2014 Super Bowl grabbed the most eyeballs

Thanks to digital media the Super Bowl XLVIII broke all records of viewership. This year the Super Bowl set a record of a whopping 111.5 million viewers. Digital media has changed the rule of the game today. New York Times Author David Carr says the mass has gone out of media in modern life. He says that each one is building our own little campfire on our phone, tablet and big screen at a time and place of our choosing (Carr, D. 2014). Carr is so right. You really don’t need to reach your apartment or bar to watch the NFL game live. Digital media has made life so easy today that you can watch it anywhere you wish. All you need is your basic communication gadget with internet connection.

I don't have a television set in my apartment, but that didn't deter me from watching the N.F.L. final. I watched it with my roommate on my laptop. We streamed the game live on Fox Sports Live and enjoyed every bit of it. It’s another thing that the game was one-sided with the Seahawks dominating the game till the end. Many viewers called the game a ‘puppy bowl’ or a ‘zombie bowl.’ I liked the halftime of the Super Bowl the best. Bruno Mars delivered a red-hot performance at the game. I was also thrilled to watch Red Hot Chili Pepper gyrate on their 1991 hit ‘Give it away.’

At the Super Bowl even the advertisements made a lot of noise.  Each and every commercial on the game night had a human element in it. There was a feel-good feeling in each of the advertisements. Take for example the Heinz ketchup commercial by Cramer-Krasselt. The commercial encouraged consumers to hum "If you're happy and you know it." (Elliott, S. 2014).

And then there is the Coca Cola America Is Beautiful commercial that has angered many people. Coca Cola used different foreign languages in the little-more-than one-minute commercial. And many critics cribbed about the advertisement saying that America is a country that speaks English and hence everything should be in English and not be in a foreign language. How stupid is that. There were some people on Twitter who used the hashtag #speakamerican to express their anger to the Coke commercial. Wonder what was going on in their minds to make such foolish comments. 

Super Bowl XLVIII generated a lot of interest not in the game in itself, but rather the commercials and the halftime performances. A tweet from Ogilvy said that 58% of national advertisements have a hashtag and the 2014 Super Bowl generated 24.9 million tweets. And these facts certainly are a boon to public relations which can use this as a great tactic to make big bucks.