While just about every other Super Bowl advertiser posts its commercials on YouTube after the big game, Volkswagen posted their spots several days before Super Sunday.
One of those two spots, called “The Force,” become the crowd favorite, serving up 12.5 million views, attracting dozens of national news stories (with the clip embedded inside), and becoming the most-talked-about commercial on Twitter before opening kickoff.
The preemptive strike is a stroke of viral genius, one-upping all the other advertisers battling to become the most-buzzed commercial of TV’s biggest annual event. “These days, it’s all about getting the content ahead of the Super Bowl so you create a buzz before you get to the game,” said Michael Kadin, creative director of Deutsch LA, the agency behind the ad.
While it’s certainly not the first time a Super Bowl advertiser has revealed a spot before the game, it may be the first time the best commercial ran on YouTube before the big game. Now when it airs, many people will explain to their friends that they’ve already seen it — a sort of “reverse recommendation” that carries its own social cache.
You can bet next year, quite a few advertisers will post their ads on YouTube ahead of the game in an effort to own the pre-game conversation.