Companies let fans get into advertising game

NEW YORK – You don’t have to be a football player to be a part of the action on Super Bowl Sunday.

Coca-Cola is asking people to vote for an online match between three groups competing in a desert for a Coke on Game Day. Pepsi and Toyota are using viewers’ photos in their ads. Audi let people choose the end of its Super Bowl ad, while Lincoln based its spot on more than 6,000 tweets from fans about their road trips.

These are just some of the ways advertisers have found to get viewers involved in the excitement on game day by luring them online. And they’re going well beyond encouraging fans to tweet or “like” their ads on websites like Twitter or Facebook.

“We’re seeing better and more unique ways of getting people involved,” said Robert Kolt, an advertising instructor at Michigan State University. “You want people to be engaged.”

PepsiCo, which is sponsoring the Super Bowl halftime show, said its goal was to create buzz online with a monthlong campaign that went well beyond a voiceover saying “brought to you by Pepsi.”

For about two weeks, Pepsi asked fans online and via a digital billboard in New York’s Times Square to submit their photos for a chance to appear in a 30-second “intro” spot to air right before the halftime show.

The company said the effort was more popular than it expected: Pepsi expected to get 2,000 photos, but got 100,000 instead. About 1,000 photos were chosen to be a part of the intro. They will be stitched together in a “flipbook” style video that appears to show one person jumping to the tune of “Countdown,” a song by Beyonce, who is performing during the halftime show.

“We don’t just want (viewers) on pepsi.com, we want them telling their friends ‘I just did something with Pepsi,’ ” said Angelique Krembs, vice president of trademark Pepsi marketing. “You want the friend to tell the friend about Pepsi. You don’t want Pepsi to always be the one talking about Pepsi.”

Ford Motor Co.’s Lincoln enlisted Jimmy Fallon, host of NBC’s “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” to sift through thousands of tweets submitted by fans about road trips for its Super Bowl spot.

The story line for the 30-second ad, which was developed from 6,117 tweets, features rapper Joseph “Rev Run” Simmons and Wil Wheaton, who acted in the iconic science-fiction series “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

“We drove (sic) passed an alpaca farm, a few of them were meandering on the highway and my sister screamed, “It’s the Alpacalypse!,” reads one tweet.

“Drove through a movie set in Palmdale, Calif., and didn’t realize it. Got out and enjoyed the catered food,” reads another tweet.

Coca-Cola created an online game that pits a troupe of showgirls, biker-style “badlanders” and cowboys against each other in a race to find a Coke in the desert. Viewers are encouraged to vote for their favorite group and set up obstacles that delay other groups on CokeChase.com. Obstacles include a traffic light or getting a pizza delivered, which waste time.

The game is alluded to in a Super Bowl ad and the winning group – which has the most “for” votes and the least “obstacle” votes will be announced after the game. Coke will also give the first 50,000 people who vote a free Coke. The campaign is more interactive than Coca-Cola’s online effort last year, which featured a real-time animation of Polar Bears reacting to what was happening during the Super Bowl.

“Last year’s effort was much more passive. It was you watching bears watching the game,” said Pio Schunker, senior vice president of integrated marketing. “This year we thought, ‘Can we up ante on the fun factor by handing the reins over to consumers?’ ”

Audi let viewers choose one of three possible endings for its Game Day spot by voting online on Jan. 25 for 24 hours.

The ad shows a boy who gets enough confidence from driving his father’s Audi to the prom to kiss his dream girl, even though he is then decked by her boyfriend. Audi allowed people to vote for one of three potential endings for the ad.

In one possible ending, the boy drives home alone triumphant. Another ending shows him paling around with friends. The third shows the boy going home and finding a prom picture of his parents in which his dad has a similar black eye.

The first ending, called “Worth it,” won.