When Pokémon first announced that it would be showing a commercial during Super Bowl 50, football fans and non-football fans alike who shared a love for the video game eagerly awaited more details on it. A commercial for the games during the Super Bowl was bound to be better than nearly anything else the company had put out, and when fans everywhere got treated to it early, we were right.
The commercial was empowering, exciting, intense and compelling. I can only speak for myself, but I got chills the first time I watched it. However, the reveal of it early, though nice for fans who didn’t live in the U.S. and wouldn’t be watching the Super Bowl, felt a little anti-climactic. Would this reveal downplay the commercial when it actually played during the event? If everyone’s already seen it, what’s the point?
Well, it turns out that it didn’t have any effect on the commercial’s reception. In fact, what may come as a surprise to some, Pokémon’s commercial actually ended up being one of the most viewed ads of the whole football game. On YouTube, the ad has nearly 18 million views, which is a higher count than a lot of other, high-profile, high-budget companies who have spots during the event every year. Then again, Pokémon had a budget of $5 million as well, so it wasn’t like it was skimping.
The commercial was obviously a celebration of the company’s and series’ 20th anniversary, but there’s no doubt that it was also to bring Pokémon back into center view of the public eye. With Pokémon GO coming out this year, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company are surely going to be doing a lot of promotion, and there’s of course going to be even more Pokémon promotions, products and media that Nintendo and Pokémon are definitely going to want to have attention towards.
The advertising and social analytics company iSpot.tv also shows that the commercial generated around 41,000 social interactions just on Sunday night alone, which means that if you included everything from today, as well as when the commercial was first released by the company itself, the numbers are surely way above that. And, even better, 88% of the social interactions regarding the ad were positive. The fact that it was shown so far in advance, and still had people excited and talking during its Super Bowl premier, is quite impressive.
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Written by George Comatas
As a wannabe social media personality and professional in the world of sarcasm, George does his best to always adapt to the changing world around him. He considers himself a maverick: a true-to-heart gamer with the mind of a pop star. Whether this makes him revolutionary or a setback, he's yet to find out. But one thing’s for sure; he's one-of-a-kind.
