Commercialization on its best: Super Bowl 2011

The 6^th of February 2011 was Super Bowl Sunday; the day that this year’s super bowl took place. The Super Bowl is an American Football match between the American Football League champion and the National Football League champion. This year’s final was between the Pittsburgh Steelers (AFC) and the Green Bay Packers (NFC). Although the Super Bowl is not very well-known in Holland, it is one of the two sports events with the highest viewership (the other event is the in Europe better known Champions League final). The Super Bowl attracts a whopping 100 million viewers worldwide and this makes the intermissions during the match an exclusive opportunity to expose your brand to this huge audience. The Super Bowl therefore isn’t just a sports event.

First of all it has become a tradition for a great number of brands to launch a new commercial or an advertising campaign during the Super Bowl. This year, 61 new commercials were introduced for a great variety of brands and products (costs: about 2 million dollars per 30 seconds). There is a downside to this commercialization in American sports however. I enjoy watching something special like the Super Bowl for example, but I can imagine that I would get pretty annoyed by all those commercial breaks and sponsorship announcements if you are watching a regular season match.

A compilation of all 61 commercials:

My personal favorite:

Next to the tsunami of commercials, the traditional half-time show is another event within the Super Bowl. This year’s performance was given by the Black Eyed Peas, the U.S. National Anthem was sung by Christina Aguilera (incorrectly by the way).

The half-time show:

I knew about the existence of the Super Bowl for some years now, but this year was the first time I actually watched a part of the show and I must say that I really enjoyed it. The commercialization, the vibe around the whole event, the typical American rituals you see; I’m definitely watching again next year! I recommend you to do the same…

Oh and the Green Bay Packers won the game by the way, but that’s just a detail.

The fall of Mubarak and the ‘Twitter-revolution’.

Eighteen days of protests by over a million people have forced the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to resign. This message was followed by massive celebrations in Egypt and popped up all over the world on televisions, radios and newspapers. However, other types of media played a key role in making this revolution happen.

The media I’m addressing to are social media like Twitter and Facebook. By using these social media, individuals were able to see that they were not the only rebels protesting against Mubarak’s strict regime. It‘s important to note that these individuals using social media were mostly young and educated people. Because of their access to these media they could communicate and share information all day long; they were able to encourage all those people in the streets of Cairo in order to keep the momentum going.

Anyway, despite the role of social media, I don’t think this evolution should be called a Twitter-revolution. In order to call it that way, a Twitter-revolution should be defined as a revolution supported by Twitter, NOT a revolution that is evoked by Twitter (which the word Twitter-revolution implies). The role of social media in this revolution is evident, but in my opinion it merely refers to a new element in revolutions worldwide: a new way to connect demonstrators within a country as well as their compatriots abroad, that reinforces the opposition and which is harder to censor. I guess if you consider it this way, you could call it a Twitter-revolution after all…