T-Mobile's Super Bowl Ad


Companies invest around $4 Million dollars for a 30 second sport on the Super Bowl. Roughly calculated, that is 130,000 dollars per second. This outrageous amount of money makes it clear why an ad for the Super Bowl must be eye-catching, creative, and appealing if they want to avoid ending up wasting astronomical figure of money. This year, T-mobile's #nocontract ad made a funny and concrete impact. It projected an idea; "Life is more rewarding without a contract". It successively emphasized how great T-mobile's policy is, and it was interesting and entertaining as well.

The ad featured Tim Tebow delivering babies, rescuing puppies, taking selfies with a Bigfoot, and performing stunts: all the thing people never expect a no contract NFL player to do. The ad projected Tim Tebow as a happy individual enjoying life without a contract. Tim Tebow was released this year in August, when NFL teams performed a mojor player release. Although there had been many critics regarding Tebow's sports career with distaste, he looked good and solid on screen.

The target audience the carrier company aims for are those who are tied to mobile phone contracts. They accurately describe how contracts can be painstaking, and how being freed opens up more possibilities. The ethos is perfect. A#nocontract ad featuring an NFL player without a contract is ingenious. Especially when the player was one who gathered humongous attention from the media and football fans due to his unique play style.

Statistically, the ad did its job. Tebow increased the T-mobile carrier subscribers, damaging other carrier companies, especially AT&T, bringing down their subscribers by 14%. Tebow successfully managed to show off the merits of T-mobile's super aggressive policy. THey are buying people out of their original contracts so that they would switch to their carrier and enjoy a "no contract" life. The ad producers of T-mobile made an exceptional ad with excellent casting and humor.

There were two major factors and one minor factor that made this ad successful. The minor one, was the fact that T-mobile hired a #nocontract NFL player to the biggest football event in the US. Many famous Twitter accounts tweeted and pointed out the fact, proving the ad team's genius.

Major factors that made this ad great, was the use of celebrity in the ad. Featuring celebrities can bring several effects; awareness of the product, credibility to a product, reputation of the company, brand recall for a product, and sales increase. For this ad, awareness of the product and credibility to a product made a huge impact. Using a football player in the ad aroused NFL fans all gathered to watch the big, national football event. Tebow shared T-mobile's merit, increasing credibility of the ad. Another cause that lead to T-mobile's success, was the use of SNS. With Twitter, T-mobile and Tim Tebow each uploaded snippets of the ad before and during the show, generating a buzz around the internet and the stadium, heightening excitement and expectation. They also held and open Q&A session on Tebow's account, grasping on tothe attention they were getting. It was a clever move, accounting the SNS trend the globe is experiencing.

Overall, I was happy that the ad wasn't a topic-less one with no main argument or confusing structure. It was simple, plain, yet effective. With the social media power and celebrity power combined, it easily became one of the best Super Bowl ads of 2014.