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For some viewers, the rivalry between advertisers during the Super Bowl has come to eclipse the game itself. Now mortgage lending giant Rocket Companies has seemingly taken the competition to new heights, with what the company describes as “a nationwide singalong, bringing millions of Americans together.”
Set to a cover of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” Rocket’s 60-second “Own the Dream” Super Bowl ad aired Sunday during a pause in the action in the second quarter.
“When the broadcast returned to the game, more than 65,000 fans at Caesars Superdome broke into a live singing of John Denver’s anthem,” the company crowed in a press release.
Although the official Super Bowl attendance was 65,719, footage of the event posted to YouTube by Rocket suggests that many in the audience weren’t actually in the mood to sing along — particularly Kansas City Chiefs fans, who’d just seen their team scored on for the second time early in what was ultimately a 22-40 rout.
But the Super Bowl also attracted a record audience of 127.7 million viewers — including a peak average of 137.7 million during the second quarter, according to metrics tracked by Nielsen.
In addition to capturing the attention of many fans watching the Super Bowl at home or in person, the story of how the ad came to be garnered coverage from a range of national and advertising trade media including USA Today, Variety and Ad Age.
Jonathan Mildenhall
According to USA Today’s Gabe Lacques, Rocket CMO Jonathan Mildenhall was “obsessed” with the initial suggestion by one of Rocket’s ad agencies to do a live singalong, but Fox Sports wasn’t thrilled with the idea at first.
Fox Sports finally embraced the idea two weeks before the Super Bowl, and the singalong went forward in the second quarter after the Philadelphia Eagles went up 10-0 on a field goal, Lacques reported.
While the singalong may have been historic, USA Today’s Ad Meter ranked Budweiser’s “First Delivery” tops out of 57 Super Bowl ads, with Rocket’s spot finishing in the middle of the pack, at 23rd.
With an eye to growing its business by targeting Hispanic, female, veteran and first-time homebuyer audiences, Rocket Companies rolled out a “brand restage” in January to lay the groundwork for the Super Bowl ad.
The ad was the brainchild of ad agency Mirimar and Rocket’s in-house creative team and was directed by Matthew Dillon Cohen.
CoStar Group also aimed to put a spotlight on its property search site, Homes.com, on Super Bowl Sunday with a pair of 30-second spots from ad agency RPA starring Dan Levy, Heidi Gardner and Morgan Freeman.
Editor’s note: This story was updated with audience metrics released by Nielsen on Feb. 11.
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