With 111.3 million average viewers, and 114 million tuning in just for Madonna’s halftime performance, Super Bowl XLVI made its mark in Super Tazón (Spanish word for Super Bowl) history, breaking the previous viewing record. This has presented the largest audience for what the Super Tazón has become known for and what we all look forward to: the commercials. From Chevrolet to Doritos, many big brands came with their best this season, but a ringing topic is – Did ad makers forget to include minority viewers?

Using the online listening power tool Radian6, we researched a quantity of over 60,000 online mentions¹ of brands that advertised during the Super Bowl to find which ones resonated most with Hispanics.  We analyzed conversations by Spanish dominant and bilingual Hispanics using sophisticated search method techniques, facilitated by the software.  By doing this we were able to capture not only the pure Spanish conversation, but also the English speaking Hispanics whom are increasingly important to brands in the US’s evolving American culture.

So lets dig into the numbers…

¿Tienes Hambre?  - Food Brands mentioned by Hispanics

Doritos led the food conversation among Hispanics during the Super Bowl. Most of the conversation took place on Twitter and the predominant language for this brand was Spanglish; “Doritos y dip no hay mejor combinación ” (Eng: Doritos and dip, there is no better combination). In comparison, powerhouse brand, M&M’s, only held 1.7% volume of conversation versus 97.7% for Doritos when compared head to head. Dannon’s Oikos Greek Yogurt commercial made a dent, but only garnered 0.6% of the total Hispanic conversation among the 3 food brands.

Hispanic mentions of 3 food brands: Doritos, M&M’s and Oikos (Radian6 graphic)

Which Beverages did Hispanics chat about?

Moving forward in our Super Bowl Ads analysis, beverage giants Coca-Cola and Pepsi equally dominated the conversation with 47.8% and 47.3% respectively. Here are a few verbatim from the high volume of posts for the two soft drinks: “¿Qué le dijo un refresco de cola a otro? I´m pepsi and I know it” (Eng: What did a cola soft drink tell to another? I´m pepsi and I know it) and,  “Me gusta el comercial de coca cola #podemosserhéroes” (Eng: I like the coca cola comercial #podemosserhéroes).

Trailing behind, beer giant Budweiser and Bud light represented the least amount of conversations with less than 5% combined, as our research showed that Hispanics were more prone to chat about soft drinks than beer.  The two dominant conversation forums among Hispanics were Youtube and Twitter as Facebook did not play a significant role when engaging fans into conversations.  This is not uncommon as Facebook users typically have private settings which would not be seen in our research.

Left: Percent of Hispanic beverage conversations by brand. Right: Conversation Cloud for Coca-Cola & Pepsi (Radian6 graphics).

So how do you think the carro industry was perceived by Hispanics?

Based on our analysis, two brands fully commanded Hispanic attention around the Super Bowl.  Cadillac came out on top with 36% of the total car conversation versus Chevy’s 34%.  For a report of all Hispanic mentions of car brands see the link to the full report below.

Let’s review how all the Chevy ads performed. The Sonic took the top spot at nearly 31% of all mentions among Chevy’s 4 commercials.  However, we can say that all four Chevy models, Volt, Camaro, Silverado and Sonic, shared a relatively equal amount of the Hispanic conversation.

Left: Car industry conversations. Right: Chevy's conversations by model (Radian6 graphics).

What about Latinas?

Let’s not take for granted the millions of female viewers. H&M presented “a muy caliente” commercial with David Beckham sporting his new underwear line, which had near 100% positive sentiment among Hispanic “chicas”: Que hombre chauuuuu OFFICIAL David Beckham Bodywear…(Eng: What a man byeeee OFFICIAL David Beckham Bodywear…

Surprised by these findings? Not me!

Also, let’s not forget the New York Giant’s Victor Cruz, who proves to be a favorite amongst Hispanics online, especially his end-zone salsa with the Latinas sharing comments of support.

Left: Conversation Cloud for Victor Cruz. Right: Tweet mentions for Victor Cruz (Radian6 graphics).

Your Thoughts

I would love to hear your opinion about all the Super Bowl Ads. Do you believe that Hispanics and other minority groups were ignored?  What no one can ignore is the fact that Hispanics are not only very active online, but also very eager to share their views about these large brands.

Want the Full Report?

Due to size restrictions, we only put several of the highlights of the report on this blog.  If you would like the full report please provide your information below and you will receive it by email.

¹ Online mentions gathered from dates 2/3/2012 – 2/6/2012