How Super Bowl commercials became a cultural phenomenon

“Everybody always asks [if there is a limit to the price of a Super Bowl ad], then they get more expensive. People [have woken] up to the fact that digital hasn’t killed television advertising. When it works together, it works really well.”

Taco Bell hadn’t planned on buying a Super Bowl ad campaign this year until it brought in Deutsch LA to help with a broader campaign called “Live Mas” (mas being Spanish for “more”). The brand’s 10m Facebook fans and 325,000 Twitter followers had started to share stories about how they were “living more” but, says Brian Niccol of Taco Bell, “the stories were not about skydiving or swimming with sharks,” but more down-to-earth events such as road trips or high school reunions. “We saw this and thought, ‘You know what? Our fans are looking for us to do some communication that goes beyond our product innovation to tell stories about the brand.”