missing, several brands used a well executed strategy to make a major impact in the marketing world. Let's check out the three marketing highlights below. For full coverage of the big game, be sure to check out the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud blog.

JCPenny wins with mittens on

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Whether or not they were #TweetingWithMittens, JCPenny's unexpected tweets landed them the title of second most mentioned brand during yesterday's game.

Buoyed by a timely article from Mashable, the brand cut through the noise and garnered 118,035 mentions. Impressive considering they spent zero dollars on advertising.

Esurance scores at the last minute

Right as many viewers were preparing to turn off their TV's and head to bed, Esurance aired a commercial immediately after the game. The commercial featured actor John Krasinski from The Office and offered viewers a chance to win $1.5 million if they tweeted with the hashtag #EsuranceSave30.

As of 11:20 pm EST, the #EsuranceSave30 hashtag had generated over 1.3 million tweets. Not a bad result considering they saved about 30% by not running the spot in prime time.

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Big spends still generate big results

Unsurprisingly, the list of brands that were most mentioned during the game was dominated by brands that spent big on in-game advertising. While the attraction of viral social media stardom remains elusive, there is a consistency to the time-tested media spend.

Here is a list of the top five most mentioned brands during the game:

  1. Budweiser: 163,002
  2. JC Penney: 118,035
  3. H&M: 103,505
  4. Coke: 83,463
  5. Doritos: 61,985

Stay tuned to the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud blog for even more coverage and analysis throughout the day.

Social Media Trends from Super Bowl XLVIII from ExactTarget

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