As an engagement vehicle, there’s nothing quite like the Super Bowl. This year’s hap-pening, Super Bowl XLVII, drew a massive TV audi-ence—108.4 million total viewers, making it the third most watched TV program ever (behind the 2010 and 2011 Super Bowls). Of those mil-lions of people, many tune in to watch their favorite teams battle for supremacy, but others make a sport out of watching the commercials.

In 2012, real estate fran-chisor Century 21 decided to make the leap into the Super Bowl.

The company debuted a commercial featuring real estate mogul and TV personality Donald Trump, football star Deion Sanders and Olympian Apolo Ohno playing up the company’s “Smarter. Bolder.

Faster” tagline. The move was a huge win

for Century 21, says CMO Bev Thorne. “We did it as a brand play, not a feet-on-the-street lead generation campaign,” she says. With the goal of attracting traffic to its website (CENTURY21.com),thecom-pany, with help from its agency of record, Mullen, saw a 40% increase in site traffic in 2012 while the industry average traffic increase to real estate sites was 4%, according to com-Score.

In addition, buzz and con-versations led to a 21% uptick in leads, and those leads led to a bottom-line jump, according to Thorne, who adds that these results can’t be all attributed to the Super-Bowl presence.

But it was enough of an indicator to return to the Super Bowl stage in 2013.

This time, though, the theme of the advertising would be much different—and the ads wouldn’t be driven by celebri-ties.

THE CREATIVEThe thrust of Century 21’s 2013 campaign would revolve around its most important stakeholder: the agent. There would be four commercials, three presented during pre-game festivities, and one in the third quarter of the game.

The spots revolve around the agent’s ability to help people who are facing big life moments: having a baby, seeing that baby grow up, winning the lottery and getting married. The tagline would be the same as in 2012: “Smarter. Bolder. Faster.”

Created by ad agency Red Tettemer + Partners the wed-ding commercial, which aired during the game, features a groom getting cold feet, until a Century 21 agent rescues him from the prospect of living with the bride’s parents.

“Our main objective this Super Bowl was to put our agents front and center,” Thorne says, adding that the branding work begins from within. “We wanted them to feel great pride in what they did as agents.”

A more granular goal was to drive the public to Century 21’s website. And key to that outreach, Thorne says, was

public relations. “PR was every-thing,” Thorne says. “We didn’t have luxury of a huge budget, so earned media was truly our greatest leverage.” It’s likely the company spent much of its budget on the ad buy, estimated to average about $3.8 million per Super-Bowl spot.

CAMPAIGN LAUNCHThe combined PR/marketing effort was launched in three waves, says Angela Giovanello, VP at Mullen. The first wave was the announcement that Century 21 would be pre-miering ads at the Super Bowl.

The second wave would involve the communications around a Super Bowl-themed survey, and the third would be the premiere of the ads the Monday before Super Bowl Sunday.

WAVE 1: KICKOFFThe official announcement that Century 21 was all in for Super Bowl XLVII was made in November 2012 at the National Association of Realtors confer-ence. Media outreach around the news yielded hits in advertising/marketing media, including mentions from advertising columnist Stuart Elliott of The New York Times

Company: Century 21 Real Estate

Agency: Mullen

Timeframe: Nov. 2012 - Present

▶Case Study

6 prnewsonline.com | 2.11.13

5 Practical Rules for Super Bowl Tweets Conversing with a big brand’s Twitter followers during the world’s most viewed TV event is a Herculean task. But Molly Galler, senior community manager at Mullen, was up to the task. During this year’s Super Bowl XLVII, Galler took the Twitter reins on behalf of client Century 21. From that experience, here are some tips and observations from Galler:

• Keepthreetabsopen—one for your corporate profile page, one for all your @ replies and one to search key terms like “Century 21” or “Super Bowl.”

• Ifyouknowyouwanttogiveshout-outtootherbrands—congrat-ulating them on their ads or razzing them—look up their verified Twitter handles in advance.

• RealizethatnoteveryTwitteruserisgoingtoloveyourSuperBowl ad. It hurts, but you didn’t love all of the ads yourself, did you?

• Showsomepersonality.Noonewantstoconversewitharobot.

• Useahashtagthatisbrandedandeasyforconsumerstoremember. We chose #C21SuperBowl.

PR and Marketing Work as One to Earn Media, Fan and Online Buzz Around Century 21’s Super Bowl XLVII Ad Spots

Century 21’s Super Bowl broadcast ad, shown during the third quarter of the game, depicts a new bride calling for a Century 21 agent after the groom faints at the altar.

