The Super Bowl is not just about football and Bruno Mars. It’s about getting the whole world together in front of their TVs so that advertisers can show off their products in not-as-inventive-as-they-have-been-in-the-past commercials. The insurance brand Esurance got pretty creative this year and bought the commercial spot right after the game. For doing so, they claim they saved 30% which comes out to 1.5 MILLION DOLLARS! If my math is correct, that means a regular Super Bowl spot costs 5 MILLION DOLLARS! Utterly ridiculous if you ask me (which you did ask me by reading this blog).
The way Esurance claimed that they would give this money away was through a lottery-style contest held on Twitter in which you could enter as many times as you wanted simply by tweeting this hashtag: #EsuranceSave30. Clearly this BLEW UP beyond anything that has ever blown up on Twitter. Followers of @Esurance skyrocketed, that hashtag was Tweeted around 3 million times, and they made history. Esurance also tweeted some things to amp up the hype including a picture of the money where it was being held at their offices in San Francisco (Northern California). I realized right then that I had no shot despite tweeting that hashtag 50 or so times (since this blog doesn’t make me any money I gotta do something, right?). The reason I had no shot is because Esurance also mentioned that the winner would get the cash hand delivered. They are not taking a cross country trip with 1.5 million dollars, or somebody who has watched too many ‘Fast and Furious’ movies might try to hit that convoy and run off with the money.
On Jimmy Kimmel Live last night, they had the voice of Esurance (John Krasinsky of ‘The Office’) on the show and they sent someone to hand deliver 1.5 million dollars in cash to the ‘random winner.’ It was John from Northern California (told you). It gets better, though... John is newly married with a kid on the way... and they live in a relatively small (some might call it crappy) house. Mr. Krasinsky even said on the show (when they saw that the wife clearly is pregnant) that he thought it just made a better story... BOOM, caught you John! Esurance was going for the better story.
Here’s what I bet happened: Esurance had an army of interns weed through the tweets to find those in Northern California (near their home base), then looked at the content of those tweets and found a nice sob story about a baby on the way and VOILA! You have your winner. This has to be it because he claimed to have tweeted the hashtag ONE TIME! One out of 3 MILLION just happens to be in Northern California right near Esurance home base where the money was? I think not. Thanks for duping us, Esurance.
DISCLAIMER: While I am sad I didn’t win, that’s not what upsets me... it’s the fact that this thing was masqueraded as random and it clearly wasn’t. Shame on you, Esurance. But kudos for covering your butt by having the fine print say the winner is subject to a background check and you can disqualify whomever you want if their tweets are offensive.
That’s it for now...
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