Image courtesy of M

ullen

Media RelationsBrandingAdvertising

Molly Galler

prnewsonline.com | 2.11.13 7

and marketing writer Bruce Horovitz of USA Today.

“Reporters want to know about the media buy and what quarter the ad will run in during the game,” Giovanello says.

WAVE 2: THE SURVEYWith no celebrities to pitch for the 2013 spot, Century 21 and Mullen looked for a unique angle to build engagement leading up to the ad launch. The teams considered doing some sort of sweepstakes pro-motion.

But they ended up going in a different direction. “Without a huge promotional budget, we got down and dirty with a traditional consumer survey,” Giovanello says.

The survey, conducted online by Harris Interactive, was fielded Dec. 11-13, 2012. The nearly 3,000 respondents weighed in about their game-watching and party plans for the upcoming Super Bowl.

The results, released on Jan. 22, after the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens earned respective births in the big game, were just what Century 21 was looking for: Nearly nine in 10 (88%) Americans who planned to watch the big game agreed that home is the best place to catch the action.

The response to the survey findings was enthusiastic. “Mashable had us recreate it just for them with questions on social media,” Giovanello says. A host of lifestyle and sports outlets also covered the find-ings.

Perhaps the biggest hit was the famed USA Today Snapshot infographic that appears on page one of the daily. “Many communicators still consider it the Holy Grail of media hits,” Giovanello says.

As Wave 2 progressed, Facebook and Twitter were used to release small bites of the findings.

WAVE 3: THE UNVEILINGFor Super Bowl brand com-municators, to preview or not preview is the big question. To build the suspense, some brands prefer not to reveal their ads until the Super Bowl.

However, Century 21 decided to show its creative the Monday before the game. “Strategically it made the most sense,” says Matt Gentile, director of PR and social, Century 21. “I think more views is better. The discussion surrounding the commercials is such an opportunity to drive publicity that it made the most sense.”

After revealing the ads, Gentile and his team of three went to work, starting with an interactive release that was dis-tributed on MarketWire.

Media outreach that week covered a wide swath, including real estate trades, sports media, advertising, mar-keting and franchise trades and online media properties like Huffington Post and Mashable.

By Wednesday, Gentile made a move toward sports radio. “It may sound odd, but sports radio stations have web-sites, and we had experienced good pickup of the survey from them,” he says. “It was certainly a different target for us.”

Also considered were TV outlets like “Good Morning America.” But Gentile says that because the networks seemed to be covering controversies surrounding some of the ads—including the Jamaican-accented Volkwagon spot and the often-edgy GoDaddy ads—Century 21 shied away from making a pitch.

Heading into Friday and Saturday, the team was still pushing the survey results and the opportunity for the public to vote for their favorite (and least favorite) commercials through USA Today’s Admeter andYouTube’sAdBlitz.Votingwas encouraged through Century 21’s social platforms—

Google+,Twitter,YouTubeandLinkedIn.

GAMEDAY When Super Bowl Sunday rolled around, it was time to watch the game and monitor social media activity on Twitter. Molly Galler, Mullen’s senior community manager, held the reins on Twitter, answering questions about the commer-cials, advising followers when the spot would appear and responding to the third-quarter Superdome power outage with: “Is there a Century 21 agent in the house?” a line that is used in all of the company’s creative.

POSTGAMETwo days after the game, results were still being tabulated, using Cision and Radian6 measure-ment platforms, among others. Thorne says the company will look closely at website traffic, which is important because 94% of potential home buyers go online in their search. Engagement, share of voice and lead-generation metrics

will also be in the mix. What is known so far is media impres-sions: some 700 million and counting.

Could Mullen and Century 21 have done anything more to increase the buzz around the ad spots? Gentile says perhaps more video content leading up to the game might have moved the needle further. Thorne says more time and more research might have yielded better results, but neither one of them has any regrets.

Gentile stressed that, for him, PR around the Super Bowl was his Super Bowl. “There is no greater campaign to work on,” he says. “Having worked in this field for 20 years, you’d better have your seatbelt on—there’s no greater spotlight.” PRN

CONTACT:Bev Thorne, @BevThorne; Angela Giovanello, @agiovanello; Matt Gentile, @MattGentile; Molly Galler, @mollygaller.

Source: Mullen

Super Bowl Survey a “Home” Run

A Century 21 pre-Super Bowl survey fielded by Harris Interactive proved to be a compelling and cost-effective tactic to engage the media and fans.